I was so wiped out last night after I got
home, we just had grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. I put a single slice of
salami on Alesia’s sandwich and when she bit into it she made a face. “I don’t
want salmon on here!” she exclaimed.
She gets the word “salmon” mixed up with the
word “salami.”
I just calmly said “There is no fish on your
sandwich.”
“Mo-om! You know what I mean!” she said.
“Use your words, honey.” I replied calmly.
“Salmami! Whatever. I didn’t want it on my
sandwich!” she finally replied.
I would have been more sympathetic, if we
hadn’t discussed the words “salami” and “salmon” within the past 24 hours.
I used sliced provolone in all the
sandwiches. We have amassed 3 packages of provolone. Are we addicts?? No. It
has been on sale at Kroger. I buy whatever sliced cheese is on sale, except
Swiss. Nobody in the house like Swiss except Mother. It’s safe from predators
at my house, and she can always count on finding it in the fridge, unlike, say,
provolone or muenster.
Alesia likes provolone. A lot. She doesn’t
like pronouncing it – that took a while, that multi-syllabic Italian word – but
she likes it.
My mother had a craving for cherry pie when
we were buying groceries Sunday, so we baked a Mrs. Smith’s cherry pie last
night. To my astonishment, Alesia ate a piece. She usually doesn’t like fruit
pie of any sort. Progress has been made. Or maybe she just added enough Cool
Whip that the pie was barely tasteable.
Our movie last night was My Fair Lady, one
of my favorite movies ever. Michael played Nintendo the entire time, except
when he was eating his cherry pie. We only got halfway through it. Tonight he
will half watch it and half play WWF Smackdown on his Nintendo. I bet $5 though
that tomorrow he will be quoting back the one semi-naughty line from the film,
when Eliza is watching the horse race and hollers “C’mon Dover, move yer
bloomin’ arse!” We watched that part tonight.
Alesia reminds me a bit of Eliza. She
giggled uncontrollably during the scene where the maids pull of Eliza’s clothes
and try to get her into the bath. I have seen the movie so many times I don't know where the laughs are, but Alesia laughed a lot. It was great to see her enjoy it.
When Alesia tries to imitate Eliza’s Cockney accent, it’s so funny – she sounds southern.
I read Pioneer Woman's website every day, and I
confess, I am a PW junkie. I never miss a day. Today’s personal section, called Confessions , was about PW getting really dirty last Sunday. I thought it was
hilarious. You may or may not agree.
The most dirty I have ever been was when I
was in high school and decided one Saturday to bathe all 3 of the dogs we had,
who had been sprayed by a skunk. I put on a bathing suit and went to work,
pulling each dog into the tub. Soap only made it worse. Club soda didn’t work.
Tomato juice didn’t work. Trying to pour tomato juice over a wriggly 80 lb.
mutt dog with an attitude is an experience I hope never to repeat.
Then I went to a rehearsal for a play. None
of the other actors would go near me. I had showered. I thought I smelled OK. I
was so wrong. I smelled like wet-skunky-tomato-dog. Any one of those smells
isn’t pleasant, but the four together were like a nuclear warhead of stink, and
I couldn’t disguise it with Dial soap. The director made me go home.
Ah, the humiliation. Time has dulled the
memory only a bit. We were driving through the mountains the other day and
accidentally rolled over a dead skunk, and the aroma filled my nostrils, which
was not a happy experience.
I have suffered through days when I simply
forgot deodorant, days of running around downtown in 100 degree heat, while
wearing pantyhose and heels, days of navigating foreign airports while pressed
against people with stinky BO, days of moving house in summer heat, etc. I have
been pooped on, peed on, and thrown up on - and that was just by Coco.
A toddler once peed on me. I was in college, and she was the younger sister of
my Little Sister. She was adorable. I took her to the movie with us and she fell asleep and wet
me. Fortunately I was wearing overalls. After the movie, she woke up, look down
at me, and screamed “I peed on Big Sister!!” Everyone in the theatre looked, which I thought was sort of amusing. Keisha, the toddler's sister, was horrified.
When my mother fell a few years ago and
broke both shoulders, I had to clean up an alarmingly large pool of blood in
our laundry room, and the smell of the blood almost made me gag. I don’t mind
blood, but I don’t like to smell large amounts of it.
Neither of my kids has ever thrown up or
peed on me, for which I am eternally grateful. There are huge advantages to
becoming a mom to older kids who don’t wear diapers…
Actually, cleaning up poop and pee is no big
deal to me. I am really not squeamish. I compiled a list of worse things.
My Top Ten Things Worse Than Cleaning Up
Poop or Pee
10. Spending an evening
with one of my past boyfriends.
9. Washing skunk
smell off of large dogs.
8. Going to the Krystal. [I hate the smell]
7. Going for a hike
anywhere.
6. Taking my
kids to Whitewater [water park].
5. Watching TV
all afternoon.
4. Eating
broccoli.
3. Smelling
any of these things cooking all afternoon in my house: collards, turnip greens,
kale, broccoli.
2. Getting a
tattoo.
And the #1 thing worse than cleaning up poop
or pee [drumroll please!]
1. Being president
of the United States at this moment in history!!
Yes, I would rather stick knitting needles
in my eyes, or set my hair on fire, than have to deal with the mess our country
is in at the moment. Whether you voted for him or not, you should all be
praying President Obama makes good decisions and gets us out of this mess. I
bet he would rather clean up poop or pee than deal with Congress any day. Far
less stink involved in the former.
BOOK UPDATE
I have seen the cover for the new book, now
entitled Adopting Alesia: The Crusade for My Russian Daughter. It’s so exciting
to see that. I think I will be able to really start marketing it once the cover
design is finished and it’s ready to roll off the presses. Hopefully that will
be in the next couple of months. I am waiting on several other writers to
finish reading the manuscript and give me endorsements.
Also, next month the anthology Call Me
Okaasan will come out, with my essay in it, which is very exciting. This
is a link to editor Suzanne Kamata’s blog, Gaijin Mama, which I read every day.
Suzanne, an American, is married to a Japanese man and lives in Japan. She is
an expert on multi-cultural mothering. You can pre-order the book now. Or you can wait and get an autographed copy from me in May. I will post more about it.
