The year was 2001. There was a little girl bun in the oven. We were living at "Grandpa's House", young and poor, still sort of newlywed. Pregnant me, too tired after a long day teaching Junior High Hoodlums, collapsed on the couch. Stewart came home from work, took one look at me, and decided to call Zubs -- Springville's finest sandwiches. In my oh-so-complicated way, I ordered my sandwich the way I like it. No mayo, put mustard on instead. (Hot subs with mayo make me gag. Quizno's makes me gag. Pregnancy makes me gag.) The Zub's employee on the phone was a boy I remembered from one of our many fine establishment visits. Memorable because he had two hearing aids and his speech was...well..."deaf sounding". I dozed off on the couch while Stewart went to pick up dinner. He came home, set the table, and woke up his cranky, pregnant wife who took one look at her sandwich and began to cry. Yes, I cried. There was mayonaise on my sandwich and NO MUSTARD. If you have never been pregnant, you may not understand why I cried over a sandwich. If you have, you know why and you have probably cried over a sandwich or two yourself. Angry, pregnant, awful, embarrassing me said, "Why on earth do they let the deaf kid take phone orders?" I know. Awful. Humiliating. One of the worst things I've ever said. I would later remember uttering that and cry again, certain that karma had dealt me a deaf child to pay me back for my lack of tolerance. Although I'm not sure which obstinate and disobedient person angered me and dealt me my Maddox. Or, for that matter, which parent I judged for not letting their child "cry it out" and sleep through the night. Meet Lincoln. He woke up twice last night. He's 15 months old, for crying out loud. No pun intended. But it's easier to give the kid a bottle and make him stop crying. I know, I know, let him cry for a few nights and it will stop. Whatever. Anyhow, if it holds true that your children are sent to teach you specific lessons in life, I can see where mine came from.
So now you are wondering what the Mustard Bomb title means. Well, that's where the sandwich story is disputed. In my mind, it goes something like this. I looked in the fridge for some mustard while Stewart patiently scraped the mayonaise off of my sandwich. He shouldn't complain. He's the king of "ketchup only" and really is quite fun to travel with internationally. I fall in love all over again listening to him try to explain to the Moscow McDonald's that his BEEG MAK should not have any cheese. Only ketchup. Also funny in French. Oooh, and in German. Really. Since there was no more mustard in the fridge, I had to open a new bottle. I hate all of that plastic safety seal packaging. I'm sure it's good because people are always in grocery stores trying to poison innocent mustard eaters, right? But at the moment, in utter frustration, as I wrestled with the safety seal, that mustard just slipped out of my fingers, hit the floor with great force, and exploded in all directions. Months later, when I was cleaning the kitchen, I found bits of mustard that I had missed in the Great Mustard Bomb of '01 cleanup. At the moment, though, I think I just cried.
Stewart didn't quite see the same thing as how I remember it. He remembers me behaving like a defensive lineman who has just intercepted a pass, run 99 yards and scored his first career touchdown. He enters the endzone and spikes that mustard...er...ball. He spikes it for everything he's worth because he's not sure if he will ever get to spike another mustard, ball, whatever. Yeah, there's no way that is right. Pregnant people just don't go around throwing mustard, do they?
You can judge the two versions of this story and probably come to your own conclusions. I, however, prefer my version of the memory. And since I've been pregnant a few times, I think I know.
Last night, all of my kids were in bed and I decided that my life was just not exciting enough so I just gave it all a light dusting of chocolate. The world is a beautiful place through rose-colored glasses, so why not covered in chocolate dust? What actually happened was that when attempting to reach my Stephen's hot chocolate mix to make one of my last cups of hot chocolate of the season (yay, yay, yay! It's getting warm!), the huge Costco-sized container slipped from my grasp and hot chocolate floated as if in slow motion through the air and across my kitchen. As I was cleaning it up from the tops of drawers, the backsplash and the floor, I started laughing because I remembered the Mustard Bomb. And, in case you're wondering, it's much more pleasant to wipe up a light dusting of dry hot chocolate mix than it is to clean up mustard.
7 comments:
First of all - you should be a writer - you are such a good writer. Second, my child is 18 months and still wakes up. I make a bottle every night to put on my nightstand so I can blearily walk it to his room, hand it to him and go back to bed. Then I clean up the wet mess in the morning as he wets through his PJ's. In reality I know it would be easier to let him cry, but seriously who thinks clearly at 3am when they have just entered REM mode? I figure that if I can get him to sleep through the night once he hits kindergarten then I have done my duty. Third - I totally get the mustard bomb and Stuart needs his memory checked I KNOW you just dropped it on accident. :)
So far my kids have done everything I always said, "my kids will never..." I've also done many things I said "when I'm a mom I'll never..." Now I know better than to say never. I'm going to have to go with Stew on the mustard football version...only because the visual is too funny.
Ooooh boy! I had the Exploding Jar of Tomato Sauce. it slipped out of my hands and in slow motion hit the floor and sprayed the walls, me, the stove and the CEILING with sauce. The BF at the time was furious with me that I stained the ceiling. Like I did it on purpose! I was up on top of the counter on my tip toes scraping sauce off the ceiling with my fingernails, trying not to "ruin the ceiling more". Good times. And why is it that these things always are in slow-mo?
I'm still laughing and crying... no joke, tears still stinging, but laughing. Here come the tears again. Where did I muse about parents/ children and get Carlie? the twins? I'm up to my eyeballs. =) And the memories of ketchup falling came back like a flash. As I "watched" your Stephen's go flying, I started laughing out loud. Sorry.
Being 33 weeks pregnant right now and completely fed up with the whole ordeal, I get it! I think I cried about curtain rods the other day...nothing big, but it seemed huge in my current state! Then I spent my afternoon cleaning up pesto pasta that Jacob flung about my kitchen...cry again!
Love reading what you have to say, write a book :)
I had a liter or so of teriyaki sauce fly out of my hand while I was getting it out of the fridge once. Unfortunately, it splattered everything inside the fridge and so many things outside, as well. Months later I cleaned out my fridge and found a big mess under the fridge drawers...one big sticky mess.
Hey, this is Jessica Fawcett, I came across your blog from one of the Russian...emails of Darin's.
I can't even begin to list all the explosions that I've had at my house. We have tile, and tile is extremely unforgiving.
Love the blog, I'll be checking it out often.
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