Twenty-one

"Mommy, I want scrambled eggs."

“Are you sure?” I haven’t had any coffee yet, and he wants me to contend with the stove.

"How about cereal? Cereal is yummy…."

"I WANT SCRAMBLED EGGS!!!! SCRAMBLED EGGS!!"

"All right, okay," (turn on the stove, get out the eggs, drop several on the floor, bump my head on the table trying to clean them up, all the while he is shrieking the scrambled eggs chant, plus he's added toast. Scramble the eggs, make the toast, he's keeping up a non-stop, top of the lungs demand for the eggs; in fact he is now sobbing and kicking the table. Have I mentioned I haven't had any coffee yet? To experience how I feel before I've had any coffee, try synching a Glad bag over your head. Now try to make scrambled eggs.)

Finish the eggs, arrange the toast, bring it to the boy. He stops screaming and smiles.

"I want cereal," he chirps. This is why kids in trailer parks get locked in car trunks.

"Eat the eggs or I'll choke you," I explain.  Of course I didn’t say that out loud.

But of all the annoying two year old boys in the world, he's definitely my favorite. Well, top five for sure.

Mike and I have a ritual now. After the kids are in bed, we lace running shoes until midnight while watching our favorite movies. Last night we watched Private School starring a nubile Phoebe Cates, who spends most of the movie in her underwear. Mike liked that one a little more than I did.

Twenty-two

Finbar had a little household mishap the other day, resulting in a trip to the Emergency Room. We didn’t have a long wait. Our doctor was an older gentleman who smelled not unpleasantly like a pipe.  He smiled kindly and asked what brought us in. 

“He, um…stabbed himself in the back of the throat with a shish kebab stick.”

Very long pause.  The doctor had a look on his face that clearly said, “You gotta have a license to drive a car, but any idiot can have kids.”

So he examined the boy, who did indeed poke a hole in his soft palette with a wooden kitchen skewer.  From the packet mom keeps next to the microwave to put in her tea cups, ever since she read a horror story on the internet about a man who heated water in the nuker that had no implement to break the surface, and it exploded in the hapless fool’s face.

But no one thought keeping spikes on hand in the kitchen would be a bad idea with Finny around, who last night to decided to hone his future circus act as a fire eater while his mom was in the john.

In my defense, they were in a drawer.  But he found them and stabbed himself with such swift efficiency that I’m sure he has known they were there for some time and had simply been waiting for his window of opportunity to open.

I was instructed to watch for bloody vomit, which would indicate he’d swallowed some of the skewer. The doctor (who by the way, can wipe that supercilious look off his face thankyouverymuch, I’m sure he’s botched his job from time to time) thought this was unlikely and the extent would be a sore throat for a day or two.

“Just watch him,” he concluded, his voice dripping with disdain.

“Will do, and thanks!  By the way, are there any doctors here that were born after 1916 and don’t stink like an old boot?”

I didn’t really say that.

Finbar seems fine.

We’re all in the front yard, I’m reading Brill’s Content (OK, it was Entertainment Weekly) and the kids are playing with the hose.  Things are all fun and happy until…

“Finbar!  Stop it!! Stop spraying me!”  The boy, who by the way is wearing, a diaper, pink rollerblades, and swim goggles, has turned the nozzle on his sister, and it’s on the highest setting, the one you would use to power wash an elephant or put out a large fire.

“Mommy!! Make him stop!”  She tries to scramble away, but the spray keeps knocking her down. 

“Meggie’s dirty mommy!”

“Finbar, stop it! She doesn’t like—“

“Makin’ her all clean, mommy!”

“Mommy! Make him stop-“

“Finbar!”

“You dirty, mommy!”

“Don’t you dare__”

 "MAKIN” YOU CLEAN MOMMY!! MOMMY”S ALLLLLLLLL CLEAN!!!”

Bon Jovi’s new CD is at the top of the charts.  Finally, those of us who grew up in the fabulous eighties, too young for the Eagles and too old for N’Sync are back on top. Giddy with excitement, I tune into my local airwaves hoping to catch their new tune.

“IT’S MY LIFE, BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH,” 

This is so great!  I’m rocking out in the front seat, feeling very superior to some kid on the sidewalk wearing a Nirvana t-shirt.  Grunge. What did that last, five years? Jovi’s got fifteen years of longevity, you punk! So about halfway through Jersey’s latest anthem, it hits me: This sounds just as awful as it used to.  Um………….has anyone seen my George Strait cd?

I finally joined a book club. It’s made up of all the stereotypes I was hoping for: The radical hippie who spent an hour warning everyone of the dangers of fossil fuel, even though he kept his truck running throughout the entire meeting because his infant daughter was asleep in the front seat, the smarty pants chick who threw ten dollar words around and asked questions like, “How big a role does India’s political system play in Midnight’s Children?” And the geek, the guy with the Dungeons and Dragons t shirt who wanted us to read the Hobbit.  Of course, I’m just feeling insecure since my most in depth contribution was, “Are there any more chips?”

Question:  How long does it take Mike and Katie to go through a ten pound bag of chocolate chips from Sam’s Club?

