Mrs. Flinger

SaturdayAug, 21, 2010

What Twelve Thousand Dollars Of Chemistry Classes Will Buy You

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.

MondayJun, 21, 2010

Respect the sticker!

My children, they do not respect the sticker. Remember getting the coveted sticker and agonizing over where to place it? You didn’t just put it on a piece of paper that might get accidentally tossed in the garbage. NO! You sat and pondered for HOURS where you were going to place this single, solitary sticker.

My kids can go through a sticker book in ten minutes flat.

Nowadays stickers are like Band-Aids: Cheap, easy to mail, and sticky; the latter being the most obvious. Band-Aids used to be special and only handed out when death was imminent. Now? Band-Aids for scrapes come in Sponge Bob Square Pants and decorate my kids’ knees like a trendy purse.

God I hate Sponge Bob and his annoying side-kick and his ability to make my children scream with enthusiasm until they get one of his teeny, tiny, fucking Band-Aids.

Stickers (and Band-Aids while I’m ranting) are like Manna from Oma. The children come home on various days to find a package in the mail with one of those “THREE HUNDRED MILLION BILLION STICKERS FOR YOU!” books. You know the ones that occupy the kids ALMOST long enough to get the dishes done but not long enough to make dinner? Those. And they tear through them like animals with raw meat. “BALERINA! I WILL PUT HER ON THE TABLE! I WILL PUT ONE ON THE SOFA! I WILL PUT ONE ON MOM’S COMPUTER SCREEN!” and on and on and on until we find stickers coming out of our asses, or theirs, three days later.

I can tell I’m getting older as I look at my children and have a back-log of stories. “I remember when….” They don’t appreciate, or even comprehend, the value of The Sticker. They can’t. The Sticker appears en mass and will continue to do so as long as there are sales at Borders when Oma goes shopping. And I suppose I’m ok with that. For now. Because sometimes you have to pick your battles and right now I’m winning, “Eat what I make for you or starve to death.”

Which reminds me, thank you, Oma, for the sticker book. I was able to poop in private for the first time since 2004, so the gift is really mine.

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