The Time My Oven Caught Fire.

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Friday, my oven caught fire when I was at home alone with all three children. The house is fine and we are fine. I’m telling you this up front, so you have the option to just say, “Wow,” and move on with your day, or stick with me and hear the whole story.

It seems I am cursed with some kind of voodoo. Someone who hates me went to a voodoo-caster and said, “CURSE THIS BITCH. MAKE SURE THAT ANY TIME SHE HAS COMPANY COMING OVER, SHIT HAPPENS. NOT REAL BAD SHIT, LIKE I DON’T WANT ANYONE TO DIE. BUT MAKE SURE WHATEVER HAPPENS, IT’S SCARY AND EMOTIONALLY SCARRING FOR HER.”

I had some people coming over, so I went full speed from the time I got up, trying to kind of clean the house amid the chaos which we all know is a pointless endeavor. I also had to shower, make myself presentable, get the kids to take their naps and feed them, make them presentable, all while texting because that is how I roll. 

I wanted to make chocolate chip cookies because that’s my signature baked item. They are easy and delightful because they are comprised mostly of Butter-Flavored Crisco. So I had Asher napping and Maverick watching TV and was simultaneously feeding Pepper in her high chair and baking the cookies. I put the first pan of them in and they came out fine. I put the second pan in and a few minutes afterward realized that I smelled something weird. So I looked at the oven from where I was sitting and saw an orange glow. I got up to investigate and the whole damn thing was ABLAZE. 

I absolutely freaked out. I have no idea what I did or said. Pepper sat there staring at me with her big owl eyes like this …

 … while I opened the stove and removed the pan and threw a box of baking soda on the flames which did NOTHING. Meanwhile, Maverick came running into the kitchen asking what was going on. I started to panic and dumped a whole bag of flour on the flames and all that did was create a lot of black smoke. 

I did what made sense: I called Husband screaming about how I was about to call 911 because the oven was on fire. I then hung up on him and dialed 911 as I frantically threw water on top of the now-bigger fire … which also did nothing … then proceeded to rush the kids to the van and start the process of buckling them in, putting jackets and shoes on them because it was like 45 degrees outside.

I have to give him credit, Maverick was a very big help to me during this particular emergency. He was calm and helped with the little kids, who were understandably confused. Poor Asher got ripped from his room by his panicked mother who was still in pajamas. After they were safely in the van I started the out-of-body experience of trying to think of what I would need should the house go up in flames. I rushed to the back and threw on clothes, put on shoes, grabbed my backpack with diapers, etc. and got Pepper’s half-empty bottle, all the while thinking, OMG, the house is going to explode while I am back here putting workout clothes on because I am too embarrassed to be seen in my ratty pajamas.  

Yes, I realize it was dumb to take the time to change clothes. But I’ll tell you what, I looked pretty cute when the firemen showed up.



Husband got here right before the fire department and he ran in to see the fire which was starting to die out and then four firemen showed up and the fire was completely out by then. I apologized and they very nicely said “Don’t apologize!” but I felt like an idiot. The heating element itself is what was burning and it had cracked in two. I stood there in my not-embarrassing outfit and thanked myself for making sure I didn’t look like hell since I had pretty much lost my dignity with the use of my oven.

After they left, I got the kids out of the van and returned to the kitchen to see Husband standing there next to the pile of water and flour, which had turned into a gelatinous goo, eating cookies off the one good pan I’d made. It was at this point that I think it dawned on him that this was going to be It. This was going to be The Thing That Sent Harmony Over The Edge.

I came unglued and I faintly recall yelling, and then … I just checked out of the entire situation. I turned around and returned to feeding Pepper the rest of her lunch. The boys stared quietly from the living room. Husband quietly went to our room and stripped down, came into the kitchen, and cleaned everything up, all of it. I had to do nothing. It was such a huge, disgusting mess, but he took care of the entire situation and then wordlessly got dressed into his work clothes again when he was done. 

Clearly this was to atone for his sin of eating off the one good pan of cookies. 

Other than the house having an odd smell, there was really no sign that anything had happened by the time my guests arrived. My oven needs replacing, and since we rent, we will have to wait until the landlord gets around to it.

If you never understood why I joke so much about it being a miracle that we all make it through the day, THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. It’s also why I’m not bothering to make New Year’s resolutions this year, because I’m too busy doing other things like keeping us all alive.

A Season of Survival: Why I’m Not Making New Year’s Resolutions.

