Musical Chores? Whatevs!

Sum of U mite remember that mom occasionally gets little articles an' essays published in, like, The Milborough Shopper. So here's sumthing of hers that she just got published there:

Musical Chores

by

Elly Patterson

Well, I've got a full house, and I must say, I'm loving it! You see, recently a tragic and unfortunate fire happened in the building where my beloved Michael and his family were living, in Toronto. The cause of the fire was careless smoking in the downstairs apartment (Michael, of course, lived in the blameless upstairs). Because of the fire, Michael, my daughter-in-law Deanna, and my grandchildren Meredith and Robin have been staying at our house here in Milborough.

As I mentioned in another recent article, "The White Goose Roosts," my daughter Elizabeth had already moved back into the house, having accepted a teaching job at the highly rated Glenallen Elementary School. And of course, our teenager April still lives with us.

So our household currently consists of me, my husband John (the noted dentist), darling Michael, lovely Dee, the adorable granddaughter and grandson, Elizabeth, April, two dogs, a rabbit, and Elizabeth's cat.

Of course, having so many people under one roof has its challenges as well as joys. One challenge is to get the household chores done. I pride myself in running my home with great efficiency, so naturally I've put into place a job list, where everyone has a job, and jobs are rotated.

Well, leave it to my teenangster to find a flaw in my carefully crafted list! With so many people to juggle, of course there will be times when someone has a particular job two days in a row! But recently, April came up to me with list in hand, moaning, "Mom, how come I hafta do the clean-up after dinner? I did it yesterday." Always the voice of reason, I told her, "So change with Elizabeth." Apparently, when April asked her sister to switch, Elizabeth said, "Sure, I'll change jobs with you. My job was to fold the laundry." April did not want to do that task, but instead of just declining to switch with her sister, she found Michael, who was vacuuming the stairs, and offered to take over in exchange for his doing the folding. He agreed, but he pointed out that she would need to clean out the canister of the central vac, located in the basement.

She did not not to do that task, either, but she didn't tell that to Michael. Instead, she found John in the basement and asked him to clean out the canister for her. He told her he would, but only if she cleaned out the recycling bins.

At that point, she came back to me and said, "Mom ... I don't want to wash out the recycling bins." I kept my calm (no easy feat), and replied, "OK, April, what do you want to do?" And she actually said, "I'll clean up after dinner." See what happened there? She'd come full circle. But did she give me credit for having chosen the job that was best suited to her? Well, of course not! This annoyed me a bit, so I sort of shouted, "FINE!" But I very quickly calmed down, because I realized I had the opportunity to think a clever pun. I love when that happens. Well, you know it already if you read the title to this essay. Yes, that's right. I thought, "Musical chores." I just love the sound of that, don't you?

Well, now that I think of it, I'm rather surprised that April did not try to switch jobs with Meredith or Robin. Merrie's job was simply to fold the napkins for dinner, and Robin's job was to make sure the napkins were lined up evenly next to the plates. Easy-peasy! Deanna's job was to help me self-diagnose my various medical problems I was having that day. She is a pharmacist, after all, and who wouldn't want to take advantage of that opportunity a little bit?

Have a punny day and don't forget to hug your loved ones!

Zzzzzz! Oh, hi, I fell asleep a lil bit there. Sorry if U did, too. C what I'm up against l8ly, with the job lists and the way Mom is. Ugh.

Apes