Sharpie -- Part Deux

This may or may not have happened to me.

We've all heard the saying "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me."  Do you think this applies to Sharpie markers?  And two year olds?

Warm summer day.

Mom feeling exceptionally well rested and accomplished.

All tasks on the list done.

House spotless.

I was feeling great about the husband bringing home his colleagues for dinner.  I'd gotten so much done around the house and it looked fabulous all the way from the clean toilets to the shiny wood floors (now absent of all red sharpie...) to the freshly laundered white denim slip covers on our furniture.

Can we just go off on a tangent for a moment?  I believe there are a lot of liars out there who need to do some soul searching and come forward.  You know who you are.  You're the smug perfect people who insist that white slipcovers on your furniture are the best thing since the discovery of baking soda.  The ones who insist your home is so streamlined and clean!  Yep, you know who you are.

I was sucked into that shabby chic cult and lived to tell the tale.  The tale... white slipcovers SUCK!  You see, sure they look awesome on the cover of a magazine, or when they're fresh from the store.  But that cute little dog in the picture sitting on the white slipcover that MacKenzie Fahrfernugget says are the best because all she has to do is pop them in the washer and POOF!  A clean couch!

I say, LIAR!

Your a LIAR MacKenzie Fahrfernugget!

White slipcovers are a pain in the derriere and you know it!!!

Your cute little dog Alfred P. Digger does more than just pose on those slipcovers!  I bet while you're planning your next dinner party with all your Pottery Barn accessories, Alfred comes running in from a fresh romp in the rain and jumps up on your EASY WHITE SLIPCOVER.  What do you do Mac?

Uh?

Oh sorry, couldn't hear you through all the screaming!

Poor Alf, just wants to be a digger, not a pooch model for House, Dog, and Home.

No one tells you the truth when you're checking out at IKEA with your brand new Ektorp sofa with Bleckinga White slipcovers (sorry no Sweedish translation available) that it is EXHAUSTING and the physical equivalent of doing 5027 push-ups and 7,000,034 chin-ups to remove them, wash them and put them on again.  And when you do wash them, they never look as "bleckinga" as when you brought them home. 

That is why I may have over reacted a bit when I realized that while I'd been admiring my awesome cleaning skills, #4 had become awfully quiet.

Uh oh.

I found her.  She'd been busy doing a little decorating of her own.

That's right.  She didn't go in on the whole clean shabby chic thing.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say she was more of an abstract artist and was busy turning my room from a Rachel Ashwell design to a Jackson Pollack masterpiece.

My little angel had decided those white slipcovers were missing something. 

Sharpie.

Permanent.

On my slipcovers.

2 hours before my husband was coming home for dinner.

With his colleagues.

From out of town.

I looked down at my hands but there was no prozac bottle there to help.