Archive for April, 2012
Easy Does It
So, I was cleaning my over the other day, when-
KACKACKACKACKACKACKACKACKACK!!!
Ahem – sorry, folks. It’s just, as I was writing that first sentence, I glanced back at it and realized the way I phrased my words made it seem like, you know, I clean my oven all the time. It was just this one particular time that stood out. When – AHEM – the truth is, the other day was the very FIRST time I had EVER cleaned my oven in the entire 3 + years we have lived here.
That is not to say the oven was never cleaned – we did used to have a full-time nanny/housekeeper and once in a very blue moon she would venture southward into the unknown. [Yo, perverts, this is a MOM blog. Get yee hence, to the same-named blog as mine without the “the”!] Anyhoo- it’s not to say that our oven was a hell-hole of drippings; quite the opposite, actually. We use it mostly for baking bread, eggplant, and the occasional batch of cookies.
But still.
It was a tad pathetic, my first encounter with our oven, from the POV of a sponge and some Easy Off®. And here’s what I discovered:
By God, is Easy Off® made of toxic nuclear waste, or what?
The more I clean, the more I understand why all those annoying “natural cleaning product” companies are popping up all around us, with their white website backgrounds, Facebook contests and minimalistic yet oh-so-hip graphics, along with loads of statistics that my lull my brain into a non-absorptive stasis, much like what happens when you actually try and use one of those good-for-the-environment cleaners.
I only jest, Natural Companies! I love you! We all know I can’t afford your products anyway, so how would I know if they work or not?
But back to Easy Off® – it only took me a few consecutive seconds of scrubbing my oven with the stuff to realize WHY Sylvia Plath killed herself in the manner that she did. I know I’m walking a very thin, perhaps completely invisible line here, but stay with me for a second. She was a housewife back in the 50’s, right? “Housework is a woman’s best friend” and all that jazz? I’m just saying, if I had to cook for my husband every night (we all know how I feel about cooking – my cooking, specifically) AND then go and clean out the damn thing night after night, inhaling the radioactive formaldehyde-ish cleaning solution whilst I scrubbed…?
One never knows. But one has a pretty good guess after a virgin round of Easy Off® scouring.
Poor Sylvia.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Lord do i love it when Google rewards my searches for images with surprising gems. Like this one, which came up when I searched "Easy Off." I like this photo so much I may just start to use it with every single blog I every write.
The Littlest Thief
ARGH. A giant wad of chewed gum stares up at my from my dining room floor. Looks similar – only larger – to the chewed gum I found on the living room floor the day before, and in the hallway later that same day.
“Racheli!” I call to my 5 year old, who is nearer than her 7 year old brother. “Tell me the truth! Did you steal a bunch of gum and chew it?”
Good God, is this what 7 years of parenting classes have come to?
Racheli swears she didn’t steal the gum, and I believe her. Which leaves Yehuda. I’ll get him when he’s done with his bath. Oh, they’ll be consequences, young man…
Suddenly, little Almost-3-yr Old Esther walks in.
Chewing.
And holding a box of gum she got from who knows where.
!!??
“Esther! You’re not supposed to have that gum. Give it to me, please!”
Lucky for Yehuda, he missed the whole thing. Lucky for me, I found the real culprit before blaming the wrong kid.
After school the other day, Yehuda and Racheli stayed after school for art class. So, when I walked into the living room and saw my purse open, my wallet out, and a receipt from my wallet on the floor… I knew it had to have been Esther. What I didn’t know, until I checked my wallet later, was that she had also taken out my paycheck for the week. Took me a good five panicked minutes to find it… on the back of our couch.
And a few weeks back, all the kids were late to school because I couldn’t find my keys. Correction: Esther had stolen, then forgotten where she had left, my keys.
Driving me crazy! And yet…
If Esther would learn to use the potty one of these days? I’d give her my entire wallet and both sets of keys. Hers for the taking. My 4 1/2” high heels, too.
Parenting 101, baby.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Sometimes, she's content to just steal the spotlight.
Potty-Mouthed Mommy
On the Subject of potty mouths, or more specifically, my potty mouth, when I write my blogs… I have a question to ask you guys. When I speak – especially in earshot of children – I’m clean as a whistle.
Not so much, when I write.
Not every blog, as you know, but MANY blogs, are clearly not even the slightest bit appropriate for children to read. I’ve even, on occasion, forbid my father to read one of my blogs.
The trouble is, whereas my father will happily oblige, following my instructions & skip any particular blog I ask him to – will my son/children do so too, as they grow older?
Bwhahahahaha!
Who am I kidding? The Fantastics – the song, “They Did it Cause We Said No” – I think song was written with my future children in mind.
What I’m saying is that I’m more than nervous when I imagine my son or daughter reading my blogs. And I have 100% no idea how/whether to prepare them for what they will read and/or how/whether to talk to them about it once they’ve read them.
Hey, you!
Yeah, you! (if you are a parent of kids older than mine, preferably kids who turned out spectacularly)
….WHAT SHOULD I DO?
I’m not going to stop writing.
And while I may tone down my language, I also may not. Tonight it hit me. As I write this, it’s 10:15pm on a Saturday night, my husband is out seeing a movie with a friend and all three of our kids are soundly asleep. And what do I do? What sneaky, rebellious, grownupgirl actions do I decide to take in my free, “Me Time”?
I ate some old stale chocolate cake. It was disgusting. So, I washed it down with Nutella spread onto dry challah bread. I don’t like Nutella. Oh – and as I fixed myself a coffee with Truvia and cream and got ready to check out what we’ve got saved on the ole DVR (ooooh, caffeine after 10pm?! NOW WE’RE TALKING! What other naughtiness do you have planned, Sheva, skipping the floss and going straight to the tooth-to-the-paste?)
Yeah, when all that bad-to-the-bonedness was taking place, it hit me:
WRITING, OCCASSIONALLY, ABOUT BARELY-NAUGHTY SUBJECTS, USING, OCCASIONALLY, SORT OF-NAUGHTY LANGUAGE IS ALL THE EDGE I’VE GOT LEFT.
In college, and for about 6-7 years after college, I was a full metal Party Girl.
Now? I’m a loving mom, a dutiful wife, an ardent student of Kabbalah (I even eat Kosher & keep Shabbat, for Christ’s sake!), and…
A (sometimes) potty-mouthed Grownup Girl.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
THIS is my idea of a major rager. Can you blame me for wanting to drop the occasional f-bomb in a blog? It's all the rebelliousness I've got left.