Finding Joy in Snarkville

Prince has this delightful expression for those in this world who do things that would get normal people killed and yet somehow those people still survive.  He will say, “they are too stupid to live.”  And yet they do, so I’m not sure if his expression still applies, but let’s not dig too deep — I’ve only had one cup of coffee.

But in light of this expression, I thought I would share a few examples of how truly bright we are and why there are days it is a wonder that we remember to breathe, eat or otherwise walk upright.

1. On Halloween night, I took Duke to Trick or Treat in another neighborhood with a good friend and her daughter.  While I was gone, Prince held down the fort here in Frankhouse and since there was a serious derth of kids begging candy, he loaded the dishwasher.  Now, what he didn’t know was that we were down to the dregs of the detergent and I’d put the box on the counter to remind me to pick up more on Saturday’s run to Costco.  Upon discovering no detergent and knowing that he faced a sinkfull of dishes, he did was anyone channeling Lucy Ricardo would — oh, yes, he put “a little” dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher.  I came home to a kitchen floor covered about 3″ deep in soap suds.  The Queen Mum’s reaction?  “Well, that’s one way to clean the floor.”
2. We took a cranky, post-Halloween excited (though he was not hopped up on candy) to Costco on the first truly rainy weekend day in months.  We did this right after lunch and during a time that he really probably needed quiet time or perhaps a nap.  We not only dragged him around the store; refused to look at (read: buy) any of the toys; and made laps trying to find a few things.
3. I decided that we had enjoyed enough chicken and needed some beef in our life.  Thus I embarked on making a few beef items — let’s call this a mini-cooking session.  I chose FOUR meals (I might mention that the day I spent 7 hours in the kitchen making more chicken than I thought possible, I made 5 meals) of beef.  I went with things I was pretty sure we’d eat and enjoy.  I tallied the ingredients, bought some at Costco, and delayed going to the grocery until Sunday — at which time I broke the cardinal rule of shopping and cooking on the same day.  But that was ok, I was just making a few dishes.  I can truly announce that I have my first failure.  I tried to make shredded beef tacos, but the way they wanted me to make the beef (basically boiling/steaming in water forever) produced a tough lump of ick.  It is now in the garbage as I plan on just browning some ground beef and moving on.  However, unlike my first day of complete plans, this one was less well thought out.  Oh, I made all the meals and stored them properly, but I wasn’t on top of cleaning as I went like before (yielding us two sinks full of dishes and one more load in the dishwasher before I’m back to normal.  But that isn’t the best part.  I’m still trying to sort out the best way to store the food in the freezer.  The Queen Mum mentioned an article she read about pour food into ziploc bags that are inside a cereal box to make bricks instead of the blobs you get when you just put unfrozen ziploc bags in the freezer.  I tried this.  Warning: Do not even bother to try this yourself.  The cereal box is NOT strong enough to hold a box like shape against the weight of your food.  You WILL spill as you pour making the box WET and thus making it not slide off the ziploc bag.  And you will really odd looks from your family as you pour soup into a box for Cheerios.  (I’m thinking mailing boxes might work better, but I need two gallon bags to try that out.
4. Do not attempt to cut your child’s hair at bedtime on Sunday night.  Even though you’ve talked about doing it all weekend long and it REALLY needed to be done — just don’t.  Step away from the clippers.  I hope Duke likes his new buzz cut.

Finally, in case you were wondering, Duke had Halloween homework this weekend that required he sort and classify all of his candy.  This is a great idea IN THEORY.  However, in reality this is the WORST plan ever.  First, this means that he has played with the candy all weekend long and that’s just annoying.  Where normally I’d let him have a few pieces and then we’d move on by throwing out much of it or feeding it to Prince, Duke now knows everything he has and how much.  URGH.  We finally let him have some last night when the project was done.  I have never been more tempted to send a note into school saying that we don’t celebrate candy and would kindly like no more project to involve the fondling of sugar products EVER.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 11:26 am and is filed under Motherhood isn't for wimps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.