Why The Face?

I have just had the weirdest couple of hours. Seriously, if I wasn't hopped up on Dr. Pepper (bless you, weird little store in the mall full of overseas delights) I would declare it the worst afternoon ever but the caffeine has been a good friend today. I don't even drink Dr. Pepper in America but because they have it in one tiny store I get excited.

Went to the mall where I got said Dr. Pepper & when I got home I was feeling mighty Super Mommish so I thought to myself, "Hey self, what say you to finally organizing that kitchen cabinet? And we should totally make some fried rice for dinner because Marcel would like that." So Super Mom plops Super Son into his highchair and plops some Super Josh Pyke onto the iPod speakers & up up & away we go. Yes, I'm stopping the Super stuff now - it got old surprisingly fast.

I gave Ben a snack, popped some rice on to cook & get a load of laundry to wash just to make me even more awesome. Around the time I opened the washing machine & saw a load of laundry that had apparently been sitting in there wet for a few days (I shall not point finger, I shall not point fingers...), Ben had thrown his snack on the floor & started whiiining. Fine, I can handle this. Start washing wet laundry again, try another snack for the boy who has no need for food, still dancing to the music. Ben throws new snack down along with the toys I've given him & starts throwing a fit. I free him from the highchair to let him run around & start organizing the closet. He is smart enough to know when I am distracted so he starts taking his toys over to his favorite container of mystery, the trash can. With my keen eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head vision, which every mother receives before they discharge us from the maternity ward, I whirl around to stop him & throw the toy across the room. Normally this is an excellent distraction for him and he chases it but today it was a toy that clattered loudly & he melted down at the noise so I scooped him up to comfort him. All this time I am holding a glass jar that I keep our spaghetti in & somehow I bump it every so slightly on our granite countertop & the jar shatters into a trillion gazillion tiny shards, showering both of us in the process & adding to the filthy kitchen, still unorganized cabinet, still dirty laundry, toys still scattered everywhere & still uncooked dinner.

Soooo, I rush Ben out of the room to change him out of his glass-littered clothes & figure what they hay, I'll change his diaper too. Put him down, no diapers, pick him up, go down the hall, get the diapers, put him down, change diaper, change clothes, put clothes in hamper, devise elaborate wall of chairs to keep him out of the glassy kitchen because we don't have one of those handy gates. Well, we had one but our trip to the mall today was to actually return it because it didn't fit. Would have been handy but apparently my foreseeing disaster vision hasn't been switched on yet.

Climb over chair wall, stretching my groin muscles to their limits, realize I still have rice cooking. Rice is now sticking to the bottom of pan but that's okay because I always make 17 times more rice than ever could be needed so most of it is okay but getting dry while still crunchy (I am obviously an excellent cook) so I add some water. Then clean up the glass slowly & carefully but all the while knowing Marcel will walk into the kitchen & immediately zero in on some humongous shard that I overlooked. Then he'll turn around slowly with it in his hand & sunglasses will magically appear on his head just so he can pull them down & look over them a la Horatio on CSI: Miami & we all know that's a look of serious disappointment. *sigh*

So anyway, by the time I finish with the glass the rice on top is now gluggy and the bottom is burnt. Whatever, I'm going to fry it so that I'm willing to accept defeat on that one. Yeah, I'm fine with screwing up literally the easiest thing there is to do in the kitchen. The old load of laundry is done washing & thankfully doesn't have that lovely mildewy smell anymore so I take it to the drier. I'm not sure if I ever explained our weird little house but our drier is in the garage & our washer is in the kitchen because the people who lived here before us were British & also didn't believe in driers so only put a washer in. Fair enough, I don't mind it all. But as I took the laundry out, I received proof that this wasn't just a weird afternoon - it was obviously the doing of God himself or one of his cronies. It was a perfectly sunny day today but as I stepped out the door I thought I saw some sprinkles hit the pool, which could not be possible then when I took my very first step down off the covered porch, the sky burst open & it started POURING rain. So I scampered into the garage where another mysterious load of laundry was waiting for me in the drier (luckily, completely dry) so I switched everything out. Back into the house, pouring rain stops immediately. Of course it does.

So now I sit on the couch with 3 loads of laundry that need drying, fetching or folding, a crap pot of rice, tons of dirty dishes, a kitchen cabinet that has been so hastily organized that some shelves are practically empty while one is overflowing & a floor that looks okay to me but Marcel will think it's sparkling like the time Tobias stole George Michael's diamond cream to use as camouflage. Yes, I talk about TV characters as if they are real friends of mine. And I would post pictures of these TV characters but I've just visited Google Images & it won't let me save pictures as picture files!!! WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE HATE ME???

And since all of this has been going on, Ben has been intermittently shouting "Daaaaa, DAAAA!" & I'm choosing to assume that means something else but in all actuality, he can probably tell that I'm only hanging on by a what's left of my Dr. Pepper caffeine boost & is hoping if he yells loudly enough Marcel will swoop in & save him from the insanity.

I will update this if I remember anything else because I think a lot more happened than I care to remember at the moment. I am calming down but now need to actually make the fried rice. Then we'll get Ben to bed, eat, then I'll go to the gym for my hour of peace where I will myself not to sing along with my iPod (I challenge you to find a better treadmill song than Justin Timberlake's Senorita by the way) & tell myself that people are looking at me because I look hot on the weight machines not because I may or may not be sitting in them backwards.

How was your day, by the way?