Gifts the grand-kids left me while on vacation

Mate-less sock (public domain photo)

The grand-kids have been on vacation now for a little over a week. Guess what? They left me some parting gifts. In fact, I'm so excited about it, this is my second post on the subject. Other parents and grand-parents likely won't be surprised by this. While we certainly try to teach them to pick up after themselves, the sheer volume of crumbs, clothes, dishes and whatever other gifts they leave behind, necessitates a bit of help from time to time. (In other words, I'm still cleaning up after them.)

So, this morning I found myself gathering towels, dirty clothes and some weird stuff on the counter that was unidentifiable (and is now trash) out of the main bathroom. It happens. It was squishy, tiny, gelatinous and round. Anyone care to guess what it was? I certainly have no idea. Maybe that's for the best.

Moving on, in the laundry room, I found a washcloth clogging the floor drain. We won't discuss the foul odor coming from it. I believe I asked someone to take it to the laundry room the day they left for vacation.

Outside, someone had thrown their fuzzy blanket and hooded jacket over the garden fence. I shook them out. It rained earwigs. A curse on the earwigs! I'm so sick of those things. I'm waging war against them in another blog post and in real life.

In the fire-pit area, I found 2 non-matching socks, several spoons (so that's where they went) and a ton of broken water balloons. The younger kids like to play there because it's where our pool used to sit. There's sand about 6 inches deep.

In the “secret garden” hole behind the bushes where they also play, I found some Mardi-Gras debris from the 17 year old's birthday party.

Under the couch, I found the usual assorted pens, tiny cars, hair ties, dog toys and more.

In one of the kitchen cupboards, I came across an empty bottle of hot sauce. Just like those commercials, they put that crap on everything. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten about this little invention known as the trash can.

In the fridge were all the leftovers they won't be eating as well as various questionable spills, drip and blobs.

In one of their rooms, I found assorted dishes to wash. I'm sure they were planning on carting them all to the kitchen eventually. At least one can hope....

So, don't worry about me. I have plenty to do while the grand-kids are gone. But then again, I wasn't really worried about that. This isn't my first merry go round ride.