I decided today would be a good day for an art project with the girls.
I laid a sheet out on the kitchen floor and handed them some squirty, glittery paint bottles encouraging them to go crazy, Jackson Pollocking all over the place for a very specific outcome.
The sheet was meant to be a super-cool, personalized roof for their new Crazy Forts set they received for Christmas.
For some reason, today of all days, art day, paint splatter day, I seemed more anal than ever about spills, stains and paint smears.
Every sentence seemed to start with, “Be very careful not to get paint on….a) yours clothes, b) the floor, c) your skin, d) me, e) the baby.”
With every fart from the squeezy bottle, purple paint would spew and I would wince.
“Be careful not to get paint on your clothes.”
Why would anyone wear new clothes for a painting project? Oh, that’s my fault?
For every criticism I had about how they were approaching the sheet, there were ten opportunities for me to find an apron or a fleece snuggie to drape around their shoulders and keep their under-snuggies free of splatter.
Essentially, I took every ounce of fun they could have had constructing their fort roof and sucked it through a wet sponge. They both seemed to spend more time showing me where paint had leaked onto the tile or trying to balance on a narrow, grout-line to keep from actually touching the material they were so eager to turn into a masterpiece. They had me follow along like an obsessive kid collecting chocolate bars on Hallowe’en night with a small scrubber that might as well have been strapped to my wrist because it never left my hand.
When I had finished squashing their creativity and sucking the life out of the first Pollock Crazy Forts sheet-roof in history, I decided to think about what I had done.
My punishment was to clean the basement bathroom.
Armed with the toilet cleaner with bleach, I sprayed the mirror with Windex, filled the sink with a combination of Pine Sol and warm water, I leaned over to rim the toilet with the blue Lysol wonky-necked bottle.
The bottle florched, the liquid squirted and most of the spewed, blue slime ended up bleaching my pants.
Touche.