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My husband refuses to make New Year’s resolutions. I think he’s onto something.
I remember our first few New Year’s together – it kind of blew my mind that he refused to even discuss resolutions. He said he doesn’t like to box himself into a commitment of that kind. Yes, really. He seemed like such a REBEL. I liked that, so I married him.
Read the rest of my latest post for Baton Rouge Moms here!

The Day That Rocked.

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I just had the best birthday of my life. 

My birthday is on December 26th, which is kind of a crappy day to be born. No one, including me, feels like doing anything or eating anything. But since it’s my birthday we all feel compelled to CELEBRATE! even though everyone is bloated and exhausted from the previous day’s events. By this point in my life I have accepted the way things are and honestly as long as I have a cake that no one feels like eating, I’m happy. 

Cake.

The reason why I have to have a cake is because my mother was always very sensitive about separating my birthday from Christmas and she always made sure I had a birthday cake. No matter where we were, I had cake. We traveled all over the place when I was growing up: I turned 6 in Gaitlinburg, 13 in San Antonio, 16 in New York City. And my mother always made sure I had cake. Now that I have a family of my own, she has started calling Husband and making sure one of them is going to make me one. I don’t know if he realizes how sad I would be if I didn’t have a cake. I think there may have been a few birthdays since we got married that I didn’t have one, and I have pretty much just blocked them out.

Turning 34.

I do not care about turning 34. It’s not a milestone birthday and I feel young so it doesn’t bother me that I’m officially, I suppose, in my “mid-thirties.” Bring it. I love being in my 30’s. I have found this time in my life to be extremely liberating. Over time I have learned how to unapologetically embrace all the things and the people that truly make me happy.

This year, I really don’t know what got into everyone, but it was amazing. I FEEL LIKE I SHOULD TALK IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT WAS SO AWESOME. ON CHRISTMAS EVE (okay, I’ll stop talking in all caps only because it’s hard to read, not because what I am about to tell you isn’t superbly exciting), Husband surprised me with a very thoughtful card that I plan to laminate and look at when he starts to piss me off. It basically said I am so amazing that nothing he saw in the stores was good enough. Well, I won’t argue with him there, unless he went to Tiffany, in which case I would think he could manage to find something that would work. 

Anyway, what he wanted to give me was time. Time to myself and time to relax.

Then he explained that he got his mom to take the kids for the entire day (bless her heart … wait, no, that deserves all caps … BLESS HER HEART) and he was sending me to a spa for six hours while a cleaning crew deep-cleaned my house. 

Wait, What?

I remember him talking and my mouth falling open at the “all day with no kids” part, and then when he said I was going to the spa for six hours, roughly the same number of hours I sleep at night, I think I went into some kind of shock, and then the thing about the cleaning service just sent me over the edge … which is when I started this weird medley of laughing and crying. He also gave me a nice bottle of wine in my stocking, bringing me to the conclusion that I pretty much won Christmas.

My parents delivered a homemade cake to me on the morning of my birthday. I got a new hat. I breakfasted with an old friend. I had a few mimosas and a lady named Olga scrubbed my whole body with exfoliant. I could go ON AND ON, BECAUSE OMG IT WAS SO LUXURIOUS AND AMAZING AND THEN I CAME HOME TO A HOUSE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN CLEANER. EVER. 

Documentation. 

When I worked for State Farm as a claims adjuster we always asked for “documentation” to prove that an event actually happened. So … here’s mine.

New hat + my kids.
A king cake really can fix a lot of problems. Really. This is me with my dear old friend Kari.
Bliss.
My fingernails are painted. That NEVER HAPPENS. 

In Conclusion … 

I wrote this so I can remember The Day That Rocked.

We’re not a super mushy couple, but Husband is absolutely the air that I breathe. Not just because he did this for me, but because he just knew what I needed. All of the times that I feel like he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t understand my feelings … well, he doesn’t. Not really. But when it comes down to it, he knows me better than I know myself sometimes. 

Also, after 10 years of holidays together, he has learned not to say a word about my hot pink tights.


Christmas Eve.

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I should be taking a shower right now, but I have to get this out before I can move on with my day.

My oldest child is … out-of-the-box. Some people call him a firecracker, a character, balls-to-the-wall, over-the-top, or they will just say, “Wow — he’s something else.” 

He will yell at me from the back of our van, “Hurry UP Mommy! I’m growing a beard back here!” He will strip down to his underwear and yell, “HAVE I GOT A SHOW FOR YOU!” He’s always yelling, because he has one volume and that is loud.

