I'm Trying to Write a Blog Here, Mister.

I'm sitting here thinking of the cute things that have been going on in the last few days and trying to figure out a start for tonight's installment. Rather, I'm trying to figure out a start that I can continue into a wee blog for enjoyment and laughs. 

The thing is, all I can think about while I'm typing is that I've invited the neighbour kids over for a playdate tomorrow afternoon, when Kiddo #1 has a cooking class from 10 to 11 and I have a physio appointment for my wretched, bastard back that is too cowardly to just gently tell me that it hurts, and instead just freaked the heck out and I'm half incapacitated from pain, at 8:30 AND THE CLEANING FAIRY IS ON VACATION!

I had all these grand plans to dicuss the book club that I was so excited to join that I actually even read the book (!) or maybe the birthday party my kiddo attended today blah blah blah but I'm too preoccupied with what a frickin' disaster my house is, to be able to write witty anecdotes and all that jazz.

See, because when I know the Cleaning Fairy isn't coming, I don't tidy like I normally do. It's like when you're reading for a book club, you read it for a purpose (ie: to sound relatively unstupid in front your neighbours) so you watch a little more closely to the clues the author leaves lying around in the text.  But, if you're just reading a book for fun, you can get through a whole thing without anything important to say about it. 

Right, so the house. It kinda looks like a cross between a trailer park after a tornado and "Animal House."  

So then I'm sitting here typing about the book club, but I can't focus on that because I'm also making a list of the top priority spaces: 1) the living room (needs vacuuming, tidying) 2) kitchen (needs a flame thrower) 3) the play room (needs vacuuming, tidying) and also trying to figure out about how much time each spot will take (probably all three areas could be managable in 2 hours) and --

SIGH! 

What was I thinking?

But then, there's this secret part of me that wants to just leave it all and say, "Welcome to Real House." 

Sounds intriguing, you say?  

A few years ago, my borther was having everyone over for a birthday/Christmas/general holiday and I was marveling that his floors were spotless (and this was long before they had a dog as a broom). He said, "Oh, well, this is Fake House.  We've been creating Fake House for the last four days-- dusting, polishing, scrubbing, tidying, hiding, painting, accessorizing and all that crap.  Now, if you had shown up on any day besides TODAY, you would see Real House.  That's the house that we, as a family of five, live in.  It's the house with toothpaste in the sink, homework that snuck under the chesterfield (sofa for you Americans), and clean laundry in a pile on the bed, waiting to be hung up."

Since my brother introduced me to Fake House and Real House, my life has become much less stressed. I was under the impression, for example, that all homes in Better Homes and Gardens Magazine look perfect like that ALWAYS.  

I'm sure part of that is because every time I open up my magazines, the pictures stay the same, in a static, perfect moment of peace and harmony. Of course, I always wonder if, just outside the picture frame, there are two children and giant, stinking St. Bernard, wet from a romp in the creek, that are (all three) frothing at the mouth on the other side of the baby gate, with ketchup on their fingers and the muddy, black soil of freshly planted-and-uprooted begonias in between their toes. But it doesn't matter what's going on on the other side of the baby gate, because every time I turn to page 37, the crisp white linens on the perfectly made bed, that lays on a thick, shaggy white carpet lull me into a fantasy where this, truly could be mine if I just tried harder.

But, back to the problem at hand: who am I trying to impress? Neither of the neighbour kids care whether the pictures are all straight on the wall and the refrigerator door is clean of fingerprints and smudges ... and chocolate milk.  I'm fairly certain that Mom isn't going to stay for the play date, but even if she did, is she not a parent, too? So doesn't she also have Real House most of the time?  If you stick us, do we not bleed? If you run over our toes with a scooter, do we not howl in pain? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that yes, she has Real House and that she, also, swallows the curse words that threaten to escape when she is accosted by a remote controlled Hummer.

So why am I so bent on picking up the house for a playdate? I guess it's for the same reason I put make-up on every day-- do my kids care whether I have crazy eyebrows or not? No. I do, though. It makes me feel good and like I have a purpose.  I find if I don't put my make-up on, I don't bother putting on a proper outfit. If I don't put on proper clothes, I can't leave the house for any reason. If I can't leave the house, then I can't possibly meet my husband in Paris for an impromptu lunch on the banks of the Seine. And, now this has the bizarre sound of a Laura Numeroff book. 

