Recovering from Jet Lag

I was looking for inspiration this morning, and Shannon over at Rocks In My Dryer provided it. It seems we all should proceed with extreme caution after returning from vacation.

My husband and I spent a week touring China this May. The trip was amazing, and I'm sure it will provide me with many blogging ideas. However, the adaptation to normal home life after the trip was a little rocky.

As you might imagine, there's a little jet lag involved with a trip to China. What you don't realize is that even if you think you've had enough sleep, and you're awake and functioning, you should not try normal household activities. Here are a few lessons I learned.

• Don't do laundry the first day home. Now normally, I put off laundry as long as possible. But laundry that has traveled from another country tends to retain the absolute worst smells from said country. It will not smell as fresh as your husband's workout clothes that he left in the car trunk during the last heatwave. It will truly stink to high heaven. Yes, every time you walk by the odorous pile you will be instantly transported back to the worst smelling place of your entire trip. You.Must.Resist.Temptation.To.Do.Laundry. Or you might just wash all the cool foreign currency you brought back for the kids, the tickets and pictures of yourself at the Kung Fo show, and your passport! And everyone knows how hard it is to get one of those lately. Imagine having to replace it.

• Do not use complex electrical appliances like a microwave. You might be tempted to just nuke your poor hungry children something rather than risk cooking or driving. But you might microwave a sausage wrapped in a pancake on a stick for 4 minutes instead of the 40 seconds you intended. This could result in filling the entire house with an odd orange colored smoke requiring 3 days of fans in the front and back doors to air out the house. Not that I would know this for a fact, because what kind of mother pushes 4 minutes instead of 40 seconds on a microwave.

• Do not attempt to clean and save the aforementioned microwave. Anyone sleep deprived enough to confuse 4 minutes and 40 seconds does not need to Google household hints on how to clean a burnt microwave. If you continue such ridiculous attempts to reclaim your status as a functioning mother, just stop and call in reinforcements.

• If you decide to throw all caution to the wind and clean the microwave, first move the microwave outside of your house. Don't ask why, just do it. Alternating boiling lemon juice and vinegar and wiping down the inside of the microwave with the steaming hot liquids works wonders, even if you do end up with burnt fingers. However, the suggestion to just leave coffee grounds in the microwave to absorb the odor means - put the grounds in a bowl and close the microwave. Under no circumstances does it mean to turn the microwave on with the coffee grounds inside.

• Did you get that - UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES!

Note to self: Burnt coffee smell is harder to clean than burnt pancake/sausage smell making stinky laundry smell heavenly.