He says things for shock value and waits for a reaction. He talks over everyone else. He thinks he knows more than any adult out there, he’s a backseat driver and a boss-around-er and knows the lyrics to a lot of my favorite top 40 songs. Then he changes the lyrics to make the song applicable to whatever is happening around him.

 
It takes time to see what I’m talking about, because generally he is very mannerly and well-behaved around people he doesn’t know well. Unless there is a stage nearby, and then all bets are off because my Maverick hearts a stage.

He is many, many things for a 5-year-old boy. I can already see how complicated of a person he is, all the different fabrics weaving together to make up his hilarious and infuriating personality. I am grateful that he is our firstborn, I am grateful that he gives me stories to tell, and I am grateful that he is forgiving because I often feel like I’m not very good at mothering him.


Maverick has been terrible the past few days. I mean straight up BAD, and I don’t like to use that word to describe my children. I spent a lot of time thinking about what the problem might be. Was he tired? Was he getting sick? I couldn’t spend long thinking about it before he was bashing his little brother over the head again or screaming “NO!!“ at me when I asked him to do something. Trying to prepare for Christmas with a houseful of kids, one of whom is acting like an outright tyrant, sucked. 

To make a long and painful story short, I reached rock bottom of motherhood as we all do from time to time when we completely lose our shit and scare the children. I went to my bathroom to calm down and thought about how we couldn’t keep doing this. It wasn’t working, I didn’t know what was wrong with my kid, but I had figure out how to make it stop because I am the adult and that is my job.

I went in the kitchen and I pulled him onto my lap and just sat in silence hugging him. His body melted into mine like he had been waiting for that hug for his entire life. He needed THAT. He needed me to look at him and tell him how much I love him and how important he is to me. Him, Maverick. Not “all of you” or “you and your brother and sister.” Just him.

And before you judge me for not doing that sooner, which is what I would have wondered two or three kids ago — why doesn’t this chick think of things like hugging her kids when they are upset?! — let me point out that when you’re in survival mode things don’t occur to you like they would if you were in a normal state. So unless you want to come over here and get the pee smell out of my guest bathroom, SHUT IT.

I don’t yet understand the inner workings of Maverick’s mind and I haven’t mastered the art of meeting his needs before we go on a 5-day bender of absolute hell … but I do know this. My children do not need more toys. They don’t need their every whim to be met on Christmas morning. My children need me to hug them and take the time to let them know that they are important. I am ashamed that I have been too wrapped up in baking cookies and making lists to give my child the reassurance that he needed for whatever reason.

Tomorrow morning, Maverick will get the spaceship that he has been wanting for the past two years. But more importantly, he will get lots and lots of hugs.

Counting Down.

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You know what makes me feel grumpy? Burpees. I’m not sure if I ever want to do one again in my life, also, I’m fairly certain this is exactly the look I had on my face the whole time. Pure irritation.

If you don’t know what a burpee is, here is the Wikipedia definition:

The burpee, also known as the squat thrust, is a full body exercise used in strength training and as an aerobic exercise. It is performed in four steps, and was originally known as a “four-count Burpee”:

  1. Begin in a standing position.
  2. Drop into a squat position with your hands on the ground. (count 1)
  3. Kick your feet back, while keeping your arms extended. (count 2)
  4. Immediately return your feet to the squat position. (count 3)
  5. Stand up from the squat position (count 4) [1]

In short, it’s like a lethal combination of a push-up and a squat and they make you want to die, but dying is not an option because then you would be lying on the floor in someone else’s way. Burpees lock you in workout purgatory, much like the Gravity machine. Part of the beauty of taking classes is that I don’t stop when I’d really like to because the peer pressure keeps me going. If the woman next to me who is clearly much older than I am can do it, I CAN TOO. 

While I was busy being tortured, here is what Pepper was doing:

I love people who enjoy working in nurseries. I can’t imagine doing it. I want to hug them all, each one, but I’m always too sweaty so I just say thank you and leave.

Christmas is in like 4 days and I am completely unprepared, but I have just accepted it as my truth for this year. We’re forging ahead anyway as if we own Christmas, because that is how we roll in this house. We’re nothing if not self confident. People are coming to my house to see our dead tree, sit on our disgusting couches and watch our children tear into presents, and hopefully we will all be so charming that no one will notice that we are in completely over our heads.

Yeah, right.  

I’ve already decided that my motto for 2014 will be Low Expectations. I got this idea from a friend who posted something recently on Facebook, and I’m totally stealing it. For once this family is ahead of the game on something because we have totally mastered the skill of low expectations.