Sunday, July 24, 2016

Just Wait A Martha Minute

I call a timeout.  I'm flipping through a magazine and there is modern-day Superwoman with her perfectly pressed clothing and her pitcher of orange juice.  The kids, so evenly spaced they look like a picket fence surround the table beaming and clearly enthralled with whatever masterpeice she is about to put down on the table.  But wait, let's not be sexist or parentist, or whatever...Dad is actually friskily trotting to the table with a platter of pancakes and a crstal decanter of syrup, (probably infused with some little known herb that creates perfect children is my guess).  But here is where the actual call of "y una mierda!" comes into play....There is a vase of flowers in the middle of the table.  Nope.  I may be led to believe you got up at the crack of dawn to put together a breakfast buffet for your impeccable family and ironed your clothing just to dish up their nutritious meal, but I don't for one Martha Minute believe the flowers sat there unmolested.  Pod people!  Robots perhaps.  But not children.

Now contrast this with my reality.  I have items of clothing I have not worn in TWO YEARS because I cannot iron them.  Despite a recent statement implying  that it was assumed I don't own an iron, I do own one.  I know where it is.  I just haven't got the five minutes it takes to do it.  Okay so my wardrobe is not all that natty lately.  I can live with that.  If I'm coming to your wedding, I will drug the children and iron.

The kids in my house are too far apart to like each other all the time, and too close together to be helpful to one another.  The only pickets are in our backyard and even those are poorly spaced.  Unless there is rum in the banana bread, they are never beaming with anticipatory glee as meal time descends.  Two often look like they are preparing to be waterboarded, and one is actually gagging like a cast member on Survivor.

And this morning, in the span of time it took to take muffins, Mr. Unscripted disappeared next door to cut down a tree.  Using the car.  Yup, you read that right.  The car that I get grief for parking too close to shopping carts and cart corrals is being used as a tether point for a tree in the process of being less upright and more "relaxed and in repose" as we speak.  So there is no frisky prep of breakfast  "a Deux" this morning in this household.  And those beaming children of mine?  Well , they managed to both encrust themselves in mud while being "supervised" outdoors, as well as in one case, befoul themselves.  Glory be!  

Pass that juice Darling won't you?  And be a dear and dabble a little spirits in there for me?

And back to the flowers.  When was the last time flowers sat anywhere in my house undisturbed? I hearken back to ten years ago.  In the meantime, any and all flowers have been part of the collateral damage.  Within seconds of their landing, someone has pulled out their favorite, tried to add more water, or move it to another location, (often the edge of the table or as close to an important document as possible.) 

And the final quote of the magazine interview reeled me back in..."I just like to use unconventional colors to make my room pop.  I like the unusual and unexpected."   Me too sister.  Me too.  So please, try not to sit on the most recent installment of Mount Washmore in the wingback, we're going for avante garde.  And the Rorschach  that is my dining room rug?  That is my nod to the unconventional...dinner and a diagnosis.  And finally, the flowers?  I'm not even bothering with faux floral at this point.  Come with me to my phone, I'll show you a picture of some flowers that I saw once on a glorious three hour trip without my children.  Try to ignore my wrinkled and out of date clothing.



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