I Just Want to be a MACHO MAN. Macho, macho man. Come on, put a little wiggle in it before you start reading....

I’m not big on housework. I love the fact that my daughter does the dishes and the dusting. That my kids trade off vacuuming the house and that my son usually will clean the bathrooms. My husband details my car. So I don’t mind doing the laundry (I am also known to cook when it suits me). Throwing the loads in while I straighten up and do my weekend grading. Yeah, I don’t mind it. If I have the time I really don’t mind folding it all either. I try and time it with my Netflix queue. However, the highlight of being a laundry goddess is the perk of making tip money out of the dryer. I probably pull in anywhere from pocket change to a few dollars – occasionally even a fiver. Once some dumb ass left a twenty in his or her pocket. Their loss, my gain. There’s a bit of a thrill each and every time I am pulling clothes out of the dryer and see a nicely washed and dried bit of currency.

Wasn’t I surprised the other day when I noticed what at first looked like paper, but soon became something immediately recognizable. As NOT money. Square foil packet. Serrated edges. When I reached in and grabbed it, there was the familiarity of the circular edge lurking beneath the packaging.

My kids, daughter 19, son, 16 were sitting at the kitchen counter eating. I came out of the laundry room and waved the singular condom package in the air.

Lookie what I just found in the dryer. Which one of you does this belong to?

Daughter raises an eyebrow at son while addressing me.

Yeah. I’ve never had a boyfriend, I haven’t been on a date yet. But I am having sex. With random guys. I meant to tell you.

At least her sarcasm is up to par.

As far as I know, my son hadn’t started dating yet either.

Son, are you seeing girls and we don’t know about it? Did your dad have a talk with you about waiting and not have sex with hoochie girls that give it up to boys they hardly know?

That’s not mine. It’s dad’s.

At the risk of damaging you permanently by talking about your parents’ sex lives, I need to tell you that your dad doesn’t need condoms as chemotherapy rendered me post menopausal.

I’m not sure, but I think there was a smirk tugging at the edge of my daughter’s mouth as she tried not to show how much pleasure she was getting from her brother’s predicament.

It’s dad’s. It has to be. It's not mine.

I tilt my head to the side and narrow my eyes at him.

He looks me dead in the eye and says, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

OK. But tonight, when your dad gets home. And I have to ask him who he is having sex that is not his wife, I’ll be sure to tell him it was you that said it HAD to be his.

As I move the next load of laundry from the washer to the dryer, I hear heated whispering.

Upstairs, while I am folding laundry, son walks in.

You know, I left some of my clothes over at X’s house and he was wearing them. He must have left that in the pocket of one of my shorts. I threw everything he's been wearing straight into the laundry. DON’T SAY ANTHING TO HIM NEXT TIME YOU SEE HIM.

My kids think because I work with 150 teenagers for a living I am prone to bossing around and nosing around any old teen that comes my way. That’s not ALWAYS true.

Later, when husband gets home, I tell him the whole story. I thought he’d be a little more upset about son throwing him under the bus, but instead he was laughing his ass off. He calls son in the room.

That your hopeful condom?

Your field of dreams?

Be careful, those things have an expiration date you know.

Did you make sure you got the kiddie start up set?

And I thought I was the one that damaged our kids.

The preceding man story was inspired by two magnificent, manly awards that have come this way from two terrific dads who blog. Goodfather and Captain Dumbass. They have awesome blogs and have appropriately been awarded with many prestigious bloggie bling. It came to their attention that most of these awards tended to be on the girly side. With savvy technie skills, they designed and launched these wonderful badges:

Goodfather's Award

It comes with rules that I did not follow so please forgive me Godfather, oops, I mean Goodfather. Please get the rules from this post of Goodfather's.

Captain Dumbass

His did not have rules, so it's his fault that I was inspired to make up my own rules for them both. Which was to tell the condom in the dryer story.

I'd like to pass these awards on to anyone who reads this post, everyone I follow (I stalk a lot of you), absolutely all of you that have your blogs fixed so that my follower thingy cannot pick up your feed, and to those in my blogroll. Which is in sorry need of updating and I probably cannot get to that until Christmas break since work is kicking my ass right now.