Slobs

Currently there are four pillows in this bed, one is covered in that freaky medicated old person smell of Tiger Balm, one may or may not have been peed on by Tessa, one is the wimpy pillow that vaporizes to a thin flat sheet as soon as you put weight onto it, and then there is the good one. Cole has the good one right now. At least we think so. It could very well be the pee pillow because that one is pretty solid as well, but if you hit the wrong spot with your face, well... it smells like urine. We think. It's just a theory. Can't be sure.

Pillows are like seven bucks at IKEA... but the thought of actually leaving the house to go and purchase pillows that would make our life a little nicer at nighttime is unthinkable to me. I was faced with this decision recently, and I'm like: "We can't just throw these out!! They're our pillows." Either I have formed some crazy sentimental attachment to these things, or I have a deep rooted obligation to not be wasteful. How long are you supposed to keep pillows for anyway? I know people who have pillows from when they were kids still. Which is totally gross to me, because I know the crazy stuff I was doing to my pillows when I was a teenager and well... gross.

I can't think of a reason more terrible to have to leave the house. I mean we have four of these big nice looking from far away pillows. Why do I want to drive down I-4 to the IKEA to walk around that giant ass showroom to buy more of these? I like to think that my day has more priority to it. Making free time to go and buy pillows? Who does this? It's not like Milk. We have to have Milk.

Friend: "Whatcha doin today Ryan?"

Me: Oh you know, I have to go down to the Ikea and buy some pillows. They're like seven dollars there!!"

You know you can't really wash a seven dollar pillow, they turn into a mess, the stuffing separates and clumps up, so the weight of the clumps hang down to one side of the pillow, kind of like a ball sack. When you put your head on the good end it just squishes to the other side, like those crazy water balloon toys "water snakes" that you can't hold onto. Those things were like hand-job training for kids, seriously questionable toys.

So instead, it was decided that we should get these pillow cases off of them, and get things smelling good again on the outside. So the cases were stripped off, and been sitting in the mound of non-priority dirty laundry, and it has now become even more difficult to figure out which pillow has the piss on it.

Enough with the pillows.

Our house is like most houses with young kids in them, there is the clean section, where we entertain company, and trick visitors and family into thinking, "aww, what a cute little house." It's the side you see in all of the pictures. Clean floors, things are put away. And then there is our end of the house. The disaster. Where everything we neglect and put off exists in piles of junk and clutter. But, for every piece of filthy laundry, or halloween candy wrapper on the floor, it represents a few extra minutes of free time we had to play with the kids that day, or it's extra time for me to work on a blog post, or to stay on top of The Walking Dead, or for Cole to sit and pull hair out of her eyebrows. So it's tough to decide if this mess on this end of the house really makes me all that bothered. This mess is the spoiled brat side of ourselves that still thinks its cool to NOT have to clean your room. Im about to be 37 and I still think having a messy room is totally burning my parents. BURN!!!!

This mess, is the reason we continue to have the time we have to talk for a couple of hours at night. Sure you can talk while you clean up back here, but it doesn't feel as good as it does when you close the doors to the kids rooms at bedtime, and just completely turn to sloth. We melt into lazy soft butter. So this mess just keeps growing while all that good feet-up relaxing is going down. I just decided. I'm fine with it. It's just this one room.

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We have the worst mattress money can buy right now, because when we got married we were broke jokes, and so we went for a really cheap king size over a decent queen. We were greedy pigs. Hey! Anyone reading here about to get married-- buy a good mattress. Trust me. Don't go for the really big one that's irresistibly cheap, go for the one that won't cripple you.

So anyway, back to our shitty mattress, because it's so terrible we have to switch sides every 3 nights, because I'm like 150 thousand pounds heavier than Cole who weighs as much as a roll of quarters. My side smashes all the fluff onto her side of the bed, and she sleeps on a rock about 2 feet higher than me, and I am drowning in a pile of mushy lumps that screw my back up. Hence the smelly tiger balm all over the pillows. Ugh the circle of life.

So when ever we make the side switch like we did tonight, I always end up with the night stand that she has had rights to for the past few days. I just checked things out, was looking for a spot to put my phone down. Don't worry, there wasn't a spot. Right now, for some reason, there is a box of Reynolds Freezer Paper on it, a wad of jewelry, some junk mail, a remote for our fan, and an empty big ass 3 ring binder. Tomorrow I will wake up and scoop all of this up and dump it on top of our dresser, right on top of the piles of the other collections of junk that get displaced whenever we switch sides.

I look at this mess and it is the very last place I have where I have clung onto my youthful laziness, and the clock is ticking. This won't last forever. The kids are going to get older, and soon Cole and I will have to suck it up, clean up our pig sty so that we can tell the kids that they have to clean up theirs. So until that day. We will continue to let the mess pile up in exchange for the extra minutes of play and silliness we get to have because of our slobiness.

Oh yeah, any friends or family reading this post that were wondering what might make for a nice Christmas present this year... How about some pillows. I hear they're like seven bucks down at the IKEA.

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