CHILDREN LIVE HERE!!!!!

A has his school musical this week. It’s a big honkin’ deal. Somehow his music teacher, who is the most wonderful music teacher ever, managed to snag a well-known (in certain circles), Grammy-nominated musician to come and perform the musical. This is no ordinary K-7 musical, this is an event. And because Tom and I are former music teachers and know the language, we are working this musical, not sitting in the audience watching. We won’t get to see A on stage at all; because of the stature of this musician, there will be no video taping of the musical. I’m kinda sad about it, but the musician side of me is excited, because I am this musician’s “assistant” for the musical; I basically take care of him and get him whatever will make him happy. Rough job. ; )

Yesterday we met with the other tech workers for the musical at the music teacher’s house. And I had an epiphany: there are two kinds of houses. Houses that have children, and houses that don’t have children. I’ll let you figure out which one we were at yesterday. Yes, a house without children. What tipped me off? Was it the newly-laid bamboo flooring? Was it the uber-cool glass bowl sink on the granite countertop in the bathroom? Or was it the fact that the house didn’t look beat to hell? If you answered “all of the above,” dingdingding!!!!! You win! Let’s look at my house:

This is where J got intimate with his inner artist and colored the walls and carpet in A’s room in black dry-erase marker. For the record, dry-erase marker does not erase from paint or carpet (this is after Tom and A spent 30 minutes with a Magic Eraser scrubbing the walls). The fix: touchup paint the walls and wait for the rest of the carpet to go to hell before we replace the entire top floor.

It’s hard to see, but that scuffy section of the door to the right and slightly below the doorknob is where A used a glue-stick to stick up a note that I wasn’t allowed in his room. The fix: save up the coinage and replace all the builder-grade “go to hell, we don’t care if we did a bait and switch on you with the doors, we know you’re not going to go through the trouble of hiring a lawyer to get the doors you’re supposed to have, so effin’ deal with it!” doors with the nice, 6-panel doors we have in our finished basement.

This one is also a bit tough to see. This is where A wrote on the basement door: A and J’s playroom. The fix: see above.

This one is my favorite. We’re not entirely sure what happened here, but Tom and I think J was doing chin-ups on one of our kitchen drawers. A knows better, and as Tom and I don’t recall dueling with the drawer, J is the scapegoat here. The entire front of the drawer fell off on Saturday. It didn’t just snap off, but as you can see, the particle board tore apart. The fix? I’ve already called the cabinet people. I’m pretty sure this isn’t repairable and needs to be replaced.

What I haven’t shown you here: the kitchen linoleum that is dented and scratched and beat all to hell. It’s 3 1/2 years old. The carpet throughout the house (except the basement, which we finished last summer and put in quality stuff) stained beyond cleaning, ripping where it meets the linoleum, the tack strip poking through on the edges. It’s also 3 1/2 years old. Builder-grade crap. It’ll be a few years before we can rip it all up and put down something of higher quality. In the meantime, I laugh when strangers come to my house and ask if they should take off their shoes. What? To protect my flooring? Are you kidding?

Our house just screams LITTLE BOYS LIVE HERE! ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK! BE NOT AFRAID OF STAINS AND DENTS AND PEANUT BUTTER FINGERPRINTS ON THE SLIDING GLASS DOOR! I love my home, the beautiful views out the back window, the neighborhood. But sometimes, my inner Martha just sobs that my house is always beat to hell. Someday it’ll be clean and organized and boring as all get out, and I’ll be sad that my boys are gone and on their own. So, for now, I will just accept that my house holds boys and their exuberance for life…and give heartfelt thanks for Spot Shot and Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.