U.L.O.'s

I've been inspired by a fellow blogger, Susan Senator. With a title called Mysterious Brown Thing, I KNEW it was right up my alley. I'll let her tale tell the tale, but it got me to thinking about all those things on my floors, walls, tubs, and refrig's that, to this day, remain thankfully unidentified. When on the floor, they are known as ULO's or Unidentified Lying Objects. Now I'm gonna TRY not to step over the boundaries of good taste, but as far as ULO's go and their counterparts UHO's and UFO's (Unidentified Hanging and Frozen Objects), it is hard, ney nearly impossible, to stay away from the grossities of life.

With 5 kids (two yet to be potty trained on the autism spectrum) now 4 cats, the myriad of small and large toys supplied by Toys r Us, Amazon and those plastic advertisements/toy box fillers the fast food restaurants supply, it's easy to get confused as to what that thing IS on the floor. Most often, these things are found through sense of touch, make that sense of PAIN when you hit that point of the Mr Potato Head eyes square in the balls of your feet in the middle of the night! Other times that 'thing' becomes part of contents of that bowl or drawer in the kitchen reserved for those 'kinda LOOKS important' things. I'll NEED that someday thing... yea RIGHT! Say goodbye, you don't know what it is now and you won't know where you put it if you ever figure out it was part of the bottom of your TV tray.

Anyway, there are a class of these ULO's that you DON'T want to find through ANY kind of sense of touch, smell, taste (GOD no!)...even sight and sound aren't really preferable. Aside from the obvious thing that cats do (I'm sorry, but ANYTHING that a cat is part of I want no part of), there are those toys that are fun at first but fast become lint,crumb,hair and anything else magnet. You'll know why I disparage them if you've ever had them in the house for any length of time: Koosh Balls, Gloop, and those sticky 'things' that stick and or climb down the walls and hang off the ceiling. I had one of those UHO's on my family room ceiling for a month before I recognized it. If you wonder why I didn't see it on the ceiling for a month, you haven't seen the FLOOR of the family room (come to think of it I haven't seen the floor of the family room for a while). Kids say "Yea, we threw it onto the ceiling and it got stuck"...yea AND...maybe....TELL ME so I don't get a stain on my CEILING! These USO's Unidentified Sticky Objects usually wind up behind or underneath something and wind up being one of those curiosities that take 5 minutes of abject fear and 10 minutes of careful scrutiny before they are identified. "Oh yea, that's the mutant sticky fish we gave to Jason last summer." And the kids want it BACK...after WE wash it off...

It is critical that WE as parents find these things, because I always dread my orally fixated children to find them first. I know BAD TASTE ALERT, BAD TASTE ALERT! But it needs to be mentioned. I dread it when I find one of them chewing on a chip, when I'm not sure IF Linda gave them chips recently! Anything else is simply unmentionable...UCO's Unidentified Chewing Objects are just too horrid to go into ANY detail!

I'll conclude with the UFO's...those frozen thingies. Most of the time it's not a matter of WHAT it is as it is a matter of WHEN it was. When WILL those supermarkets start putting the YEAR on those 'sell by' dates?! The other thing are those ice pops in the plain white wrappers that you have no idea what it is and become the desperation snack of choice until unwrapped. At that point you realize how glaciers form, given enough time...