Sweet Cheez-its.

Tate's becoming a pro at this whole preschool thing. Every morning as we drive there, he exclaims "I'm SO excited, Mom!" and every afternoon as we drive home, he gives me a garbled rundown of all his activities that day. Usually it's how they learned about dinosaurs or apples or owls, but last week was something rather...unexpected. This was the scene in the car ride home:

Me: "So, what did you learn about today, Tate?"
Tate: "Cheez-its."
Me: "...Cheez-its?"
Tate: "Yep. Cheez-its."
Me: "You mean you had Cheez-its at snack time?"
Tate: "NO! WE TALKED ABOUT CHEEZ-ITS!!"

Now, at this point I'm wondering if the teacher just plain ran out ideas of what to talk about that day and conducted an impromptu lecture on the joys of unnaturally orange snack crackers. Perhaps she had had a ferocious craving for them for one reason or another. Maybe she just wanted to make sure all the little children were able to revel in the wonder of...Cheez-its. I don't know.

Me: "Well, uh, what did you learn about Cheez-its? Are they yummy?"
Tate: "Mom. NO. Don't be silly."
Me: "O...K..."
Tate: "Cheez-its is our friend. Cheezi-its lives up in the sky."
Me: "Tate. Do you maybe, by chance, mean JESUS?"
Tate: "YES. CHEEZ-ITS."

Therrrrre we go. Tate will now be saying his evening prayers to a gigantic box of cheese-flavored squares floating merrily in the sky, looking down on all the little children telling them to do unto others as they would do unto them.

And if anyone knows the patron saint of missing shoes and socks, hit me up with their digits or something. Because I have like no foot coverings of any sort for any person in my house at this point. Now, things are even more cluttered and disorganized around here than usual. Eric's working 14 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week so I'm pretty much Single Mommy these days. The kids aren't much for washing windows or scrubbing down baseboards, and also aren't really fans of letting me out of their sight for more than 3 minutes before pushing each other down the stairs or off the couch. Or out of the laundry hamper, toy shopping cart or clothes dryer. Therefore, I do not get much done. Well, really, anything done. It ain't pretty.

So today, I was in the usual chaos of trying to pin down both kidlets long enough to wrestle them into their clothes. I took a clean pair of matched socks off the kitchen table (yes, we have clean laundry on the kitchen table. It's usually only there for about 5 or 6 days. Then we'll have a different load of clean laundry on the kitchen table.) and put them on the couch. I left for 20 seconds, came back, and there was only one sock on the couch. The other sock apparently got so fed up with the disarray around here it staged a protest and stormed off. I made a quick check to ensure it wasn't stashed in Nora's cheek, and asked Tate if he took the sock.

Tate: "I'll help you look, Mommy. It's ok"
Me: "Gee, thanks. Why don't you tell me where you put it?"
Tate: "Um....your name is Nemo."
Me: "Awesome. That's the next place I was gonna look anyway."

I still haven't found it. I seriously think it made a desperate dash for freedom, to find a world where socks can run free without being stuffed into random cupboards or left in the car under one of the seats for years at a time or chewed on by little girls. A world where Tate's shoe doesn't end up in the clothes hamper, where mittens are no longer hidden inside the broom closet, where my hairbrush doesn't find itself buried under a foot of sand in the sandbox outside. It just unfolded itself, bid it's mate adieu and ran. Goodbye, sock. It's ok. There are days where it's simply easier to run to the store and buy new socks rather than wash and try to match up the ones you already have. There are always more socks out there.

But maybe it's just me and my stance on cleaning. Like the average person out there and I most likely have different views on what exactly "just do it" means in terms of cleaning. For most people, it might mean setting aside an entire day to to clean the hell out of your house: scraping old food off the oven, shoveling the dust out from behind the couches, sweeping out mummified carrots from behind the fridge. For me, "just do it" means finally bending down and picking up that piece of paper towel on the floor instead of just kicking it out of my way 100 times a day. Hey, every little bit helps.