Zen and the Art of Motherhood

Yesterday we did the unthinkable.  The unimaginable.  The seemingly impossible.  As the neighbors lined the street and cheered -- OK maybe not actually cheering, but I'm sure they thought about it -- we began cleaning our garage.

Now, if this was a cutesy kind of thing, I'd post sweet before-and-after photos of the big day.  But believe me when I tell you this mess was way too gross for even me to document.  So, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Then again, I'm taking a bit of perverse pride in the whole situation.  After all, it took years of very hard work to morph our supposed car parking area into a mess of this magnitude. That's quite an accomplishment if you ask me.

I have to say I was amazed by all the crap we found..  There were bags of clothes from when my oldest was a toddler.  Boxes of books that I think were from the '80s.  Then there were the mystery objects -- the ones that even CSI would have a hard time identifying. 

But what took the cake lay inside an old trunk.  As the flimsy lid squeaked opened, I saw an old doll that was mine when I was a little girl.  But instead of the pristine, well-kept kind you will find on a shelf (in someone else's home perhaps), this one had matted hair, no clothes and divots in the arms.  There was one other thing.  It appears that over the years, the plastic around her neck wore a bit thin.  The result?  My old friend was now headless. Yep, it was pretty traumatic.  I'm still reeling from the experience.  I may actually be scarred for life.

Broken up, I pronounced her DOA and tossed into a pile with the rest of the trash.  The end.

So imagine my surprise when I pulled out of my driveway that night to pick up my daughter.  There she was, her headless figure shining brightly in my headlights.  Like she'd been waiting there...in the shadows...just ready to exact her revenge.  If any of you every watched a Chucky movie, you can understand my horror.

I finally managed to calm down, but as I drove away, my overactive imagination reared its ugly head again, this time with one of those perverse thoughts.  You know, the kind that you don't want to admit you had.  You see, all I could think of was those neighbors again.  Oh and the police.  And a late night arrest for the seemingly headless baby sitting in our driveway.  All because we decided to clean the stupid garage.  That'll teach us.