I don’t have a single living plant in my home. Not a philodendron or even a cactus.
This is not by choice. I think they look lovely, adding nature to your atmosphere. Bringing the beauty of outdoors inside, a burst of new life.
No, this is by default. A result of my total inability to keep any living things alive, other than my children, thank goodness.
In classic form, I either over-water or forget to water. Not enough light, too much light or some faulty combination of all of this.
I used to have fake plants in my home, but I couldn’t even manage those. The dust would build over weeks and months so that they no longer had a nice, bright green hue but more of a grayish one. When the feather duster wasn’t cutting it, I concluded I would need to individually dust each leaf by hand and who’s got time for that? Not this apathetic plant duster.
So, the fake plants bit the dust. Literally.
This is as green as my thumb gets. A styrofoam "plant." In case you were wondering, I do keep it on the window sill. There is absolutely no logical reason for this.
Now, the lack of pets is totally by choice. I’m not a natural animal lover by nature, so when you add in the need to water, feed, walk, and clean up after them, I’m quickly not a fan. After all, I already struggle to keep my own husband and children watered, fed, walked and cleaned up after.
Plus, when you want to go somewhere, you have to hire someone to watch them. And they require doctor visits and shots and medicine. As I just mentioned, I already do all of these things with my kids.
Now, I know I may be in the silent minority here. Most people seem to love their pets, other people’s pets, and every single animal on the face of planet. After all, there wouldn’t be millions of cat videos on You Tube if folks weren’t crazy about them.
Except for me. And because of this, I always feel like I should keep my pet apathy hidden. As if not liking pets is akin to not having a heart. Wait, good grief, even the heartless Grinch had a dog!
My family wants a pet. Although if Michael is really honest, he only wants a cute little dog about one or two days a month. Because he knows, like I know, that despite my kids’ claims of responsibility, we’re gonna be the ones taking of the pet. I’m going to be feeding and watering, letting it out and taking it for walks. For all their sincere promises, I know my kids well enough to know I’ll be the one cleaning up all the hair and spraying Febreze throughout the house in an effort to rid the pet smell.
Don’t even get me started on the hair and the smells. These are two other areas I already have to tackle with my kids!
So, it’s one against four, but my one is a pretty adamant one. People ask our kids all the time if we have a cat or dog or even a fish and their response is always, “No, my mom’s not a big fan.”
You can say that again. But while I can’t keep a plant alive and don’t have any interest in caring for a pet, I love people a lot. Promise, I do!
(Just don’t pee on my carpet.)