Saturday, October 25, 2014

Assault by Bug Repellent

Friday is supposed to be a good day. It’s the fun day of the week I look forward to. This particular Friday was one I was really looking forward to. The weather was nice and I anticipated a house full of kids and teenagers for our annual pumpkin carving. I couldn't wait to get off work and prepare for the party.

In spite of my excitement, Friday was not cooperating. Nothing I had touched had gone quite like I expected.  The cake pops that were to be dipped ever so elegantly in candy corn-colored layers had instead become unsightly orbs coated in glops of melted chocolate.  I had decided to just go with the flow and I had adopted a rather whatevs attitude.  Friday just wasn't what I had hoped, but I pressed on.  

I was boiling sugar into caramel on the stove while also trying to direct my young herd through a last-minute power cleaning of our well-lived in home. You know, multi-tasking, which always works out SO well. I picked up a few scattered hair bands from the sofa and flung them in the bathroom drawer on my way through the hall. I shot a sideways glance at the bathroom floor and noticed multiple rolls of toilet paper thrown in the floor (why kids, why??) and immediately my frustration level grew.

In my extreme frustration, I slammed that bathroom drawer. Hard. Very hard.



A bottle of bug repellent lined itself up ever so perfectly in the drawer so as to align its spray nozzle in such a way that my slamming the drawer depressed the spray nozzle and sent a stream of bug repellent directly into both eyes and my nose in a split second of pure horror. I was BLIND.

I’m not sure if I was blinded by the actual chemical or just from the sheer pain, but I was unleashing a torrent of profanities and indistinguishable screams that could probably be heard on the next block. I was near a sink, but I was not thinking clearly and I began to run blindly toward my own bathroom sink slamming face first into every door frame along the way. Every door frame. I plunged my face into the sink and began flushing my eyes with water which had the effect of intensifying the burning sensation three-fold.

I could not even fathom what had happened. I had just shot myself in the face with bug repellent. For the love of all things! How in the hell could that even have happened? I wandered, still half-blind, back to the kitchen to check on my caramel and then back to the sink for more eye washing.

In the meantime, a well-meaning family member reduced the temperature of my boiling caramel to less than a boil. I decided it looked caramelish enough and we began dipping bite-size pieces of apple. I was so very proud of myself. I had cooked my own, made-from-scratch, caramel and the Fish and I had coated the most adorable bite-size apples ever complete with little bat and pumpkin-shaped food picks.

About twenty minutes later,   those cute little apples shed their caramel coatings in an act of pure defiance.  I said very ugly things. Very, ugly.

But, Friday marched on as it does. Kids arrived with pumpkins to carve and I soon forgot my irritated eyes. There were ugly-but-delicious cake pops to be consumed. There were friends to converse with and hot dogs to roast. There were leaves falling from the trees and ooey-gooey roasted marshmallows being eaten around the fire pit in the back yard.

It was perfection, this Friday with all of its challenges and torments. Absolute perfection.  



If I had my stuff together, and had not sprayed myself in the eyeballs with bug repellent, and had not adopted a whatevs attitude, perhaps I would have actually taken photos of the pumpkin carving party. Alas, I didn't have it together. I did poison my own eyeballs. And I did say "whatevs, people. Whatevs." I did not take photos of our annual pumpkin carving party. But, I did take this last-minute pic with mah friend. So there you go.   



Monday, October 20, 2014

Who Knew?

This was delivered in my Super Mail today (slipped under my bedroom door) while I was away at class by Super Girl (also known as Little Bean).



It says:

If you are in the age of 13-20 there are 2 jobs open at the super office.

Attention! Super Tuna's mother has passed away. You are invited to her funeral Nov. 5 at [the] family room. 

So apparently, I have died.

Who knew?

It's a good thing I got the Super News or I would have missed my own funeral.

Monday, October 6, 2014

September In Numbers

I offer you September in Numbers: A Snapshot of a Family Schedule


Color Guard/Marching Band Rehearsal  Drop-offs and Pick-ups: 18

Doctor/Dentist/Therapy/Ophthalmology/Lab Appointments:  20

Back-to-School Orientations and Parent Events: 2

Work Related Drop-Off/Pick Ups for Kid: 20

Volunteer Activity Drop-Off/Pick Ups for Kids: 9

Marching Band Performance/Parade/Football Games: 2


In addition, we tackled a yard clean-up day, a garage sale, and sent two girls to the homecoming dance.  I also went back to school and took six credit hours in college this semester (two classes each week), leaving the Big Guy to manage even more of this mess on his own. (Which he did, like the rock he is.)

The comment I hear most often is that people don’t know how we do it. The truth is, we’re crazy. And we cut a lot of corners. We cook enormous pots of chili on a Thursday and then offer it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days.  We call the kids the wrong names and then get mad when they don’t respond. We turn in three pages of homework for our college course when we only needed to turn in one because we can no longer comprehend simple instructions. We occasionally wear our clothes inside out. We get so sleep-deprived and exhausted that we actually hit ourselves in the face with a chair we’re carrying and bust our own lip open.  We are walking comedians.

The how we do it is simple really. We just do it. We make a lot of lists and schedules. We rely heavily on the iPhone calendar app. We tag-team, reminding each other who needs to be where when and helping each other get out the door with every thing (and every kid) that we need.   

What’s more important is the why

We do it so we can stand up and salute the flag on the football field at the Friday night homecoming game as the marching band plays the Star Spangled Banner and our daughter takes the field in full show makeup spinning her flag like a boss.

We do it so we can look on with pride as our oldest daughter walks into work in full uniform, becoming ever more independent.

We do it so we can celebrate the joy of our middle school-aged daughter getting a reduced prescription for her glasses, knowing all those years of eye patching and an eye surgery were well worth it and turned out okay.

We do it so we can watch in awe as our two oldest daughters are transformed from snarky pajama-bottom-wearing, pony-tailed teens into stunningly beautiful young ladies for the homecoming dance.

Well, there might be just a little bit of snark still there. 


We do it so we can watch our son spread his wings and fly as he moves into his very own apartment.


There are things that simply cannot be measured in numbers.  Now (yawn) if you’ll excuse us, we are going to collapse and sleep.  The schedule has whooped our butts.