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| Don't want to disgust you with pictures from my gross car. So here's a cute baby picture of Chris to distract you. |
- One CheezIt Cracker, circa “your guess is as good as mine”
- One black Sharpie marker with lid miraculously snapped on
- Handful of random McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, most broken, jammed between the seat cushions
- A $5 bill that would have come in handy yesterday at Starbucks
- One balled up, dirty sock from when my kid who wears a monstrous size 4 shoe used to be a size 2
- Various KidzBop CDs, all of which have a scratch on the one song which is semi-tolerable
- One pair of toddler sunglasses missing one lense
Sound
familiar? I could go on all day about all the interesting science experiments
that have been found underneath the seats of my car. You may even have heard
the screams not long ago and worried that there had been a volcanic eruption
nearby and people were running for their lives. Mainly because you heard the
shouts of “Run for your liiiifffe!”
Don’t
worry. There wasn’t a natural disaster nearby. But unfortunately, there was
lots of screaming coming from the vicinity of my garage that morning.
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| A few car items that make you wonder why: plastic lei, lottery ticket, bee pillow from Chris' baby crib, ballet outfit from 1 1/2 years ago. |
You see, we
took the dogs for a ride to the dog park last week and they had trouble wading
through the piles of trash in the backseat so they could get out of the car to
go run. And seeing how I could now write my name in the dust piled up on the
dashboard, I knew that time of year was upon me – car cleaning time.
Most of the
car wasn’t horrible. I made piles of toys, random child leggings, and bags of
gum wrappers and other miscellaneous trash. Then I set about giving the
dustbuster a workout by vacuuming out months of gravel, French fry bits and dog
hair.
After a
while of cleaning, I could put it off no longer and I steeled myself for the
horrors I knew were about to come. I know you probably think I’m embellishing,
but you weren’t there. You didn’t see how I had to dance around the garage like
a prizefighter trying to psyche myself up for the main event. There was lots of
deep nasal breathing and lots of positive talk like, “Come on Osborn, you can
do this! It won’t be that bad! Just get it over with!”
After a
while, even I started to think I was being ridiculous and reasoned with myself.
“I mean, come on? When was the last time she even ate any food in the car?”
Well. That
soon changed. As soon as I moved Chris’ car seat to take a brave look
underneath, it was more like, “Gross! When was the last time she even ate in
the car? Dear God! What is that? Is that…is that…moving?”
I danced
around some more and shook off the heebie jeebies and ran into the house to
search for some gloves with which to peel the melted gel fruit snacks off what
were once gray fabric seats. Now they're spotted gray and black seats. And I’m really just
guessing here when I say fruit snacks. There’s really no way to know without
the benefit of a microscope.
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| Guarantee you whatever is in this lunchbox is now embedded in my fabric car cushions. |
Honestly,
the only reason I can think of that there is not a constant line of ants
marching from the garage door to the car door is that pest control is a little
luxury I will scrape together my last dimes to purchase. I’m sure when the pest
guy makes his visits to our house he peeks into the dirty car windows and knows
that he must give us the high strength stuff because the bugs will be attracted
to the half-eaten chicken nuggets we’re carting around in the backseat of our
automobile.
I know I
sound disgusting for driving a portable trash can. I really do have good
intentions of keeping the car clean. I really do. Every time I go through the
totally gross-out stuff I swear up and down that it’s never going to get that
bad again. And then I lecture my kid all the way to school to take a good look
around the car and see how clean it is and to make sure she does her part to
keep it that way. And then when we get home after school I tell her to pick up
her junk out of the car and usually get the exhausted response, “But I’m so
tired,” as if she’s just run a marathon and I’ve asked her to run another 5k.
I
understand the feeling of exhaustion. I get it. So I give myself a pass and
give up on the car save for the few times of the year when the dogs are in
danger of sticking to the seats.
I live by the proverb “kids will
remember the quality of time you spent with them, not the cleanliness of your
house.” Sure. That’s why I don’t clean all the time, not because there are too
many good books to read. Frankly, keeping an uberclean house is not at the top
of my priority list. In fact, if my kid gets a vegetable or two with her meals
I count that as a pretty stellar parenting day. I can’t do it all!
Nevertheless, I do wish our car never gets to the state that it was in on that particular
morning last week. Honestly, I can’t describe to you the fear always I feel before
pushing that car seat to the side to see what’s underneath.
I don’t
really know how to justify all this filth. All I can say is I don’t think it’s
going to get better until my daughter goes to college. And I don't think they can create a CarFax that can fully describe the horrors my car seats have seen. So when the time comes my plan is to just torch
the sucker and start fresh.
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| Someday she will drive herself. And I can have a clean car. |
