Exposed.

First, let us talk about the ways in which I am clever.

Because talking about how I am clever, pretty, funny, charming or winning at a board game are some of my favorite topics.

We really don’t get to talk about these things enough.

This may be my fault.

On Friday, Himself stopped at Costco on the way home from work to pick up a few essentials. Toilet paper, butter, a twelve-pack of flat-screen TV’s, you know.

I suggested that maybe he could look for something for dinner. Especially if, perchance, crab legs were to be had for a really good price.

And it turns out that crab legs were to be had for a really good price.

There was swoonage. I don’t get to have crab anywhere near as often as I think I am entitled to have crab.

So dinner was set to  be rosemary bread, salad, and steamed crab legs.

We encountered an eensy weensy hiccup in that the only steamer we own can’t even handle asparagus, let alone three Alaskan King Crab legs.

I hate boiling crab. The shells become unmanageable and the meat gets too tough. Steaming. It has to be steaming.

So this is where the clever part happens.

One of us (also known as Himself) suggests the big roaster. Which is large enough for the crab legs, but has no steamer inset.

Then one of us (I don’t actually remember who but we’ll go with me) thinks to line the bottom of the roaster with cookie cutters to rest the crab upon.

Brilliance. Sheer brilliance. Someone should think to send my name to the Nobel Committee for Creative Crustacean Cookery.

Plus, it adds the festive "Christmas in June" look.

Don't you wish YOU were so clever?

So once we had the giant turkey roaster lined with copper Christmas cookie cutters and an inch of water happily boiling away, we added our three Costco Crab Legs.

I bet Bobbie Flay does it this way ALL the time.

Then we melted up half a dairy’s worth of butter and sat down to a feast.

This, however, is where the happy-making discussion will end.

Because I have ignored the inevitable for too long.

While I was merrily tallying points for all my crafty door-painting and ashtray-enhancing, I was also ignoring many other things in my house. Things like the carpet being an inch thicker than it’s meant to be for all the cat hair, the layer of dust on the bedroom furniture that had become thick enough to grow crops in, and the discoloration of certain porcelain household fixtures that should really only happen in laboratories designed to test industrial strength cleaning materials for the military.

And despite the reader suggestions that things behind the bedroom door are the private business of two consenting and sometimes-slovenly adults, there does come a point when enough is simply enough and responsibility must be taken.

My office at WORK never got this bad.

My desk is made of wood, right? I can't tell any longer.

Previous score: +26 points

• Allowing an entire new level of carpet to grow on top of the previous layer of carpet: -5 points
• Allowing dust to cultivate its own microclimates: -5 points
• Ignoring the master bathroom to the point where even a teenaged boy isn’t happy to use it: -8 points
• Paying such close and caring attention to our growing plants that we actually have baby tomatoes and baby lemons: +6 points
• Allowing the home office to evolve into a new species of sentient furniture is counterbalanced by the reason being creating a storage back-up system so that music files stop dragging down the operating systems and photos have a back-up in case of drive failure: 0 points
• And finally, for taking the “if I ignore it it’ll just go away” approach to what’s growing under the dish drainer: -4 points

New score: +10 points

All I can offer is huge relief that I’m still in positive numbers. Because I was braced, I can tell you.