The Skinny Dipper

The best thing about my neighborhood is the beautiful pool.  It has a section of covered seating with ceiling fans that makes it easy to watch the kids in relative comfort.  Best of all, it is manned by alert lifeguards that keep an eye on the kid’s safety.

The other night, I sat under the covered seating and wrote while intermittently watching the kids.  They seemed to be having a fun time and it was nice not to be out there with them crawling all over me.  It gave me a moment to take a breath from my hectic summer.

Suddenly, I was tapped on the shoulder by a flustered lifeguard, “Maam, Maam?”

“Yes?” I responded.

“Did you realize your daughter is swimming without swimsuit bottoms?  All the lifeguards are really upset!”

I blanched for a moment.  Coming from extremely modest stock (so reserved that Queen Hadlifah isn’t allowed to wear a skirt without matching bike shorts or leggings), I couldn’t imagine how my little pumpkin was showing her cookie to the entire pool.  I searched my memory for what she was wearing.

Being a child with fair skin, I always put a long sleeved white rash guard over Queen Hadlifah’s suit.  Not being a believer in exposed kiddo tummy (the modesty thing again), she only owns one piece suits.  In fact, as a sufferer of Junk in the Trunk Syndrome, I’d reminded her to pull her suit over her tuchus before swimming.  Then I remember the color of her suit… white like her pale skin.

“She has a suit on.  It’s just white.  She’s very white so she probably looks like she has nothing on her nether regions,” I explained.

“Oh my gosh!  I am so sorry!” the life guard replied, looking VERY relieved and backing away from me.  He never took his eyes off of me like he was afraid I might strike like a cobra.

As he made his way back to his stand, I noticed him giving the other life guards the thumbs up.  Coincidentally, I also noticed him walk by another little girl wearing the exact same swimsuit (minus the rash guard) as Queen Hadlifah.  Slightly darker skinned than my girl, she did not elicit the same reaction from the lifeguards.

I’m claiming pasty-white-skinned discrimination.

The Toilet Killer

Before you get worried that I’m going to go there, understand that I’m not.  Overall, I find bodily functions fairly amusing unless trapped in the car for a long distance with BDogg and a snack with a high fiber count.  But it doesn’t matter because I’m not going there.

Twenty years ago, I married a hopelessly inept man when it comes to repairing things.  Generally, I do small repairs and build things (I am especially talented when it comes to IKEA stuff).  When it’s out of my skill set, I call in my father.  When he’s out of pocket, we call in the neighbors.  Luckily, we’ve always been blessed with talented and charitable neighbors.  Regardless, it’s been a long twenty years searching for assistance.

Recently, we’ve come to a crisis level because Sparky has killed all three toilets in our house with his repairs.  There is not a single toilet in our household that doesn’t run or need to be leaned on for more than ten seconds for it to flush, which is a painfully long time in bathroom seconds.  I understand that the first toilet was problematic, but I have no idea what possessed him to interfere with the other two.

DO NOT get me started with his abilities concerning the ridding of sink and shower clogs.  I’m beginning to suspect that’s all on me.

It’s time for my Independence Day.  No, I’m not leaving Sparky – I can only imagine his first day on his own being marred by overflowing sinks and a non-flushing toilet.  Someone has to save that guy from himself.  I was thinking it’s time to consult the internet on plumbing home repairs.  Seriously, how much harder can it be that IKEA directions?

I think I’ll keep the next door neighbors on speed dial.

The Five Levels Food Anger

I think everyone in the world should have an opportunity to work in the food service industry.  It’s humbling and builds your patience for those preparing your food.  Also, you get to spit in the food of customers you hate… (I am sooo kidding – I swear I never did that EVER even though I can think of a LOT of customers who deserved it – plus being a food addict I just wouldn’t mess with something as pure and pleasurable as food.)

At sixteen years old, my first real job was at Taco Bell.  Believe me when I say that I exhausted all the clothing and record stores in a twenty-minute radius of my house looking for any other job with no luck.  Obviously, I was meant to wear brown polyester and sling tacos for the masses.

