CHOCOLATE-FUELLED THOUGHTS
Bless This Broken, Mayonnaise-Slathered Nest
The kids were all making Fourth Lunch or whatever the meal is they make when they get home from school. (Never mind that dinner is two hours away, nothing but an entire four-course meal will do at 3:30 in the afternoon.)
I was rushing toward my espresso maker, planning to coax sweet nectar from its boiler, when I heard a loud THUD in the kitchen. I rounded the corner just in time to see the children frozen, eyes aimed downward. My youngest had dropped an entire Costco-sized jar of mayonnaise on the kitchen floor. Nobody dared move – least of all the kid who had mayonnaise spurted up his leg.
Without a word, I assessed the situation and discerned that it wasn’t the entire jar that now laced my kitchen with egg-based substance, merely the bit that had flown out of the top with such a force as to coat the nearby dishwasher before landing in a sad glump inside the floor register. (Aside: whoever thought a floor register in the highest traffic corner of my kitchen was a good idea is badly mistaken. I’m all for indoor heating and cooling, but don’t put the floor register in a location that has the highest potential for smashes, seepage, and spills.)
I grabbed a wad of paper towels and worked on Youngest’s leg, because: people first. But I had my eye on that floor register, just daring that glob to move any further down the vent before I finished cleaning the slippery stuff from my baby’s socks. As someone who isn’t a big fan of eggs, I could only imagine the distasteful smell that might emanate through every register in our home if I didn’t swiftly remove the Hellman’s from the Hole.
I handed a very slippery wad of paper towels to the Youngest and sent him to the trash can. Then I yanked the register out of the floor. I must have been very focused because I didn’t notice the silence that hung over the kitchen while I cleaned up the condiment-soaked innards. It was only when I turned back around to face Youngest and saw him standing very still, mayonnaise still congealed in his Adidas, watching my face. “Am I in trouble?” he asked carefully.
I blinked. Then I giggled. “No, dear. Not at all! You’ve got six older siblings. This is nothing!” My utter lack of reaction has been drummed into me by so many breaks and spills before you that I can’t even muster a hint of rage. “Now swipe that bit out of your shoelaces before it stains…”
And it’s true. Those blessed older siblings have systematically numbed my Reactor when it comes to physical damage. They’ve spread bodily fluids to the far corners of the house (who can forget the one who peed on my diploma?), they’ve made off with our coffee, tripped, fallen, and splooshed it onto the ceiling, and they’ve treated every lamp, every sofa, and every chair as if they were made of Little Tykes plastic and then acted surprised when it broke. They pick holes in the fluff of the pillows, poke their fingers through the wall closest to the toilet out of boredom, write with Sharpies on every available surface, forget to tell us the toilet is running and leaking through the ceiling, and reliably kill the lawnmower every season.
As Husband and I joke – Kids are the worst roommates ever.
We’ve lived with them long enough not to blink at the next minor calamity (although as the kids get bigger, the mistakes do, too). Maybe we’re mature enough to realize that all of these things are a temporal and rusty treasure – or maybe we’re just slightly dead inside.
Two things I know: 1 – Our younger kids are the beneficiaries of all this chill. We are better at discerning mistakes from mean intentions. (ProTip: broken household items are almost never the result of mean intentions, just thoughtlessness.) Our reactions are decidedly less screechy than they were ten years ago.
2 – The day is coming, very soon, in fact, when my house will be clean and nothing will ever get broken and I will miss these horrible roommates with every fiber of my being. We raise them to leave, I know. I will send them out with joy and only a little weeping, I promise. But as my older kids are thinking about college and my Baby announces his disgust with dinosaurs as “kid stuff,” I feel this broken nest we live in getting too small for all the fluffy feathered wings they are beginning to sprout.
