Anybody get the license plate?!?!

Well, here’s the Surprise of the Century™: it has been a wild and also crazy week at Chez de la Chaos.

Oh, you want to know how crazy? You are asking yourself, “Gee, I wonder just how crazy it could possibly have been?”

For your viewing pleasure horror, please find below what I walked into this morning down in my kitchen:



Did aliens beam these people away from their meals before they could take their plates to the sink? I mean, it’s not like I ask a lot of the little people amongst us, gracious no, it just seems to me that the instruction, given at least ninety-bazillion times per day, to ‘take your plate to the sink when you’re done’ shouldn’t be THAT hard to remember, and honestly I’m starting to wonder if they have MENTAL DEFICIENCIES or something…



Oh. I see. The counter was a bit…occupied…



Aaaaand the sink is completely (over) full, gotcha



OHMYDAWG, what on earth?!



Even the cooktop is not sacred…(note empty milk jug!)



Clean, or dirty? Hmm…

So then I made this. You may not be able to tell from the picture, but this is not a mocha or a latte. It is regular old coffee with non-dairy creamer which I bought during the Eisenhower administration (OK, not really) (but darned close).



WHY, you may ask – oh yes, you might ask – would a woman who is so passionate about having her cocoa-powder-dark-chocolate-and-by-dark-I-mean-almost-toe-curling-dark-chocolate mocha each and every morning RAIN OR SHINE, RICH OR POOR, BETTER OR WORSE, EVEN IF HER DOCTOR JUST WARNED HER NOT TO DO SO, be drinking such a thing? A woman who, when given plain coffee doesn’t spit in it by any means but who will put nice fresh milk into it, not powdered milk-like substance which is actually utterly lacking in dairy? It being almost (almost) an affront to God and Nature and all things sacred in the world?

Because.
There.
Is.
No.
Milk.

I know. The horror of it about knocked me over, too. No milk.

But the carnage is not limited to just milk. Oh no.

On Monday, I had five (5) boxes of Capri Sun drinks, a gallon of apple juice, a quart of lemonade, two (2) quarts of cranberry juice, a quart of orange juice, THREE GALLONS of milk, twelve cans of diet Pepsi and about a dozen boxes of apple juice in my larder. You know, “plenty”.

Now, we have The Boy Who Is Staying With Us (hereinafter referred to as The Boy, because my fingers are getting tired), who combines picky eating/drinking with a black hole somewhere near his stomach that can take in astonishing quantities of the few things he will eat/drink, and then a friend came over with her two daughters (likewise suffering from black hole stomach syndrome) Tuesday for a few hours of going “BLAH! Yadda yadda yadda OH NO WAY blah blah blah OH I KNOW AND ALSO? Kitchita-kitchita-kitchita talka-talka-talk!!”

We turned the kids loose and nodded vaguely when they would come skittering into the room by ones, twos and threes to ask if they could have a(nother) snack or drink or what-have-you. We were busy gossiping and didn’t hesitate even a moment to say, “Waitasecond, how many of those have you had?!”

By the time we were waving goodbye to them, the five boxes of Capri Sun (which is fifty (50) pouches) had dwindled to only two pouches, all the apple juice boxes were gone, I was down to a little less than two gallons of milk, the lemonade and most of the cranberry juice was gone, the orange juice was likewise history.

By nightfall, the last two Capri Suns were gone, along with all but one gallon of milk and the gallon of regular old (diluted, which is why the boxes went first) apple juice. And also? The snack box, which I keep full of baggies of crackers, 100 calorie granola bars (those, uh, are supposed to be for ME, hello!), fruit snacks and so forth, looked like a drought-afflicted reservoir.

Also? There were wrappers and baggies strewn from bow to stern throughout the Den. I actually became so angry about that (they ALL know better!) that the Denizens (plus The Boy) have lost their (usually) limited snack box privileges. A few hours later, they lost the Babybel cheese treat as well, when I had to crouch down on the floor and use my beautiful, somewhat-freshly painted thumbnail to pry the wax I had specifically and with impassioned quotations warned them not to get on the floor.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

In case you were wondering what happens when you’re having a “party” atmosphere and turn the children loose on snack boxes and the fridge? It is like the plague of locusts that helped get the Children of Israel out of Egypt. And now I know just how Pharaoh felt, too. I’m about ready to put all these kids on a bus to, uh, anywhere.

