Awkward Hands

Took a gander through the photo archives yesterday and met a girl on Memory Lane who had terrible troubles with her hands. In fact, every time I saw this girl, it was as though she was afflicted with a palsy of awkwardness and could never seem to figure out what to do with her hands in the wake of a camera flashing in her face. Now, things were not always this way. Once she had moxie. She had pinache with those hands.

But then she just started clenching them and wearing an expression that's sort of...meh.

Again with the clench and the meh.

Oh look, girl, you're graduating from the 8th grade! Clench those hands! Look a little more meh why don'tcha!

Oh, or just grab some sausage. That's not awkward at all.

There is no help for this girl.

Can we draw our eyes to the extreme white knuckle clenching going down pre-sophomore dance?

Oh wait! A glimmer of progress!

Oh, that's SO MUCH better.

You know. Maybe you should just grab the nearest Korean with those hands and call it a day.

Knee socks

Twelve years of Catholic school learnt me sumpin': 'Tis better to wear knee socks.

When you have twelve solid years of polyester skirt schooling, you know that there is a strong chance of self-imposed air conditioning. That is, occasionally, you will be wearing a skirt and suddenly you will feel a slight breeze caress the backs of your legs. Occasionally, that feels a little too northerly. And, en route to the mall or the bus stop after school, where no doubt a bus of heckling schoolies from an enemy institution will inform you in no uncertain terms that you did the unthinkable, you realize: you did the unthinkable.

You tucked the back of your skirt into your tights. If ever there were a time to resent the implications of control top, it would be now. Control top gone off the heezy yo.

With knee socks, except for the occasional lazy elastic, a girl faces no such threat to ensemble.

Don't cry for me, Leggs brand pantyhose. I never left you. I just got smarter.

I kept my promise. Never to impose air conditioning on my nether thighs again.

Viva las knee socks.

2 alarm fire

Dearest children, Something happened tonight that was a little heart-stopping.

I think the world actually held still when I realized that I had left a pot holder in the oven by accident.

And that the oven was cranked up to 450 degrees.

So, the pot holder was aflame inside the oven, which is highly ironic when you think about the fact that a potholder is supposed to protect your hand from getting burned.

Instead it was doing a really good job of being totally flamboyant.

Because this wasn't just another stop off on your mother's hot mess express train, like how she gets dressed for the gym in the dark every day so she arrives wearing yoga pants inside out and two different shoes--No, it turned a shade more serious rather swiftly.

Little Man, you emerged to watch your mother think fast as to whether the house was equipped with a fire extinguisher or was that a house at which she babysat in 1994?

You saw her take a cloth diaper out of a cabinet and use the cloth diaper as a POTHOLDER to remove the potholder aflame in the oven.

You said, "Fire! Oh, fire! Oh, gonna call the fire trucks! Fire trucks coming!" but you didn't get hysterical which was a boon to your mother's ability to extinguish the fire from a potholder with an ad hoc potholder.

Little Man, you then stood frozen as both smoke detectors in the kitchen started mouthing off yelling, "WOMP WOMP WOMP WOMP WHAT THE WHAT THE WHAT THE"

You watched as your mother regained her senses and held the two potholders under a running faucet and managed handily to save the kitchen that does not belong to her, even though burning down the house would totally have gone along with the theme of this past year and damaged property. Hah. Just tryin' to be thematic I was!

After your 4'10" mother somehow got the smoke alarms on the ceiling to shut their big mouths, you looked at me with some tears in your eyes and I thought you were scared and maybe you were a little, but really it was more probably the smoke irritating your sweet little brown eyes.

Baby Girl, I'd just like to thank you for being unflappable as well, and by that I mean I want to thank you for sitting in the other room and turning two deaf ears to the smoke alarms and panic attacks happening in the next room, staying completely and absolutely occupied on your mother's laptop, probably picking out Cinderella's outfit for princess pilates on DisneyJunior.com. I know it was hard to stay that focused and not be tempted to come and see if everyone was okay, but far be it from me to say you weren't taking one for the team.

I still love the guts out of both of you and am glad we and our kitchen escaped this culinary crisis fairly unscathed.

Love, Mama *** Little Man by my side

Baby Girl gaming with her boy Tiny C.