Defcon 4
I don’t know what that means in real life–I vaguely think it refers to an all-out emergency situation. Regardless, that’s how I’m using the term. As I gear up for back-to-back events things have gotten to insanity–thus comic–situation at my house.
It all begins with our back-up nanny–for those of you who haven’t been reading that’s Mary Poppins. In fact she factors heavily into this tale. For number one, my kiddles have listened to the cd so many times they can now quote WORD FOR WORD the song for “The Perfect Nanny”…If you want this choice position, have a cheery disposition…nothing’s funnier than a 2 year old saying “If you won’t scold or dominate us” with an English accent on the “dominate us”. Well, nothing’s funnier except the insanity of our house.
Because number two Mary Poppins fact is that “A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down”. The other day, I woke up and heard my tiara-wearing 4 year old rustling back and forth downstairs. I knew my sister (who has been staying with us and in the hierarchy of nannies is between my actual babysitter and Mary–Mary’s cheerier, but my sister has the advantage of actual being a live person) was downstairs with her so no worries. I was concentrating on getting the twins dressed and so ignored Princess One. Till Erin walked out of her room and I said “What WHAT! I thought you were downstairs”.
We knew we were in for some trouble and sure enough Princess Tiara delivered. We came down and there was vinegar, oil, balsamic, soy sauce, etc spread from here to there. And all mixed up with “a spoonful of palmolive”. In the kid mixer. And then handily packed into two pans and stuck into the EZ Bake. Which I picked up to find a full complement of oil dripping down onto my shoe. Luckily it didn’t occur to our happy chef to plug the oven in as we would have all likely been blown to kingdom come; she raised an unholy fuss as I unceremoniously dumped the offending (and, I know, already recalled) EZ Bake into the outside trash.
Upon further pressing America’s favorite four year old chef fessed up that she was attempting to concoct “A Spoonful of Sugar” to help her medicine go down.
So as I was relating this story to Grandma, who from 1000 miles away finds all these stories hilarious and endearing, I had to HANG up due to another breaking calamity–wherein the washer was shooting more water than Old Faithful across my laundry room, kitchen, what have you. In a house built of normal materials this would have been a simple clean up; our house, however, is constructed as near as I can tell of powdered sugar held together by filament. So, of course the water instantly drained through into the basement, onto all the toys, etc etc. Which we went down to clean up, but only after we had to stick our hands down the in-sink-er-ator to pull out the artichoke threads. Aunt-Mary-Poppins-Want-to-be had enjoyed an artichoke the size of one of my twins at dinner the night prior, to the disgust of children and husband, and we unknowingly stuffed the old leaves down the sink. “Never put an artichoke down the sink” Grandma advised, a full 12 hours late.
So is it weird that NONE of this even phased me? That I took it all in stride and just kept on going? I truly feel things have spun so far out of my grasp that I just am holding on for the ride…