And then I was telling the kids they could have water, or milk. As water apparently causes acid-like burns in their mouths, they kept saying milk. And I kept pouring them milk, delighted because usually milk is their last choice and, you know, calcium for strong bones and all that. Until suddenly last night as I was filling up their greedy little maws with the white gold, I realized: This was the last gallon, and it was…empty.

I reeled. The world turned gray at the edges. The dreadful truth struck like a thunderbolt.

“Holy @*^&@!” I said (poetically). “Honey! We’re out of milk! We’re not going to have enough for coffee tomorrow!”

You would have thought I had announced that the air supply was running low, with the unspoken dread of having to put on a space suit and walk through space to Jupiter to get more. We shared a moment of keen grief, combined with the knowledge that both of us were simply not (wo)man enough to put on shoes and go out into the cruel, balmy night to fetch any home.

It was about this point that I bolted upstairs to begin frantically ordering delivery (all hail the Safeway delivery person, my I-don’t-hafta-go-shopping-with-five-bratty-children savior!). Hold that delivery window! HOLD IT I SAY!!!!!

And then suddenly it was bedtime and we were reading stories and trying to get everybody settled down and then we were exhausted and both fell into bed a little on the early side (which means I didn’t go back downstairs at any point and realize the destruction) and then I came downstairs this morning, shrieked in horror, and ran back upstairs to fill out the police report.

Obviously, a truck was driven through my kitchen last night, leaving wanton destruction in its wake.

Just for the record? I ran my dishwasher FOUR TIMES yesterday. FOUR! And yet my kitchen looks like this.

Shocked. And. Appalled.

I don’t know if I’m going to make it through this weekend. Seriously. Tomorrow, I will have The Boy and his father, PLUS a family of four staying with us – doing the math on this deal, that is twelve people for dinner tomorrow. The dietary requirements / restrictions / ‘I don’t eat that, ew’ issues among all of these people are so intense I’m tempted to hand them a map with all the various eating establishments circled on it, tell them ‘good luck!’ and then plonk my butt down on the couch to knit while they figure it all out for themselves.

Then the family departs Saturday, my husband goes off with The Boy and his father (and Eldest, and possibly Danger Mouse as well) for the day, aaaaaaaand my nephew arrives for a brief overnight stay. He is a toddler and more fun than a basket of puppies. I am blissfully happy that I get to steal him and love him and keep him forever dutifully give him back to his parents in due course. (One crummy night? C’mon, bro, you KNOW you want to leave him with me for a week or two…)

And also (hopefully) my godson (which is not firmed up yet but hope springs eternal) (I love this kid) (I also would like to steal him, but unfortunately his parents are somewhat attached to him and will want him back and since I value their friendship I suppose I won’t hide the kid in the closet and pretend that he ran off to join the circus when they come to get him). He is a wicked smart kid who eats anything and I mean anything. None of this, “Oh, I only like fishsticks with Heines ketchup and they must be precisely 170 degrees or I will recoil in horror” from him. NO! He eats goat cheese salad with grape tomatoes and balsamic vinaigrette, people. And whole wheat rolls, and eggs that have “stuff” in them. (You know, like, feta and ham – which my children react to as if I were serving them raw kitten livers on rye toast.)

And he will also eat fishsticks if that’s what you’ve got, or pizza (gladly) or grilled hamburgers. With or without “weird stuff” like Worcestershire sauce and diced onions in the patties.

I love him so much for that. I love having him over so I can point at him during dinner and yell loving, supportive things like, “See? See that? He is eating the green beans! And he did not explode into a pile of ash!!” to my Denizens.

Because that’s the kind of mom I am. Loving, supportive, and never prone to using sarcasm, cynicism or implying that another child is somehow superior in any way…say, by having a digestive tract capable of handling green beans…