Here’s the good news: I’ve got stories to keep me giggling, even with slightly wry laughter, for years. (Although not ever sure Hubby will find that second broken weedwhacker funny.) Husband and I will savor those stories, tell them over and over to potential kid spouses and future grandbabies, and settle into our sofa, that hasn’t moved across the floor on a daily basis from overzealous plopping, to look forward to the day when our favorite roommates come back to visit and start clogging up the plumbing again.
It’s a broken nest, full of broken people. But I’m so grateful we’ve crashed around in it together.
When Self-Discipline Backfires – A Humorous Incident
It was during bed rest with my 5th child that I developed a Pavlovian reaction to pill-taking. My round-the-clock medication kept the contractions at bay, but also turned me into a barge-sized space cadet, bloated and incapable of remembering which pills to take. During my previous bed rest, my husband made me a chart on a whiteboard and set it by my sofa so I could take my medication appropriately in between stuffing my face with York peppermint patties. Five years later, with the advent of the iPhone, he set a variety of alarms on my phone, all designated to chime and tell me which pill I should swallow and when.
Inevitably, the alarms were more for him, as the medicine made me sleep so heavily I rarely heard the midnight chimes and he had to rustle around, find my pill, and shove it down my throat. It was a few months later, after delivering a healthy baby girl, that I was in Target and heard someone’s phone chime with a familiar alarm. I whispered to my husband, “I have the sudden urge to take a pill…”
My gestating days are over but my pill swallowing ways have not slowed. Now it’s the medications and herbal supplements to keep me “young and vigorous” as middle age wraps its arms around my middle and tries to drag me down. My memory has somewhat improved, enough that I can keep up with my own pill schedule, and I dutifully stop my day to chug some water and fling my head back to get the appropriate number of medicines down my gullet. My husband always praises my self-discipline and ability to remember my distinct pill schedule. I suspect he is relieved not to bear that particular burden anymore.
I tell you all of this so you’ll keep it in mind when I tell you the next thing:
I accidentally swallowed my son’s pain killer.
He was laid up on our couch, recovering from some teenage procedure (I can’t remember which one) and I was having “a bit of a day.” I remember that I was in the van a lot, whipping around town, running a myriad of errands and walking fast. Texts were zinging on my phone and my list was 80 pages long. My brain spun wildly and I was trying to get home in time to deliver my son’s medication before he felt any twinge of pain. I hit the door and ran straight to fill up my water bottle. Three children attacked me with questions that I tried to field as I wrestled my son’s pill bottle open and counted out the proper dosage. Another question winged my way (no doubt something of the “what’s for dinner?” variety) and I stood up straight to think about my answer. As I thought, I held my water bottle in one hand and my son’s pill in the other.
And then I quit thinking and did what came naturally: I swallowed the pill.
It was all the way down before I squeaked in surprise and said, “Oh no! That wasn’t my medicine!”
From the couch, I heard a cackle followed by a “Moooooo-oooooom!”
I yelled out to my husband, “Babe? I just took the wrong pill.”
And then I remembered the pain-killing, prescription-strength, night-night kind of pill it was.
“And also? I may need you to take over dinner and bedtime duty tonight…”
There was nothing to do but let it happen. I took out another pill to give to my son – who was still laughing – and went to put on my pj’s. Sure enough, 45 minutes later, I was slithered down in my bed, barely awake, accidentally drugged by my own self-discipline.
If I’m being perfectly honest, I’ve done it one more time. I took my husband’s vitamins without thinking. My prostate will be healthy forever, thank you very much.
2 Things You Should Know:
- This story happened over a year ago. I’ve only just now worked up the nerve to tell you. My kids still tease me about this and every time they get a new prescription, they admonish me to “Keep your hands off, Mom.”
- I still hear that old iPhone alarm sometimes and feel thirsty, like I ought to swallow something. Perhaps my kids can use that to their advantage one day when I get old and forgetful and they want Mama to take her pills. They’ll have to dig an iPhone 4 out of some museum and get it to play “chimes.” Those bells are the boss of me.