Super Hero

The other day J was playing super hero.  He doesn’t do this all that often.  He usually pretends to be some bad guy or other, mostly due to the fact that the girls can’t get him to follow any of their pretend play edicts.  They realize that he’s going to run wild and chase them no matter what, so they might as well incorporate it into the game.  They’re very wise in that respect.

But the other day, the girls were still in school, and so J was free to follow his imagination into new territories.  He donned his green cape and pleaded that I stick a long paper streamer down the back of his shorts.  I swear--this was ALL his idea.  He began running in circles around the coffee table, allowing his lovely, and very long tail to flutter after him.  “I’m a super hero piggy-butt!” he announced enthusiastically.

Since I was unfamiliar with that particular super hero, I asked him if he had a super power.  “Yep.  Pichu.  Pichu,” he replied while opening his hands wide in front of his face.  “This makes everyone think I’m a robot.  Also, I can fly.”  And after a few more laps around the table, he started making a chu, chu sound accompanied by a finger slicing motion.  When asked what that did, he said, “That makes me cut pears.”

Ok, I may not be much of a super hero buff, but this combination of powers struck me as odd.  I totally get the flying power.  That would be downright useful.  I can even imagine a few scenarios where the ability to make people think you were a robot would come in handy.  I mean, who wants to mess with the terminator, or a cylon?  But I’m a little stumped when it comes to pear slicing.  And why in the world would a flying, faux robot pig need to slice pears in the first place?

Milk & Cookies

I am of the persuasion that warm cookies and cold milk are one of those heavenly combinations that just belong together.  It’s a combination I crave more often than I should.  I’m always coming up with reasons to make chocolate chip cookies--I know that even if the cookies are technically meant for someone else, there will always be a few for me to enjoy.  Someone has to taste test the batch, after all, just to make sure they’re not too horrible to give away.

This was one of those days where I had thought up an excuse, er . . . reason, to make cookies for someone.  It started out like any other day with the chaos of the morning routine, the scramble to get three kids ready and to school on time.  Once that feat was accomplished, I had to jet out and do some errands, which included my multi-weekly run to the store for milk.  We are forever running out, and I couldn’t possibly allow myself to run out of milk on a day where I would be baking chocolate chip cookies.

We arrived back home with the groceries, my kindergartener and toddler in tow.  After coming inside and fixing lunch for them, I realized I had left the groceries in the back of the car.  I glanced at my kids to see if they would remain occupied while I unloaded them.  The oldest was painstakingly picking every raisin out of his bagel, and playing a game where they chased each other around his plate.  Yeah, he’d be busy for a while.  The toddler, sitting securely in her high chair, had taken her PB & J apart and was rubbing the sticky sides all over her tray, creating a very interesting art project.  Yep, she should be fine, too.

As I was putting the groceries away, I misgauged the length of my counter and a gallon of milk went crashing down, spreading a horrible white puddle all over the floor.  After exclaiming and moaning and jumping up and down in frustration, I asked of no one in particular, “Why does this keep happening to me?”  See, I’ve spent most of my life being able to avoid spilling whole gallons of milk.  Well, until recently that is.  Over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve managed to drop three gallons of milk.  One in the driveway, and two in my kitchen.  So I was wondering what gives.  My four-year-old son matter of factly replied, “Maybe you’re not strong enough and you should let Daddy do it.”  To him, Daddy has superhuman abilities in almost every area.  If there’s ever anything I can’t (or won’t) do, his response is always that he’ll ask Daddy.  I told my son that that’s a great idea and that he should tell Daddy to take over the grocery shopping.  Fine by me.  The only thing I’ll miss is occasionally buying treats that I don’t have to share with anyone.

My dog took this opportunity to add a little calcium to his diet by licking up as much milk as possible from the floor before I shooed him away.  I guess he was thirsty, or maybe he was just trying to help me.  Once he was safely out of the room, I grudgingly cleaned up the remaining milk puddle and wiped off the thousands of milk spots from the cabinets.  The last task in cleaning up my mess was to take the broken milk bottle to the recycling container in the garage.  As the door was swinging shut behind me, a screw popped out of the door latch and fell to the floor.  I’m not sure why this struck me as particularly funny, but I started laughing.  Perfect, just perfect, I thought.  That was the moment I decided to start a blog. If I can’t examine these moments and find humor in them, I’m afraid they just might drive me crazy.

To add insult to injury, later in the day the parsley fell into my glass of water, I spilled baby tomatoes all over, and I slammed my finger in the door.  But the very worst thing that happened that day was that I had to use wheat flour to make the cookies because that’s what was in my canister. Wheat flour!  Needless to say, they didn’t quite hit the spot.  Though my dog didn’t seem to mind since he stole some off the table.  Maybe he likes milk and cookies as much as I do.