Answer:  I am wayyyyy too embarrassed to tell you.

 You should’ve heard me when Mike brought that thing home. 

“We’ll never finish it, it’ll go bad,  whaddya gonna start a bakery, blahbitty blahbbitty  harp harp harp.  Holy kermoly.  I guess the guy knows his wife.  ( Perhaps he was thinking “maybe this feed bag of chocolate will shut her up.”)  Every time I wander into the kitchen feeling a little peckish, it’s just so darn easy to reach into that huge sack and grab a handful.

“Hmm……kinda hungry……….carrots…no…..apple………no………hey, a ten pound bag of chocolate chips!!”  Plus, it’s fun to melt them and smear them on everything in sight.  That’s our new favorite game: See If This Food Would Be More Delicious With Melted Chocolate Chips On It.  And let me tell you, most of them are.  I think I need help.  Coupla years ago, I gave up chocolate for lent and lost seven pounds.  Seven pounds of my body was made of chocolate.

A few nights ago, the kiddies and I made a batch of peanut butter rice krispie bars with chocolate on top.  I lovingly gave them each a 1x1 inch square, sent them off to bed, sat down and polished off the rest of the pan while I shouted swear words at Survivor.  The next morning Meg saw the pan and yelled, “Who ate all these?”

“Daddy,” I said sheepishly.

I’m trying to decide if I’m gonna run the Labor Day race this year.  I’m definitely leaning towards ‘no’, but this particular neighbor accosts me every time I see him and wants to talk running.  I feel I should have something to tell him, especially since he shops at our store.  And it wouldn’t look good to say, “I’m not training for anything, but thanks to you, the store allows me to afford ten pound bags of chocolate chips!  Want some?”  (Hoping he’ll say no.)

I’m flipping through Robert Redford’s Sundance catalogue.  Yes, apparently there’s a catalogue attached to the film festival, so nobodies like me can look like the stars when it’s cold outside.  This furthers my belief that that festival is just an excuse for b-listers to look all adorable in sweaters and hats.  Does anyone ever actually see those movies?  Not to mention the fact that I really do live in cold weather, and I understand that a midriff sweater with a matching skull cap ain’t gonna cut it, not even with a skimpy jean jacket over it. 

“I’m so sure, just because he’s Robert Redford now I’m supposed to buy clothes from him oh hey that sweater is pretty cute I guess I’ll order a couple after all Robert Redford would only attach his name to something of the highest quality” or something like that.

Twenty-five

Had one of those great days the other day when you manage to get a jillion things done.  Mowed the lawn, went to the bank, went to the accountant’s office, bought food, colored my hair, re-screened and re-painted the front door, and for dinner made lamb chops in a mushroom and red wine sauce, which the kids said was icky.  So it was really going terrifically until we all sat down with a big bowl of popcorn to watch the Olympics, the kids thinking getting to stay up late to watch is the greatest, when what pops onto the tv screen but an add for the re-released movie The Exorcist.  Hi, it’s seven o’clock and my kids just got the living snot scared out of them.  Happened again last night, luckily I got to the remote before anything too scary appears.  So much for the happy family Olympics-watchin’ time.

“See kids?  If you work really hard, someday you can be in the Olympics!  And by the way, Devil’s gonna gitcha! Nighty-night!”

Now, I realize I’m the biggest fraidy cat of all time, I’m the mom who only allows happy costumes on Halloween, only smiley pumpkins and ghosts, no restless souls of the undead, thankyouverymuch.  But honestly, the Exorcist at seven p.m.??

Yesterday was ‘Have lunch and go to the park with your eighth grade buddy’ day at school, and I had no idea.  I showed up at the usual time to pick up Meg, and she’s sitting down to lunch with her buddy, but she has no lunch because her mom is a moron.  So I had to run home and make her a lunch and run it back to school, but of course, by now they are all at the park, my poor child having had no lunch at all.  I high-tail it to the park, where I find the other kinder-moms have fed Meg in the form of donations from all the other kids’ lunches, making me look like even more of a loser.  Poor kid.  Not only do I forget buddy day, all the other moms look like they got up at two in the morning to put on matching casual wear and do their hair and makeup, you know, the kind of hair and makeup job that’s always touted in magazines under headlines like, ‘Busy Day Hair And Makeup In Five Minutes Or Less!’ (Right under an article entitled, ‘Nutritious Meals Under a Dollar or Shape Your Thighs While You Sleep!’ If only there were some articles in those rags that were actually useful, like ‘Identifying the Crust in Your Kid’s Hair’ or ‘It’s Normal For Your Toilet to Smell Like a Dead Wolverine’.  Or how about, ‘No One Will Like What You Make Them to Eat, Ever.  End of Story.’)  And here’s me, sprinting through the park in the same ratty t-shirt I slept in, hair so bed-heady it can’t possibly pass for on-purpose-Meg-Ryan-bed-head hair, and waving a limp sandwich.  I made a vow last night to do better, to become a mom right out of a Jif Peanut Butter ad, but  I overslept and made Meg brush her teeth in the car.

© Katie McCollow, 2004 •