Working at a fast food restaurant schools you in the five levels of food anger (1 being the lowest to 5 being WATCH YOUR BACK), which came in handy as a parent with small children because it prepared me for hunger-induced mental abuse.  The levels are as follows:

1. It’s mid-afternoon, I’m feeling a little snacky, I’d appreciate it if you’d get moving.
2. It’s well into the night, I’ve worked up an appetite and I’d value fast service before I get surly (and possibly naked in my car at the drive-thru).
3. It’s lunch time and I have thirty minutes to get back to work… GO!  By the way, get my order right or I will report you to management before you can say Adios!
4.  It’s dinner time and I’m starving, tired and moody.  I will throw myself on the floor if you don’t feed me immediately.
5. It’s Friday night during dinner, I’m famished, exhausted and I just want to feed my family so I can go home and have a cocktail.  I’ve had a dreadful week of my boss bullying me, so I will return the favor by yelling at you about the difference between red and green sauce.  My meal better be on the counter by yesterday or I will cut you!

Learning to deal with that kind of pressure at a tender age taught me a lot about being a mother.  Feeding the kiddos is not much different, except I gave birth to my abusers, which makes me wonder if I was just asking for it.  So when I think back on my years at “The Bell” when my armpits chafed from the combination of steam and polyester, I try to remember the lessons that have served me well at meal times:

• Speak calmly, but don’t look your abuser in the eye
• Never turn your back on a hungry person
• NEVER let them smell fear
• A Taco Bell paycheck only lasts seconds, but the burrito-rolling skills last forever

No Worries, Rachel Ray

My escapades in the kitchen are legendary.  Whoever coined the phrase, “Go big or go home,” obviously watched me prepare a meal in the kitchen.  My mistakes are usually a grand gesture of ineptitude.  So remarkably dangerous are my concoctions that a zombie wouldn’t eat me or my family after we ingested one of my meals.  (Must find silver lining…)

I’m thinking I might write a cookbook on what NOT to do in the kitchen to raise a healthy, thriving family.  At the very least, I might help others from making my mistakes.  At most, I might save some lives.  Either way, it would never cannibalize Rachel Ray’s book sales.  And I know my techniques would give Martha Stewart heart failure, which y’all can thank me for later.

At almost every dinner I serve a roll for my family members.  With a roll I know they will get one thing on their plate that is (hopefully) not burned and tastes appetizing.  It gives them something to look forward to during mealtime.

One night, my mother brought the kids home just as I was making dinner.  Before I made my way outside, I placed the rolls on a cookie sheet sitting on the front of the stove top and I turned on the back burner to get some water boiling.  I rushed outside to collect the kids and check my mother for emotional scarring via small children screeching in the car.  She was okay and chatty, as usual.

About ten minutes later, I returned to the house to witness a horrendous stench, billowing smoke and Queen Hadlifah sitting in the room next to the kitchen engrossed in a computer game.  On the stove top, I found three dinner rolls in flames.

“Queen Hadlifah!  Didn’t you notice there is a fire behind you?” I yelled as I ran to the kitchen.

Being a Junior Firefighter from years of kitchen related blazes, I quickly and calmly extinguished the flames.  Per charred popcorn protocol, I threw open the windows and slider to dispel the dark cloud enveloping the house.  Upon inspection, I realized that I had turned on the front burner that held the cookie sheet instead of the back burner that held the pot of water.

Always one to find a lesson in my numerous mistakes, I realized the following:

1. A metal cookie sheet will turn into silver lava under enough heat, but you cannot make jewelry from this substance.
2. Queen Hadlifah is disturbingly unaware of her surroundings when under the influence of the computer.
3. I am altogether too accustomed to fires in my kitchen.  Infernos should cause an increased heart rate.  With me, they do not.

Luckily, being on Weight Watchers, I don’t fry with oil.  I can only imagine the kind of damage I could do with that method of food preparation.  In the meantime, I think it’s time that I get Queen Hadlifah off the computer and into the kitchen.  For the love of combustion, she can certainly do no worse than me.

The Cobra

There’s nothing like sharing a Girl’s Night Out with Queen Hadlifah.  She’s an entertaining companion with a great sense of humor.  Unfortunately, being seven years old means she only speaks the truth.  Sometimes it works in my favor, like saying I’m the most beautiful woman in the world, and sometimes not so much.

Saturday night, we split a meal at a restaurant that included corn on the cob.  After I took a bite of the tasty yellow kernels, I held out the cob to offer her a taste.

“Wow, Mom!  Your jaw unhinged like a cobra when you took a bite of that corn!”

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again… that kid’s going up for adoption tomorrow.