Do you ever find that after surfing the web, you sometimes come away feeling inadequate, boring and like a filthy slob who has holes in the inner thighs of all of your jeans?
(Not talking about anyone in particular here. Definitely not. I don’t even wear jeans anymore. Probably because of all the holes.)
You know how it goes. You start out on Facebook. Or Instagram. Or Pinterest. You click on a link for educational activities for your child red velvet brownies. And then you keep clicking, and clicking, and before you know it, you’re caught in this weird lifestyle blog loop full of beautiful homes, amazing homemade meals, stylish clothes and people who wash their hair on a regular basis.
And then you take a look around your apartment, which has multiple futons being used as furniture and an aesthetic that most closely resembles “junk drawer,” and you’re left feeling kind of lame and boring and like you should be doing more. Cooking more. Cleaning more. Exercising more. Wearing actual pants more. Owning copper clawfoot tubs more.
It can mess with you a bit.
This, my friends, is not a post that will mess with you.
I want to lift you up.
I want to make you SOAR.
I want to make you dance like no one’s watching and wear sweatpants like you’re actually sweating.
I want you to feel like the amazing and unique mother/father/aunt/grandma/extremely confused Merle Haggard fan that you are.
This is my gift to you:
This is my kitchen table.
And this is a list of the 22 items currently residing on it.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a closer look at a few of these items.
BUCKET IN SHAPE OF ELMO’S HEAD
We found this Elmo head bucket in a Value Village a few days ago. I was against buying it, because I find it slightly terrifying (and I think Let’s Imagine Elmo may have forever destroyed Elmo for me), but my husband and daughter were both Team Elmo Head Bucket, so here it is on our kitchen table.
I stand by my choice. They’ll come around. It may take awhile, but when we realize that the cat’s been missing for several days and we find nothing but a tuft of fur inside Elmo, they’ll come around.
ODD ASSORTMENT OF DOLLS IN CHAIRS
Okay.
So right now in our house, the doll situation is a little…intense.
We have roughly 4,000 baby dolls and usually at least half of them are required to eat with us for all meals, or else there will be a very sad toddler. Or an extremely angry one. I’ve lived both options and have learned it’s best to just eat surrounded by baby dolls.
So we strap my daughter into her high chair, strap a few babies into the second high chair (we have two high chairs, as we inherited one days after we purchased ours–isn’t that the way it always goes?), place a baby on the homemade high chair constructed out of blocks, put bibs on everyone and away we go!
Except that’s really only the beginning. I then spend the next 45 minutes to an hour “feeding” all of these dolls, complimenting them on how well they are eating, “cleaning” them and then eating their leftovers as my dinner. The good news is that they seem to be very picky eaters, so I usually have a good spread.
I think I liked the finger puppet phase better.
OLD COPY OF THERE’S A BAT IN BUNK FIVE
The Hilarious Sequel to The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
I pulled this book off of the shelf the other night and stood in the kitchen for awhile, thinking about maybe re-reading it and also thinking about Fig Newtons (I remembered that they exist a few days ago and they’ve been on my mind ever since).
Then I realized it was 1:00AM and I was holding a copy of There’s a Bat in Bunk Five and thinking about Fig Newtons when I’d slept like six hours total for the week and omg GO TO BED YOU INSANE PERSON.
Still thinking about those Fig Newtons, though. The raspberry kind. I will look for you, I will find you, and I will eat you.
AND FINALLY, A BUTTERNUT SQUASH
This squash will eventually be cut up and made into soup, but for the next two weeks, it shall remain on the table. And to be honest, I think I like having it there. It’s like my comfort object. Like Tom Hank’s Wilson in Cast Away. I can talk to it while I feed spoonfuls of oatmeal to a baby doll wearing a bib in a high chair made of blocks.
And there you have it. My kitchen table, my current state of affairs, and my soul, laid bare.
It ain’t pretty.
Perhaps this not-very-large kitchen table with 22 items on it is part of the reason the inside of my head feels like this, at all times?
Could be.
If I’ve done nothing else today (and I gotta be honest; it’s like 4PM and not looking good), I hope my kitchen table can make you feel uplifted. Because you’re doing a great job.
Or, at the very least, if you don’t have an Elmo Head Bucket on your kitchen table who I SWEAR keeps whispering for you to give him your debit card PIN number, you’re probably doing great.
And now, the burning questions:
- Do you currently have 22 items on YOUR kitchen table? Can you list them all to me? Or at least the highlights?
- What does the inside of your head look like right now? I don’t know if you can post gifs in the comments, but that’s okay. Just describe it to me (“The inside of my head looks like Tyra Banks contorting her face into several odd expressions, all while rocking a side ponytail.”).
- And what is the best way to repair inner thigh holes in jeans? Do I just have to turn my jeans into really really short shorts or what? Because I can’t do that.
These are the things I really want to know from you.
Dear Mother Haggard, this is brilliant. I applaud your honestly and I celebrate your table! It’s real and raw and it speaks the truth.
