Shoulda Ordered Chinese...

It's gotta be a pride thing. The "I can bring home the bacon...." (cue stripper music) "Fry it up in a pan...(More dance moves) "And never, ever let you forget you're a MAN!!!" (Now half-crazed mom-by-day shows up wearing stockings, great dress for skinny woman and high heels, hair done, make-up on, ready to make her man's night after being wined and dined in a high class restaurant.

ENJOLI...

GO HERE FOR RETRO COMMERCIAL....

What exactly is Enjoli?

Perfume. So if you buy Enjoli you too can have a life like that.

Good luck.

Dave's mom was coming over for supper Monday night. Now this isn't a big deal. We all like food, it's a no brainer, Dave buys some great-looking pork chops and I'm going to cover them with crushed cracker crumbs, salt and pepper and cook them in olive oil on the big griddle. Beth, Jon and the two grandsons are going to be here too. Jon had been working in the woods with Dave, so nice family dinner, right?

CUE THE DARK MUSIC....

Beth goes home and leaves 'Lijah and Xavier here sleeping... 18 month old Xavier wakes up screaming.... Long before he should have....

CUE MORE DARK MUSIC... He's not happy. He won't let me out of his sight. He won't let me go near the kitchen...

ADD BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR 4 OF MY DAYCARE KIDS....All of my older kids are busy... swim team, dancing, chorus, band, theater, auditions, gymnastics, math club, student council, etc. So some of them don't get to my house until after 4:00 PM... and then get picked up at 4:30 P.M.

Birthday celebrations must be SANDWICHED in.... Ready... Set... Light the Candles... GO!!!!!

Sing. Cut. Serve. Scoop. Eat. Kiss goodbye... Oops, presents, DO NOT FORGET THE PRESENTS!!!  The week before this was spring break here and 4 of my kids had the nerve to have birthdays that week.... FOUR.... I mean, 'Sup wi' dat? And Monday is the BEST of the bad days to celebrate, so I rock a great cake.... the teen gals I've had since they were babies decorate the cake... AWESOME JOB, LADIES.... And we pull the birthday thing off with nary a hitch...

Except this is what the kitchen looked like:

And here's another view:

And here's a fairly simple recipe I should have considered:

But Dave bought pork chops so Dragon Soup is for another night...

Enter:  "Z-Z".... (This is the nickname 'Lijah gave his baby brother Xavier, even though there is no "Z" in Xavier and my literary mind screamed that nipple confusion would be the least of the child's developmental problems if we didn't use the "X-sounding-like-Z" and call him "X-X" which makes no sense whatsoever because it does sound like "Z". The world of phonetics...)

He looks innocent, right?

Looks are deceiving....

But I breathe, snuggle the yowling toddler, and try to assuage him with food.

Nope.

Drink?

Nope.

Muzzle????

TEMPTING!!!!

Grandma comes around 5:30.  We laugh and chat and keep the boys amused (as long as I sit right on the floor with "Z-Z" and let him crawl all over me, walk on me, and poke my ears, eyes, nose and mouth while singing "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet", we're fine... No meltdowns)

No adults arrive to help me. None. Nada. Zilch.

Beth calls, she's caught at work, she'll be there soon....

Jon brings up a load of wood and says "When's supper?"  He is now DEAD and we're holding his funeral this weekend, after my taxes are submitted.  My husband is still in the woods...

Grandma is getting a kick out of this whole thing, and that's a good thing... So eventually the multitude of adults begin to arrive.

This is where the phone call for Chinese food should have occurred... You can't load the dishwasher until you unload it... And you can't cook on the one countertop cooking space with the dishwasher opened.

And "Z-Z" thinks the dishwasher is his personal bathtub... He's sure he's helping by climbing inside to get that last spoon/fork/cup/saucer/steak knife.

Dave turns on baseball...

Dave is now lying in state beside Jon in a funeral home for CLUELESS MALES.

'Lijah has to go potty. He wants to use upstairs potty. I say sure (DUMB, RUTHY, DUMB...) and open the gate...

Back to kitchen, organize big griddle, dip the pork chops, Grandma (Go, Grandma, Go!!!!) peels potatoes....  And she's adorable, not minding that it's after seven already....

We get things going.

Grandma sits down.

Grandma jumps up. "I'm getting wet!!!"

Water begins sprinkling out of ceiling over Grandma.

Ruthy sprints for stairs.

Men do not sprint.

Men are not quick like that.

Ruthy finds 'Lijah upstairs having the time of his life in sink... water going full blast, antique (meaning older than dirt) plumbing not able to drain sink fast enough, sink overflowing all over bathroom floor...

And Grandma.

Towels. Lots of towels. Calm kid down because adult over-reaction terrorizes him...

Oops.

Okay, back to kitchen. BIG POT on high chair under leaking ceiling.... And more towels.

Chops are not burnt...

Potatoes are almost done.

"Z-Z" is being held captive by men in living room (Okay, if I'd really killed them, they wouldn't have been able to amuse small child, so I let them live temporarily.)

Eventually we eat. And it's good. And it's late. But Grandma says, "I eat late lots of times. With Dad gone, I don't have to have a schedule anymore"...

And then I realize that Mom doesn't have to have a schedule because Dad is gone. He's buried down the road in the pretty Parma Union Cemetery and she visits his grave every day. And this spring we're making a garden around the Blodgett graves... And it will be pretty and sweet and she can take care of it whenever she wants because she doesn't have a schedule anymore... not with Dad gone.

I'm surrounded by fun, craziness and goofiness 24/7 pretty much. Sometimes I take that for granted.  I could be immersed in silence.

And if Grandma wasn't bothered by the whole dog-and-pony show, then I won't be.

But:

I shoulda just ordered Chinese.