Mrs. Flinger: Blog

Mother Nature has been bit of a tease to Seattle this summer, leaning in at the bar just enough to show some cleavage before pulling back and slapping our hand. She buys us a drink, a day of sun, maybe three, and then pushes us away when we reach in to make-out with full on tongue. We purchase sunscreen and sunglasses. We plan camping trips. And then she pulls away, douses our hopes of getting to third base with a week of mist and drizzle at 56 degrees.

In fucking August.

So we walk around, with our proverbial blue-balls, just waiting for the cold shower of month after month of drizzly gray skies. We find ourselves conspicuously purchasing lotion: plane tickets to sunnier states in an attempt to tell Mother Nature, “it’s not you, really, it’s me..” lying the entire ride to the airport.

We wave a middle finger at her as the plane takes off for Arizona or Hawaii, places where the sun kisses our skin, and oceans and pools lick our toes. All the while we know we’ll return to the proverbial ball-and-chain at home.

We know, for a fact, while our grass is greener, our balls are blue.

*This post brought to you by the first cool day of the season following fourteen pretty chilly weeks of what the rest of the states call “summer.”

**I realize I happen to live in the woods on an acre and my house never gets above 60 degrees so this may be a somewhat skewed view of the summer.

***I’m sure someone here got sweaty this year.

****I probably need therapy for equating Mother Nature to a hussy.

*****I’ll get right on that.

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We are making homemade ice cream today. It’s part of my clean eating movement. I involve the children so they feel empowered to create their own food.

I feel proud and motherly.

We mix the ingredients and begin to poor the solution in to the ice cream maker but I notice the sugar isn’t dissolving. “What’‘s dissolve mean, Mom?” my oldest asks. Something from 1996 and my chemistry minor comes bubbling to the surface.

I’m suddenly a chemist!

“Well, see, that’s a good question, honey. There are bonds in the sugar molecules so they remain solid in this liquid here, see?” I show them the grainy bits in the bottom of the bowl. They look disinterested at best.

“What happens is,” I ignore their faces of disgust, “the bonds need heat to release them so the sugar will…” I pause to find the right word, my son plays with his penis in his pull-up, my daughter tries to eat the ends of her hair. I’m trying not to use the word dissolve while explaining what dissolve is… “So the sugar will melt, sort of, in the liquid.”

“That’s why I’m putting the solution, the mixture of liquid we just created, over heat in this pot even though we’re going to freeze it in the ice cream maker,” I conclude.

My children look as if they’ve aged seventeen years while listening to me lecture. They stare at me. I smile back.

“Can we have a Popsicle while we wait, mom?” they ask. Yes, Fine Fine, Fine. They scream in enthusiasm and run out the door. I yell after them, “Do you want to know how a Popsicle is made?!”

They don’t.

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