Tips from the Trenches: A Guide to Practical Parenting

Yesterday, I accidentally lost my brand-spanking new iPod Touch down the side of the couch. This is an unexpectedly perilous place in my house not only because of the bits of old food and such, but also because there is an upholstery nail/staple that is not properly tapped in. (Found that out the hard way. Lots of blood and gore a little too close to the wrist for my taste. Generally, I want to be the one in charge of slitting my wrists; not have it happen in some kind of freak accident.). But I digress.

Anyway, I couldn't get my hand far enough inside my couch to retrieve the iPod, so I had to turn the couch over and pull off the lining from underneath. While I was there, I found an interesting and surprisingly (to me, anyway) large collection of detris both in the couch and underneath it.

Here is a list of items recovered from under my couch (I'll leave in the couch for another post):

• 1 Twizzler (fossilized)
• 6 plastic balls (various colors)
• 3 pacifiers under the couch/3 pacifiers in the couch (but that's for the other list)
• 31 Cheerios (stale)
• 1 Twix (minus caramel and chocolate top/plus teethmarks)
• 5 Lego men (2 without heads, 1 without arms)
• 27 Lego pieces of varying sizes
• 2 sets of ear bud headphones (all without the padding that fits inside the ear and makes the comfortable courtesy of Emma who likes you pull them off and use them like gum.)
• 3 thumb drives (all missing caps)
• 1 camera case
• 4 remotes (ah, there they are!)
• 1 light saber (blue)
• 2 books
• 1 cordless telephone handset
• 3 clumps of Play Doh (dried)
• 6 Crayola Washable crayons
• 5 wooden blocks
• 1 sippy cup with old milk (don't quite know how that fit)
• 1 laptop
• 8 misc. snack wrappers
• 1 empty water bottle
• 1 Cloisonne egg
• 1 knife
• 1 spoon
• 1 fork
• 1 side plate
• 2 napkins (balled up)
• 2 DVDs (sans cases)
• large distribution of crushed Salt and Vinegar Pringles (various sizes, stale)
• 1 slice of red apple (dehydrated)

Talk about a slice of life. Yikes! You know, it really wasn't that long ago that I vacuumed under there. (Yes, really!)