An Acknowledgement To The Level of Craftiness Employed On A Daily Basis In This House

This used to frost me.

I mean, ooooh....really just frost me.

I used to get madder than a woman who's been arguing with her local library for the past three months over who's got the Disney's Prince of Egypt DVD.

It seemed that anywhere I looked in my house, there'd be the very thing that would just push me right over the edge.

The near empty Kool-Aid pitcher in the middle shelf of the refrigerator.

The two drops of apple juice left in the gallon, next to the Kool-Aid.

The trash can under the sink that was kinda full, but not full enough to spill out...yet.

Our Mr. Coffee, along side the toaster, with barely 1/4 cup of coffee left in the pot. 

Tony The Tiger smiling at me from a cereal box filled with, oh...what? Let's say FOUR frosted flakes inside.

A snack cabinet loaded with bags of Lay's, Jay's, Doritos; each one filled with a precise count of no more than seven, no less then four, chips.

The gas gauge in the car; at a level where the *pingpingping* of the cutest little gas pump ever has been lit since last Thursday -- at least.

And the soap dispensers in the bathroom....my three all answer yes when I ask them if they've washed their hands; so, are we using air as soap now because when I went to wash my hands just now the pump I saw in there hasn't seen soap in it since Jillian tried to convince me to lose 20 pounds in 30 days the day after New Year's.

But, tonight, when I opened the refrigerator door and saw the Kool-Aid pitcher sitting on the shelf with only an eighth of an inch of yellow liquid silt covering its bottom, it hit me like a bolt of lightning.

Holy cow but the forethought the four guilty parties in this house go through to NOT be the ones to have to make the fresh Kool-Aid, or empty out the apple juice and crush the container and bring a new gallon up from the basement, the piling up of the trash -- like a game of Mr. Tip It.  How there is just enough coffee in Mr. Coffee to make it look like there is still some coffee in Mr. Coffee, leaving cereal in the boxes so it sounds like there is still cereal in the boxes so they don't have to be the ones to throw out the box and take it to recycling, same MO with the bags of chips in the snack cabinet...if you shake the bag and hear something in there, then you don't have to be the one to get rid of the empty one and replace it with a new one from downstairs.  Perfectly timing out the gas longevity in the car so it juuuuust gets you home, but no one else anywhere else.

And the empty soap dispensers in the bathrooms.... let's just say that if that's the level of cleanliness in this house, then it was no small miracle the swine flu didn't take us out last year.

It astounds me; the cerebral gymnastics required to calculatingly measure, determine, estimate how much is not too much but just right for leaving the Kool-Aid, juice, snacks, car, trash, coffee, full enough so that no labor or replenishing is required on their part.

I noticed a trophy store on the way home from school the other day, I'll be stopping by there and placing four orders tomorrow, because such skillful levels of ingenuity just can't be left unrecognized.

Bravo, children, well done. 

Please, sir, the trophy over there? The big one? Make it out to read "First Place: To The Artful Kool-Aid Dodger."
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