Also…challenge accepted. My 22 items are as follows: 1/3 lemon meringue pie (please don’t ask the exact fraction I ate), plastic fork, a tiny Ned Flanders figurine, salt and pepper shakers, water bottle, blue twirly straw, TWO different sets of matryoshka dolls, whale bib, baby spoon, small teddy bear, bag of half eaten tarelli (Italian snack food), lipstick, Dove deodorant, (empty) bag of oreo thins bites, half eaten banana next to plushie toy banana, my apartment keys next to baby niece’s toy keys, Beatles themed mug, hair clips from the dollar store, and finally an inexplicable copy of Ray Bradbury’s We’ll Always Have Paris (seriously, where did this come from?). I do like to think that the charming and colourful tropical fruit table cloth I’ve got going on helps to detract the eye from the many oddities. And there you have it hag! Thank you. That was therapeutic. xo
Thanks for getting just as raw with ME! That’s quite a table you got there. Ned Flanders figurine is right up there with Elmo head bucket.
Things on your table that I wish were on my table: 1/3 lemon meringue pie, bag of Oreo Thin Bites, Beatles-themed mug, tropical fruit table cloth. You may keep the bananas, bib and Bradbury.
So funny and true! The items that accumulate on kitchen tables are so random. My table is a play/study/eating area so currently there are 200 popsicle sticks right next my Quebec lit books Putain and Comment faire l’amour avec un Negre sans se fatiguer … and the half eaten banana.
Oh my gosh, the half-eaten banana. WHY IS THERE ALWAYS A HALF-EATEN BANANA ON THE TABLE?! In my house, it’s half of a chopped-up, brown, slimy banana, but still…always a banana on the table. You don’t even notice them after awhile.
I’m really grateful for the opportunity to share this aspect of my life with you. I should emphasis that I don’t have any children – which you’d think would make things a little more streamlined at my place. NOT so. Table highlights include: an opened bag of walnuts, a lint roller, a large box of Magic cards (obv), an extracted upper left second molar in a tiny plastic envelope, 4 empty prescription painkiller bottles, a dusty fedora hat, not one but two Silly Putty eggs, a colouring book, many Harvey’s coupons, 4 lipsticks, 3 U2 cds, a pile of unopened mail belonging to someone who lived here more than 2 years ago, and a stack of 6 novels. There is probably part of a banana on there as well, but it’s most likely under the fedora.
To answer your other queries: the inside of my head probably looks exactly like the extracted, partially bloody, ravaged molar in clear plastic, but with like…googly eyes. And the best way to deal with thigh holes in jeans is to let your thigh hair grow long and fluffy so that any friction becomes less of a hindrance.
Thanks for letting me share! It was really cathartic!
It really DOES feel good to list the entire contents of your kitchen table, doesn’t it? Like a new kind of therapy.
Your table paints an interesting picture of your life, of which I can only catch glimpses. Dusty fedora hat. The empty prescription pill bottles. Bag of walnuts. Extracted molar. I find myself feeling a bit fearful of you, like you’re running some kind of molar racket in town and it’s best not to mess with you. I also picture you cracking walnuts with your teeth and perhaps that’s why a tooth is on your table. Is that accurate?
And thank you for answering all of the questions!! I actually do want to know the answers to all of these. Genius suggestion with the thigh hair–I haven’t shaved my thighs in maybe five years, so I’m well on my way! Short short shorts here I come! (Never.)
I know that your table couldn’t possibly be this awesome a few months layer, but I am super impressed with the array of objects you have there. I’m also concerned about the dolls. Is this in my future? Eating meals with dollies? It’s bad enough eating meals with stinky belchy slob faces. Let’s add some creepy dolls to the mix. FInally, my favorite item, the butternut squash. Yum. You’ll have to update us and let us know what’s working and what’s not for your table potpourri!
I just took a quick scan of my kitchen table, and I think there are only like 13 items on it! (Well, I’m counting a huge pile of miscellaneous papers as one item. I’ll sort it one of these days. It’s fine.) The only items of note are a broken light-up toy drum set kit (I’m not terribly devastated that this is broken), an invitation to a wedding in 3 months that I’m already stressing about how to bring the baby to, and a dirty bib (some things never change).
Dolls MAY be in your future, but rest assured, it could just be a short phase. We still have five million dolls, but they’ve been demoted to the C-list of toys. Right now, my girl’s main interests are running around the house and getting little, tiny bits of Play-Doh on everything.
Later not layer. Man, I must be thinking about hens again.
You and your hens, man. For the last time, I’m not gonna do a post about hens!!!!
Favorite line HAS to be the Fig Newtons.
Keeping in mind that I cleaned today, here is my current list. Four water bottles. One granola bar wrapper. One irrigation invoice. One Kohls coupon. TWO Roomba parts that I don’t know how to use. Annie’s Bunnies. A small plastic Trolls bag. And oh… my friend… a single clementine.
Do you know that I STILL have not found the raspberry Fig Newtons?! It must be a Canada thing to only stock the boring kinds of Fig Newtons. Sigh. Life’s hard.
THANK YOU for your list! It really does provide great comfort for me to know I’m not alone in the kitchen table/entire house/entire life madness. You just know those Roomba parts will remain on the kitchen table for the next two months, or until the next major holiday, when they will be shoved into a drawer to live out the rest of their lives. (I’ve basically just outlined my personal decluttering strategy right here.)
And oh, that single clementine. We may be miles apart, but a single clementine unites us. (omg should we get tattoos of this?!? LET’S DO IT!!)