A rocky start.

Oh, my goodness, some days it doesn't pay to surface through the ether of dreams into consciousness.

Let's begin with something positive - Bird slept wonderfully well in the ridiculous bed, surrounded by several million dozen stuffed critters and possibly a cat or two. The cats like the bed, too, funny beasts.

Right, now for the grumbling. Let's see - it started around five-thirty this morning when my innards began doing the cha-cha. Things were a-happenin', and my body wanted me awake for them. Whee.

Then I couldn't get back to sleep because my mind kept flitting from planning my day - I am making lasagne and key lime pie for T's birthday dinner, and I want it to be ready at a reasonable hour so I need to start cooking early this afternoon - and a week long event in June...yes, June...that I need to make a menu for as well as shopping and packing lists. In June. Sigh. Stupid brain.

I finally gave in and got up, wandered into the kitchen, and...squish. A stray green bean from last night greeted my foot. Oh, just yuck. There were several on the floor, dropped there by one of the cats who got up on the counter to search for interesting tidbits. She only does this at night when we're asleep because she knows she shouldn't be up there. Usually, I put away any leftover food and make sure there's nothing for her to get into, but I went to bed feeling ill last night so it didn't get done.

Which brings us to the mess that was waiting for me this morning. Dishes. Pots. Pans. Cookie sheets. Wait a minute...I didn't even use a cookie sheet yesterday; why do I have to clean it up?? Unless you are completely crippled and reliant upon me for life, or a child incapable of lifting your dishes up to sink level (and Bird actually does put his dishes in the sink and help unload the dishwasher), I shouldn't have to clean up after you. If you used the freakin' cup, put the freakin' cup in the dishwasher - or if the dishwasher is full, run it through and put your freakin' cup in the sink - or if the dishwasher is full of clean dishes, take a moment to put them away, put your freakin' cup in there, and save us all from my urge to smother all of you in your sleep!!

And while I am ranting and raving on the matter... It was really sweet of T to collect my dinner dishes and place them in the sink last night. He doesn't often offer, so I am grateful when he does it. But, umm...I know I've mentioned this many, many, many, many, many. many, many, many, many...sorry, I had a skip...many times before...when you put dishes in the sink, you should really make sure there's no food, napkins, wrappers, or other non-dish related items on them. That way, when someone runs water in the sink, the food, napkins, wrappers, or other non-dish related items won't get all wet, clingy, disintegrated, and generally icky to deal with. Because we? Don't have a freakin' disposal in there, and we never have! There's nothing that quite compares to the texture fiesta that is a sodden napkin or water-logged meatballs.

And what happened to "I cook, you clean"?? 'Cause I seem to do all of both around here, and it's pissing me off again. And putting leftovers way? Umm...I seem to recall that someone else was going to do that so I didn't have to every night. And last night it would have been especially nice since I felt like crap. Sigh.

So I was a mite narked at the state of the kitchen, but I sucked it up, wiped the smushed green bean off the bottom of my foot, got the sodden food items out of the sink, began emptying the dishwasher...all before I even had a cup of tea. In the end, housekeeping is my job, my nine-to-five (even thought I say I'm a writer, it doesn't count because I'm not published or anything, and if I tried to claim my music as a job, I'd be on welfare) that's more like twenty-four-seven, and if I get pissed off because some folks think that means they can just be thoughtless and leave messes wherever they want, well...I bet they're not thrilled when I don't do laundry for a while and they run out of underwear, or don't clean the downstairs bathroom ever and mum gets mad at them for the weirdness that ensues because she uses that bathroom when she visits. If it had just been that, maybe I'd just be my usual low level annoyed, but no...no, there had to be more.

I was putting away a baking dish and decided to pull the lasagne pan down for later, save my lazy ass some effort. Pull down? I'll say - every oversized plastic cup that no one ever uses but pitches a fit over if I want to throw it away because they might use it some day, every pitcher, every one of Bird's straw cups came tumbling down on me. One of the baking dishes tried to follow suit, but with Ninja speed and flexibility and a few choice swear magic words, I managed to avert that disaster. I got the rest of the dishes put away without incident, although that one knife was eyeballing me kinda funny.

I mentioned having to clean up dishes I didn't even use? Yeah, that's just not right. But while dealing with the cookie sheet, I had to remove some foil, and somehow managed to give myself foil cuts on my left thumb and my right forefinger. Owie.

And my scale lied to me and told me I gained four pounds in one day. Either that or someone turned the gravity up when I wasn't looking. It couldn't be the rivet-covered pants I'm wearing or the two thirty-two ounce cups of water I drank this morning...

If things don't improve in a hurry, I am going back to bed until next week.