Kitchen Chaos

1.4.07

 

We had a lovely Christmas season.  A good friend of mine added a stunningly adorable baby girl to her family.  My own girl was stunningly charming with Santa Claus.  She was so enamored and sweet with him I nearly cried (my thanks to the Mariner Mall Santa on Dec 23rd – you were fabulous).  On the way to visit Santa, my little miss warned me she might be scared and shy, but when we got there and it was her turn she went into his arms without a qualm.  Actually, she flung her arms around as much of him as she could, buried her face in his pristine white beard, and said, “I love you, Santa!”  That’s more affection than some family members get sometimes.  She told him her list of 3 items and her life story, all in 8 minutes.  I believe she included the low down about the new baby.

 

Ok.  Well, with all the holiday busy-ness and the having-to-work time crunch, imagine, if you will, my house pretty much as messy as it could possibly get.  And I have teen-agers coming tomorrow.  One of them kind-of, sort-of likes things really… um… organized.  Ha-ha. Today I had a plan to get my house in order.  My girl has lots of fun new toys to play with, so it was a pretty good plan.  Except she got a whole lotta kitchen stuff from Santa… and during my final last-minute shopping trip I saw a really cute kids’ kitchen…

 

And that’s all well and good, right?  Quick trip to the bank to cash in the kid’s Christmas money, quick trip to Target, no problem.  Home by noon.

 

Except for the fact that the darling little kitchen comes in a really flat box.  And with a LOT of screws.

 

Let me just say that – ahem – Mommy isn’t exactly the builder of the family, but come on,  how much trouble can a screwdriver and a star-wrench be?  And I know we have a cordless power screwdriver.  Heck, I’ve bought at least two of them.  Last Father’s Day I bought a very decent low-quality multi-talented tool kit for my husband because every time I ask him to fix something or hang something he says, “Oh gee, sorry honey, all my tools are at the shop,” and I was pretty tired of that excuse.  So I KNOW there are tools in this here house.  In fact, I even know where they are.

 

Only… when I lifted the cute little lid of the cute little black tool box… all the good tools – like the laser level and the cordless screwdriver – were missing.  That’s par for the course around here.

 

Back to manual screwdriver and star-wrench… and three hours later my girl has a brand new island kitchen in her room to go with her brand new pots and pans.  Almost.  I say almost because the hinges for the oven and refrigerator doors were a bit complicated, to say the least, and had to be left for Daddy. 

 

My daughter put a cookie-sheet in the oven, and being the bright young darling that she is, said with an aggrieved sigh, “The cookies are waiting in the oven.  They’re not cooking because my kitchen isn’t done being builded.  They can’t cook without the door.”

 

When Daddy came home he figured out the hinges (although, to my credit, even he didn’t get it right the first time).  He also brought home dinner, because there was no time for cooking real food while building a pretend kitchen.  I mean, come on, that’s asking a little much.

 

When my daughter climbed up on top of her new kitchen, my husband said, “I’d keep in mind who built that before I’d stand on it.”

 

Yeah, thanks for that.  Ha-ha.  Sometimes the cook is in the kitchen.  Sometimes he has to finish the job with a screwdriver.