Get out of my Kitchen!

Anyone who's tried to accomplish something in the kitchen, with small children, knows- you'll soon be pulling a soaked shirt out of your belly button divot, after a child sitting on the counter surprisingly nails you with a squeeze of the spray wand.  Use that soaked shirt to clean up various other spills and sticky messes caused by that same, or an additional toddler also sitting on the counter, before leaving it atop a laundry heap. Then, answer the phone, let in the barking dog, and take a it-was-too-late anyhow child to the bathroom, before finally passing the bathroom mirror and realizing you've been in only your left cup-soaked bra for... what time is it anyway!

After attempting a mere macaroni salad preparation, I had a sink of dishes like I'd catered a 250 guest wedding, with the disaster of three blind monkeys as my assistants. Well close, two had perfect vision, only one fell victim to the vinegar in the eyes...

Six different large spoons for stirring and nearly a whole roll of paper towels to dab and scoop away unwanted ingredients, either happily added, even when I said, "NO No, No" or accidentally dropped from little over-touching hands.

Like every other time; the floor soaked, the counter tops covered in dirty feet prints, and numerous tiny hands throw various things, including several pumps of the hand soap, into my every stir!

"Can I help?" were the words that made me wake in sweats and sit up in my bed at night! Faster than I could say, "Oh, not this time..." They were scurrying up the Lazy Susan ladder, like mice up barn rafters, and the sound of a chair shrieking across the tile floor gave me goosebumps, and made the kitchen walls close in when it was sat directly under my nose.

I tried to divert them, even coax them away like rattling a grain scoop at farm animals, I'd lie that I wasn't really cooking anything, entertain them elsewhere, then attempt a sneak away, like I did out of their beds at night, but nothing ever, EVER, kept them out of the kitchen for long!

It started...the same way every time, "Ok! But, sit here, stay down, and you gotta listen!"

Hahahah!

Well, it also ended every time with us eating a bowl of cereal or ordering take-out, and my urge to throw a lit match in my kitchen before any possible desire to clean it!

Showing first priority to the bare-butted toddler sitting on my counter and reaching to stir boiling noodles, seemed like the proper thing to do...until it meant I neglected to aid in the hard-boiled egg peeling, or lack of peeling, for my salad! Just ask a four year-old why there are also bubbles and shells mixed in the salad, and you'll get something like this, "Well, you shoulda helped me, I'm not the cooker! Some shells wouldn't come off, so I tried to wash it!" Naturally, I couldn't convince her to lather with soap when she washed her own hands, yet she felt it necessary to scrub an egg with an amount sufficient to supply a car wash...and then quickly mix it in the mayo of my salad, hoping I wouldn't notice.

I was out of celery, and surely its absence wouldn't be missed nearly as much, with the same crunch texture found in added egg shells. And after seeing my counter top and son's fingernails, maybe a 1/2 cup of antibacterial soap was just what is needed in this recipe.

I insisted on continuing...

Additionally, sand fell out of the socks of my littlest as he climbed around the sink area, and my daughter licked everything from her dirty fingers and spit back what she hadn't liked. Eating this special blend, was going to be as "iffy" as cutting the top off my child's Go-gurt tube with the same scissors found in the shower, which my husband trimmed his pubes with.

Cooking in a kitchen barefoot and pregnant seems so joyous...until the pregnancy is over and left behind are three baboons leaping form cupboard to stove top, flinging hot pasta and heavy jars onto those unguarded feet, and something I wouldn't dare to eat becomes the end result.

Now what the hell is for dinner? The question we all ask at 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, and 5pm, yet don't get serious about until daddy asks at 6 or 7pm...
I've begged of several things already this summer vacation, mostly that each car pulling in was a nanny, even a zookeeper, camp recruiter, or Grandma...but today it was simply pleas to have barbed wire fencing (with electrical current) and a presidential guard posted at the entrance of my kitchen! Seriously, I'd pay... and just may post a job opening for keeping these little counter contaminating, over-adding spice creepers away from my magic of creating a meal with only the five most-likely ingredients still left in the fridge when you haven't shopped in weeks!

A side from the mystery items in various Tupperware containers, those don't count...shit, those don't get moved without a long-handled spoon poke or oven mitts...my bare fridge always had the same last straggling items...

French dressing, the same bottle, an opened yogurt still containing a film covered spoon, a chip dip container no one was brave enough to open, and dried out baby carrots, freed from the bag, that rolled from front to back with an occasional raisin-like grape, every time my kids slam the crisper drawer... at times it required a prayer, a Google search for a possible recipe suggestion... or a call for pizza, and a definite promise to grocery shop tomorrow.

A mother is under enough pressure to prepare a meal with fridge bottom ingredients, or pull off something edible within the 7 minutes before soccer, so why couldn't it just be common knowledge, like when an x-ray is progress, to get the hell out of the room?

This attempt to get ahead of dinner time rush has left my garbage  a bit heavier, with a 6lb inedible mac. salad, my sink looking ship-recked, yet my dishwasher still is not repaired and my dish soap bottle laying on the lawn, after being hocked for added success in the slip'n slide... and my refrigerator, now has more mud and grass printed on the shelves, than food!

Week two, summer vacation...just may start with the bang of three kids tipping over another shopping cart at the grocery store...there's just no more avoiding it!