I have three basic rules in our home. These three rules were created with the consideration of everyone’s wellbeing in mind. 1. Don’t eat in the living room
2. Don’t jump on the furniture 

3. Don’t make Max do THAT SCREAM! (It’s his “someone is doing something to me just to make me scream” scream…and it is grating!) 

There are other rules…basic “obey your parents, be nice to each other” kinda rules…but those are more unspoken. The above three are ones that need to be constantly re-recognized and re-enforced. 

Tonight after I got home from a long day at the Farmers Market peddling my wares, I caught a glimpse of a “situation” in the corner behind the hanging basket chair. Surely it couldn’t be what it looked to be? I stepped closer…it was, in fact exactly what it looked to be. It was a small pile of shredded cheddar cheese…with a pair of discarded dirty socks also peppered into the pile. It was like a little tossed salad of cheese shreds and dirty socks. It was evident that someone went to the trouble to scoot the pile into the corner, almost making it unnoticeable, until you do a double take and you’re like “wait a minute, is that dirty socks and shredded cheese over there?” I was like, “For real guys? Who was eating shredded cheese out here and then dropped a bunch and then also got the urge to take off their sweaty socks and throw those into the cheese pile?” I even imagined that maybe the person was using their foot to scoot all the cheese together and then realized they were too rough with the cheese and their feet were too warm and they now had crushed and melted cheese to their socks.   Everyone told on Micah in unison. Micah sullenly retrieved his socks and then got the vacuum out and cleaned up the cheese pile. He also did a few other chores, just for showing such open disregard for the house rules. 

Within the half hour Chris was sitting beside me on the couch with his guitar in hand and we were singing a song about a pile of cheese and dirty socks in the corner of our living room. There was even a lyric about Micah spinning around in the hanging basket chair and imagining that the mess must surely be gone, since it was no longer in his immediate view. Lemonade, from lemons. Or in this case, we’ll say we made New York Cheese Cake out of a dirty, cheesy sock pile.