I don’t watch the Simpsons, but I’ve seen a few episodes. One of the ones I remember boiled down to Homer just having nothing more to say. So he walked away saying, “Snuh.” So for years, when one of us in the house is just done with a topic, we shut the entire thing down with a firm ‘snuh.’

It was a day in which Beloved (she’s 4. Her father calls her this to alienate the other children. Just kidding.) fell, caught limbs in furniture, or hit her head at least 56 times. Honestly, I was surprised she was still forming sentences by the end of the day. Mama’sBoy got hives from too much crazed white boy-dancing to an endless loop of Justin Bieber that I foolishly downloaded onto my nano. I have blamed a neighbor boy for my own kids’ Beaver Fever (you try to tell them it’s not Justin Beaver. I gave up.). But my first shout out, Elaine the Informinator, has informed me with little to no compassion that I am completely at fault here. Whatever.

OK, Let’s see. Back to this day. I asked for some help cleaning up. I was met with blank stares. No, I mean that. Blank stares. Like I wasn’t even talking. I actually crossed my arms to see if each arm still existed and asked them if they could see my mouth moving. It was a weird existentialist moment. If you don’t know what existentialism is, you might want to stop reading my blog and choose more intellectual material. Try Emerson or Thoreau. Ultimately, you’ll probably get bored enough to return and I’ll look forward to having you back. So, I met their blank stares with a cardboard box and took EVERYTHING from the floors of 4 different rooms. Much of it will be in the garage sale in 2 weeks. Booyah. Also, they are grounded. Until I no longer feel like saying Snuh. And then, to put the pink piping on the cake, my will-remain-unnamed child looks upon the plate of sweet smelling food that I placed in front of her and says, “Now that’s just the worst chicken I have ever seen.” Really? Let me see if I can find you something slightly worse than this for tomorrow’s dinner and we’ll see if we can amend your statement.
Also, go to bed.
And still also, snuh.

P.S. The chicken rocked. I ate mine and hers too. So there.

UPDATE: Uncle Cletus responded to the following post from this morning. If you haven’t read that post, read that first and then his response will at least have context.

Well, I guess I don’t quite know what to say; I am almost speechless.  I don’t know whether I’m honored or angered.  But for sure, I am targeted….and exposed.  But because for me the glass is always half (or more) full, I am honored, and if so, I suppose I am supposed to say “thank you.”  And for what it is worth, I am well enough fed, though I should say promptly, no thanks to you.  Honestly, I thought about cutting a piece of the cake (from the rear), but decided that if I did so I might end up in your blog.  Now all i can think about is that I should have cut a BIG piece.  (I did say ALMOST speechless.)  But there is no malice here, just love…….and patience….endurance….faith.    – UC

I overate tonight.

My middle quadrant is overblown and puffed up like biscuit dough. This came as a result of a birthday party menu of pizza and mayonnaise cakes, not biscuits. The mayonnaise is not because we are weird, though I’m not saying it doesn’t add to the case against us. It is because we have milk allergies in the family. I think I prefer the Boy-in-the-Bubble recipe to a regular milk and eggs concoction. What does that say about me? I don’t care. My husband did all of the baking and icing and some of the piping on the mayo cake. If you stick this blog out long enough to gather my history with cakes, you’ll know why I didn’t touch it.  Anyway. Apparently the trim looked pretty bad and had to be redone by a female coworker. Had this not been the case—had his piping been pretty—then this would be a blog of an entirely different nature. And I think you know where I’d be going with that. But since he did not rock the piping, I’m going down the original road.

So I overstuffed with cheap chuck e. cheese pizza and mayo cakes, as we’ve already established. But there was a member of the birthday group—we’ll call him Uncle Cletus—who did not overstuff. In fact, UC was on a pretty tight schedule and needed to eat before heading out to a meeting. We had ordered the pizza and it was set to arrive shortly. Not 2 minutes into the waiting period, we noticed Uncle Cletus milling around with a plate and 2 pieces of pepperoni pizza. Where’d you get that? We asked. Oh, I obtained it, was his answer. Obtained it? You mean from a vacated booth of some family that went home an hour ago? Dude. It’s hard to know where exactly to walk with that one and what to do with it once you get there.  So let’s just leave it at this: (1) Uncle Cletus, if you are out there…and I know you are…don’t comment on this post. You’ll give yourself away and what you did is not okay. (2) Though we are aghast at the lengths you will go to for a pizza fix, thanks for providing inspiration for this post. And (3): If you find yourself struggling in today’s economy—jobless, homeless, penniless, or pizza-less, let me leave you with:

Uncle Cletus’ Guide to Living Like a Street Urchin:

1. Eat other people’s leftovers at restaurants that are busy and where apparently the staff waits until closing to bus the tables. Approximate savings for a family of 4: $20. You’ll have to steal your own tokens.
2. On vacations, always have 2 or 3 smashed up tuna salad sandwiches in a fold-over sandwich baggie for meals.  Then proceed to drive as far out of your way as is necessary to find a rest stop with a stone picnic table. Approximate savings for a couple without children: $11, depending on what you order at the McDonalds you might have stopped at…
3. If you see eggs on sale for $.79 a carton, buy them. Even if you are in Tennessee when you see eggs on sale and you live in Southern California. Even if you have a 27-hour drive to get them home into your refrigerator. Even if the chances of them making it back in tact are one half of one percent.  Approximate savings for a family of any size: $1.20.
4. Wear the purple blazer until your funeral. It is wool. It is functional. There is no need to replace it just because purple went out with King Solomon. Hang on. It’ll come back around. Approximate savings for the coat wearer: $6.
5. Spend $1.99 at any Target store on a new tube of super glue and continue gluing the soles of your sneakers back onto the base of the shoe until either there is no more gluing surface or until your skin is tarred and blistered from regular contact with super glue.  If you really want to save money, you can buy an off-brand of Super Glue. But just know it will probably kill you with flesh-eating toxins. Approximate savings: I don’t know. I don’t do this. Ever.

Hello world. This is my first post, which I will follow with something slightly more interesting. At least I hope. If you like this blog, great! Come back with 2000 of your friends. If you don’t like it, just realize that I designed it with an almost totally bare pantry and refrigerator.  It’s hard to get inspired eating dark red kidney beans out of a can.

Forty-year-old mothers of four after a day of 400 badly juggled foodstuffs, homework foibles, timeouts, half-spilled large jugs of sweet-n-sour sauce, and inappropriately, undiapered bottoms cannot successfully blog at 12:48 a.m. without the risk of repeating the current day’s chaos at a higher level of intensity…the following day.

But the real reason I am going to bed is this:

There are no more Wheat Thins in the house.