The Ongoing Saga of Housecleaning

     My mom has been integral and plumb necessary to getting my house back up and running. Although we do have organizational and compartmentalization systems that are completely different. Mine is mostly a plan based on the concept of “like items go with like items.” Cleaning supplies all go in one place, DVD’s and books all go in another, riff raff goes in the riff raff pile. Mom’s is more akin to the unifying principle of “I’m Jean and I say it goes here. Don’t argue.” And considering Mom does the vast majority of the work when one of her bonehead boys (my father included) does something this stupid, we follow suit without question. But not without commentary.

My camera is in some box somewhere. When I want a possession, and this is true especially in the last week, I have to gauge how much I really want/need it and compare that against how much work is it going to take to find it. Yesterday, I really wanted to get myself back at least into the “I’m going to try to quit smoking” mindset and that requires the use of my e-cigarette for that period of time in the middle of the night when I wake up and smoke (don’t judge.) So I had to commit to at least 15 minutes of trying to find it in my sacks of “probably contains something I’m going to want in the time it takes for the house to be totally painted.” And after a little time, I found it. No big deal. I want to find my camera, but as I don’t have that kind of time this morning, a transcription of me and Mom’s text exchange will have to do.

That waiting time has also come to include whether my employer will help me out with what everything costs, so I have been putting off buying a new stove. It is with this little nugget of information that I texted mom a few days ago.

Me: You haven’t shopped for a stove yet right?

Me: You said the cleaning crew will come on Thursday yes?

Mom: Yed

Me: Is that a Jewish currency you’ll pay them in or something?

Mom: Bite me cubed.

 

And later:

Mom: I’ve done all I can do. The rest is heavy work. I took your shirt and ties home to be washed. They are full of crap. Talk to you when you have read the note.

Mom: Full of soot. Smiley emoticon.

Me: Nice save.

Her: Apparently voice-voice generated messaging is a technology that’s not quite perfected.

 

     And I am not impervious to the perils of text messaging. My new phone is a Galaxy S4 Mini. It’s really sleek and shiny, but the “buttons” on the “keyboard” are wicked small. So inevitably I close at least 2 sentences per day with an “m” instead of period cuz one is right above the other. For instance:

Me: I will call you when I am done with work todaym

Me: Today [period]

    

     And I am fully aware of my typo in the text message, but it seems that increasingly, people will let typos go. But that voice-recognition software struck again:

 

Me: Is this your hammer in this kitchen? You left a sweatshurt here.

Mom: No its yours Craigslist trying to get the window open with it. By the way I have your altar cloth and shower curtain in my car.

Mom: Greg was trying

Me: Ahahahaha …

That annoying keypad thing again …

Me: Can we do the painting on Sat at noon or so? I wanted to get to the gym too m

Me: Gym [period]

I recently read an article at The Huffington Post detailing the adapted meanings of things in text messaging. It buttressed my uniform objection to and the lunacy implicit of overuse of [!] and the bastardization of the intent when using ellipses [ … ] and the like. I picked and I chose. Mostly because I think, for the purposes of these kinds of blog posts, they make for some hella funny material.