Living with the Lords of Chaos

In the event that you are ever intimate with a person of the opposite sex and particular fluids are exchanged in particular ways, or if you have a medical procedure that duplicates such a fluid exchange, or if you discover a noisy basket on your doorstep, or if you are Angelina Jolie, then you might end up with one or more children.

This turn of events is not all it is cracked up to be.

I was reminded of this fact when I used the pen by the telephone in the kitchen to write down a number. At first, I thanked the Let-Me-Get-a-Pen God for the presence of that pen by the phone.

Normally in my house, the children have taken all the pens away from the one place in the house where you are guaranteed to need a pen and moved them to other locations, including beneath their beds, under the cushions in the couch, inside the vacuum cleaner canister or out to the garden. There are, of course, pencils by the phone, too, but the children have conveniently broken off all the points on those pencils.

So I was happy--no, thrilled--to find a pen by the phone. And this was no ordinary, practically-out-of-ink pen, but THE GOOD ONE. This was the one Mrs. Lefty usually keeps by our computer. It is Old Reliable. So I happily wrote out the telephone number I needed to remember and was about to put Old Reliable back in its place when...

...I discovered that my hands were covered in black ink.

I blame my children. They have the uncanny knack of making it appear as if their sole purpose in life is to create as much damage and chaos as physically possible. Whenever I am unfortunate enough to follow in their footsteps, I inevitably say to myself, “There is no way on earth they could have made a bigger mess.” Then I get to the next room and realize I was wrong. Everything they touch disappears. Everything they walk past collapses into a heap of debris.

Now I know you’re thinking, “Parenting. It’s all about parenting.” To that, I say, “Bite me.” You may also be thinking, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” To that, I say, “Shove it.”

I suspect that my real children were switched at birth, and some dastardly alien creatures left mutant doppelgangers in their places. My real kids (I’m looking at you, Lindsay Lohan) are living very different lives in some unknown place. They are getting straight A’s, are polite to their fake parents and keep their rooms clean.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Fun with Kids; Fun with Food

I love my kids!

I love the way they leave food out on the counter, like milk, butter, raw liver, jars of pig’s blood, so that it will turn rancid and attract hordes of insects, many of which have never before been described by science.

I love the way they leave plates of half-eaten food, grease, ketchup and other former food items in their bedrooms. I am confident that one day a cure for cancer will be found in the mold and fungus that grows beneath their beds. Also, I love the way when they leave a half-drunk glass of milk on their nightstand until it turns into a solid. It’s sort of like delicious flan, but with a kick!

I also love the way they smear food--peanut butter, jelly, butter, syrup--onto the outside of every food container in the house. What a wonderful tactile experience to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and to come away so covered in goo that it feels as if I have velcro hands. And there was that one time when the substance on the outside of the jelly jar was a strange orange-brown--definitely not jelly. It was so gross I could barely stand to lick it off my fingers.

Did I mention that I love they way they leave their spills out for someone else to step in, slip on and then clean up? There was that one time that I stubbed my toe on a rock hard three-day-old pile of macaroni and cheese dropped beneath the counter.

If I had known what great fun kids were, I would have had none!