Bread, soap, butter, toilet paper, toothpaste, milk, towels. What do these household items have in common? They are just a few of the things my two boys have left me stranded without. And when I say two boys, I mean my husband and teenaged son.

As the only woman in the house, I do enjoy large amounts of freedom to reign supreme in the areas of home décor, garden landscaping, and the general running of our humble abode. I fancy myself an attentive monarch, making sure my fellow dwellers enjoy a clean home, delicious food, and entertaining family activities.

Unfortunately, those with whom I share my little queendom don’t always acknowledge me with the respect and consideration I deserve. Take, for example, my son who never replaces anything when he’s used the last of it. Only after I had washed my hair and was groping for the soap where it should have been, did I realize that he hadn’t replaced it with a fresh bar.

I’m pretty sure I muttered something like, “The next person who strands me in the shower without soap gets shanked in his sleep.” Admittedly, not my finest moment, but in my defense, I had to leave the comfort of my toasty shower, traipse across the slippery bathroom floor, walk across the carpeted hallway, and dig for a bar of soap in the back of the cupboard.

Then there is my darling husband of twenty two years who should know by now how vexing I find it when he leaves bag after bag of bread heels jammed in the back of the refrigerator because he doesn’t like using them. The last conversation we had on the subject went as follows:

“William, when a woman sees that there are four slices of bread left, two heels and two inside pieces, she uses one of each, one heel and one inside piece, and she knows to turn the heel inside to make the sandwich more palatable, and she does this so that no one person is left using both of the heels for their sandwich, whereas a man sees four slices of bread left and immediately grabs the two inside pieces, which are still soft, and uses them to make a sandwich without ever once considering that the next person to come along will be forced to use both of the heels for a thick, bready sandwich,” I said without breath or pause.

After ten seconds of silence, he replied, “You whipped that off way too quickly. You worked around lawyers for far too long.”

But it isn’t just the things they leave me without. It’s the little things they leave behind for me to pick up such as bread crumbs and milk dribbles on the countertops, glasses on the kitchen table, and, the one that really flips my trigger, fuzz from the pockets of their jeans when they pull out keys or other items.

I once watched William drop a piece of jean fuzz on the floor. He didn’t see it at first, so I decided to leave it where it fell and observe what he did about it when he finally noticed. He stepped around the offending mat of fabric fibers on the first pass.

Then William had cause to walk past the same piece of dark blue fuzz on our white carpet; still nothing. The third time he walked by, he looked at it as he passed, his head swiveling a good 180°, and still he did not take the three seconds required to stop, bend, and pick up the quarter-sized wad of fuzz. Exasperated bellowing in the form of a complaint emanated from where I sat at the kitchen table. William just laughed and said, “I thought you’d get it when you swept.”

So while I imagine that I am the Queen of Gibson Castle, more often than not, I feel like the chambermaid.