A Little Advice, or, Making Friends with the Fridge

As you know, here at Somethin' Impractical I'm here to help. In the field of domesticity, you are not alone. Right there about a half-step ahead of you I am holding you hand, leading you toward the ever-elusive goal of well-adjusted children and an ordered home.

With my bumbling steps to follow, how could you ever get lost?

(Please ignore that white-tipped cane. I only use it for balance. Those? Oh, those are just the three mice I picked up along the way. We seemed to have a lot in common.)

With this in mind, please welcome Important Piece of Domestic Advice Number 2:

HAVE THE COMPLETE CONTENTS OF YOUR REFRIGERATOR, FREEZER AND PANTRY MEMORIZED AND AVAILABLE FOR INSTANT RECALL.

To illustrate, I offer the following real life situation:

After starting the laundry, going to church, picking up donuts, helping HC with history homework for 2 hours, driving HC to Godspell rehearsal, grocery shopping, dropping off the groceries, changing the laundry, starting dinner, picking up HC, putting dinner on the table for me and the kids, delivering P's dinner to his office (since it's a deadline night), helping HC on history homework for another hour, cleaning up the dishes, and helping HC with math homework I retreated into the laundry room for a quick respite.

(So, what do you watch while doing the laundry? Soap operas, of course.)

It's warm in there after the dryer's been chugging away all day. The piles of freshly folded towels and sheets form a welcoming backdrop of order on the stage of the very frazzled one-woman show that is my life.

(Side note: When I was a teenager I babysat for a mad woman. No really, she was crazy. You can ask my Mom. Anyway, she once told me that she really liked doing laundry because it was "like instant gratification." I wasn't even an English-Philosophy-double-major at that point and I still had the fleeting thought, "Is it like instant gratification? Or is it instant gratification?" Either way, it was total hogwash because there is NOTHING instant about laundry.

It. Takes. All. Friggin. Day.

At the time I thought it was nice that while most people gripe about piles of laundry to do she had this pleasant outlook on the whole situation. Now, I just remember that she was crazynuts.)

So anyway, there I was deep in my room with padded walls (I have floor to ceiling shelves, you see, on which I stack my cleans) when a hollering voice broke in from upstairs.

"Llama...? Lllllaaaaaammmaaaa?"

Don't be confused. I am not a four legged creature. I am, however, Llama-Llama-the-Step-Mama.

I sighed deeply, and eventually hollered back. "Yes?"

"What should I have for luuuuunch?"

"Um, I don't know HC. That's your job."

"I know, but I don't know."

See, this is a problem. "I know, but I don't know," is a line that in my family comes in many forms, such as "my brain won't work" and "wauuuuugh". That last one is a variation on a theme of non-english that my family speaks to itself and each other. Why use words when you could just grunt and moan? It's not like any of us are writers or anything.

Translation: Please be my crutch for this decision, as I'm too lazy to deal with it myself.

"Have a sandwich."

"I can't find any lunchmeat."

"It's in there."

"I can't find it."

This is another problem. My choices are to either stop folding the warm soft laundry, exit my womb of cleanliness and order, make use of my whimpering quadriceps to climb the stairs and find the ham, or not move, take a deep breath, and keep hollering. Guess which one I chose?

"How about a refried bean quesadilla?"

(make yourself a dang quesadiLLa!)*

"Do we have any tortillas?"

"We have that flatbread at on the bottom shelf. It'll work."

"Do we have any cheese?"

"Is it cheap? I don't know, what do you mean?!"

"NO I SAID DO WE HAVE ANY CHEESE?"

"Oh. Yeah. We do."

"Well I don't really wanna quesadilla."

"How about some ribs?" (still hollering through the floor)

"Noooo...." (This is drug out more as a verbal wallow than out of disgust. She likes the ribs.)

"We have some fried chicken."

"Llaammmaaa. I don't know what I want."

"Make some tuna salad." (still hollering)

"Ugh."

"There are some chicken nuggets in the freezer."

"Yessss! Chicken nugggetsssssssss!"


And finally, as the last pair of socks was being thrown in the to-be-matched-later basket, my mission was complete: crisis averted, child fed, family lives to see another day.

This time, anyway.



*(if you don't get that reference, see here. If you do get that reference and want to watch it 500 times anyway, click there too.)