Wow

17 comments on the last post. Who would have though my refusal to eat crustaceans or mangos would spark such controversy? I was happy to see that the vast majority of people agree with me on the topic of Rocky Mountain Oysters, however.

As for the foods that I do like, well, I had a few of them this weekend. Hugh made the trip to Denver to officiate at Rocky Mountain Nationals so the kids and I were free to indulge the way we usually do when we are left alone; by getting our chow on at the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. We also had breakfast at the local diner and lunch at a fast-food drive-in because we like to live large and calories don’t scare us.

Besides, we managed to work off a tremendous amount of those empty calories by doing manual labor around the house all weekend. For instance, on Saturday, I spent almost eight hours cleaning. You heard me; eight hours. The house had not been properly cleaned since before the Man-Cub started wrestling and we had the dust bunny population to prove it. Clearly, something had to be done and I was just the woman to do it. So, I washed windows. I scrubbed bathtubs. I moved furniture and crawled around on the floor, scrubbing the baseboards. I vacuumed every conceivable surface of the house including the furniture, the curtains, the tops of the kitchen cabinets and, I’ll admit it, the dog.

Hey, he loved it! He particularly enjoyed the vigorous rub-down with the furniture attachment which I’m sure felt just like a fabulous massage one might get at one of those fancy doggie day- spas.

When I was done, I gloated over my sparkling and pristine house for a good ten minutes before the dust re-settled and the children tracked in the first new dirt at which point I briefly toyed with changing my name to Sisyphus before deciding against it given how easily it could be confused with a certain venereal disease of similar name. So, I just wept a little, instead.

On the off-chance that eight hours of hard labor wasn’t enough to thoroughly exercise the extra large order of tater tots from my ass, on Sunday, I spent three hours hunched over the flowerbeds, pulling weeds, cleaning out dead leaves, mulching around the tulip and daffodils and raking up the debris.

While I toiled away at the pruning of my mum bushes, I made the kids cruise the front lawn with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, picking up dog poop. They were not overly enthusiastic about the job, as one might suspect. But, in a page taken directly from my Dad’s book of parenting, I offered to buy them each an ice cream once we were done and the deal was sealed.

For the record, my dad offered ice cream as a bribe to get my sisters and me to rake leaves from underneath the lilac bushes in our front yard when we were young. It worked fairly well for him until we hit Jr. High and became aware that our friends might see us raking leaves, gasp! No amount of ice cream in the world was worth that humiliation, I assure you. Vanity, thy name is Chelle!

Heh, I guess I had better take full advantage of the Ice Cream for Labor deal while my kids are still young. And, you know, not vain.

Anyway, the weekend wasn’t all toil and despair, I did manage to get in a pedicure and I watched a few DVDs (Employee of the Month which wasn’t as bad as I had expected and The Prestige which wasn’t as good as I had hoped but was still worth watching because, Hugh Jackman, rowwrr).

Today I have a wicked backache which is clearly God’s way of punishing me for not observing his mandated Day of Rest. Lesson learned, Lord! Next Sunday, the most strenuous thing that I plan to do will involve lifting a drink to my mouth.

Dust bunnies be damned.