Didn't I Feed You Yesterday__ A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos - Laura Bennett [69]
“Fantastic,” I say. “Let’s hang them up!”
He grabs a couple more boxes and walks out the kitchen door, while I race down the hall to the gun cabinet to retrieve my personal favorite, a high-powered German pellet rifle, and a box of ammo. I run back into the kitchen and open the window over the sink. By the time I get my rifle loaded, Peter has hung about twenty odd-size ornaments fifty yards away on a nail-studded plank designed for this purpose.
“All clear!” he yells, running back to the house to join me. I can’t tell you how many houseguests have enjoyed this activity. Even the kids get into the action with assorted BB guns. Before you know it, every window on the north side of the house is open and tiny Santas and reindeer are being blown to smithereens. When the last one has been dispatched, Peter turns to me, my very own Mr. Smith & Wesson, gun still slightly smoking.
“Good work keeping the kids alive,” he says, and gives me a high-five.
Just barely alive. Little did he know that while he was out, the four elder boys went a little stir crazy; in their moment of severe cabin fever, they decided to collect all the cardboard boxes from the various presents and construct a giant fort in the kitchen. I was getting Finn up from his nap when I heard yelling from downstairs.
“Fire in the hole!” Pierson shouted, and though I know he is prone to drama, I raced back down, a half-naked Finn on my hip. Smoke curled out of the kitchen and I got there just in time to see Peik throwing water on a black chunk of cardboard and Truman slapping the same area with a wet dish-towel. Pierson stood in the corner, fire extinguisher sort of at the ready. Though, like his mother before him, he didn’t have the sense to actually point and shoot.
“Who set this on fire?” I demanded. They all just stood there, a tableau de Noël,
“It wasn’t me!” cried Pierson.
“Spontaneous combustion?” Peik managed. They all looked at him, nodding in agreement, and then looked back at me, praying for believability.
“I have read Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” I said, looking each of them dead in the eye. “And I know for certain that spontaneous combustion only happens in obscure English villages. You’re all guilty, but I’m going to turn my back and the ringleader can put his matches on the table.” When I turned around there was a box for each boy. Perhaps I should have tried to teach them something while I had them, after all. Like, “Let your brother take the fall,” or “Don’t play with matches.” I really felt sorry for them in that moment. What they really needed was to be back in school. Fast. By the time the holidays were officially over, every last one of us was happy to see the last of the others.
SINCE I MOVED TO THE NORTHEAST, I’M NOT REALLY THAT INTO Easter. I generally try to avoid it altogether. In my opinion, Easter should look very springy, and when the temperature is thirty-seven degrees and my kids are running around in fleece instead of pristine white embroidered short sets, it just doesn’t feel right. My kids know that they have a day off from school, but they don’t seem completely clear on the difference between Easter and Passover, though they’re aware that we aren’t Jewish. I can usually avoid having to fill baskets on Easter by just not mentioning that it is Easter Sunday. This only works if I can prevent the kids from noticing that It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown is on and if I can keep them away from the Peeps display at Rite Aid. Otherwise, I’m busted and have to search the basement for baskets and scrounge the kitchen for candy.
Halloween is the big holiday in our family. It’s the perfect example of how a low-expectation event can blow away the most jaded partygoer if you put in extra effort and preparation. We have amassed a cache of Hollywood-prop-room-worthy decorations and begin putting them up around October 1. Enter our loft on any day thereafter, and you are likely to find me on a ladder, hand-sewing formations of life-size rubber bats