So, off I go to clean and tidy, because I guess it's the same as doing my make-up every day. And while I'm doing all that, I'm going to check to make sure my passport is up to date, because, well, what if?

Easy Bake Honda

When life hands you lemons, I always say, squeeze the juice from those lemons in your hang nails and paper cuts and then you'll really have something to complain about.  Frick. 

On the hottest day of the summer, in heat and humidity that rivaled temperatures in Afghanistan (which is no joke-- it was 120F or 48C after you tacked on the humidity), on the big highway between my house and my mother's, the air conditioning quit working in my car. 

Anyone who has ever wondered how a convection oven works should try turning on MAX AC, only instead of delicious, cold air, crank the dial to scalding-hot-air instead. It was the most uncomfortable I've been in a long time, and I am constantly saying the wrong thing in the middle of a dinner party.  Yeah.

But that got me thinking about how I could harness my new Honda CR-Oven and use it to make a little money.  I'm an ok cook, or at least I can follow a recipe-- what is it that people love and can't get enough of that I can make and deliver with the amazing heat of my car? 

Cake, obviously!

I quickly turned the car around and headed toward the nearest cooking store to pick up some cooling racks, mixing bowls, spoons, and a cooler (with ice).  I also picked up three matching chef hats, aprons and fake-mustaches because, let's be honest, if you are going to start a business, you have to look the part.

Off to the supermarket I went with my team of sous-chefs.  

While my children began making the cake batter, I whipped up a website on my iPhone (yes, there's an app for that) and paid for it to be the first thing to pop up in every google search.  Sure, I had to put a bunch of nonsensical words pertaining to sex in the search criteria, but within the hour I had over 10 000 hits, and 57 orders for cakes to be delivered by 5pm! Only 5 of those cakes had a naughty theme to them, which all things considered, is pretty good.

Kiddo #2, from his rear-facing car seat, opened the cake batter boxes into bowls and add the oil and water. Kiddo #1 would then take the bowls, add the eggs and stir the batter until it was ready to go in the "trunk" of my CRV, to cook. I can honestly tell you that my car has never smelled as good as 15 cakes cooking at the same time before. And it might never smell as good again, since there are at least a few broken eggs that have cooked into the carpet and a bowl of melted butter that tipped over when I was going over some particularly feisty railroad tracks. 

My kids and I are such a great team! Each kid took his or her turn, with mommy driving and singing songs like, "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You" by James Taylor, "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies, and "Sugar Shack" by Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs, which lead to "Love Shack" by the B52s, "Supermodel" by RuPaul (who was in the "Love Shack" video) and then, just like my iPod likes to do, I switched gears completely and sang "Snowbird" by Anne Murray. 

As the cakes finished cooking, I then brought out the icing sugar and various food colours to have the kids begin making the fluffy icing. I can't begin to tell you how easy it is to run a cake business! Why oh why didn't I think of this sooner? 

While the kids were making the icing, I downloaded a credit card app for my phone so I could take money this way, as well as cash. No, I don't take cheques/checks and before you get all mad about it, hear me out: I drive around an oven and deliver fresh cakes to your home. I don't drive a TIME MACHINE to go back in time to take your cheques/checks, nor do I use said TIME MACHINE to get your faxed orders, either. Order your cakes online and pay that way, or with my handy credit/debit app and shoosh about the no cheque/check policy.  Thank you.

After we'd delivered the last of the cakes, (the naughty ones I iced myself-- no sense in exposing a baby and pre-schooler to naughty cakes on their first day of work) I looked around at my staff. We high-fived and counted our receipts over slushies. After paying for the website design I did, paying for the credit card processing I did, paying for the singing I did, as well as driving,  on top of my base salary, we did pretty well.  There was even a little left over to put into the kids' education funds.

And since the kids worked extra hard, I decided to finish our trip to Grandma's pool to wash the batter, sweat and tears off their bodies.  

I figure, if the money we made today is any indication, we should be able to get the AC fixed just in time for January.  Not that it matters much, since September is when half my kitchen staff goes off to school and people's need for fresh cake dramatically decreases (at least that's what the research shows-- I earn the salary I command, you know.).  

So this fall, be on the lookout for a mobile dry cleaner-- we pick it up, clean it with the power of steam (how eco-friendly!). I'm still ironing out the kinks of filling the bottom of my car up with water that will create steam to clean the clothes without making us into floppy broccoli at the same time.  

Kiddo #1 suggested that maybe we could use our wages to fix the AC. I was all for that until I realized she meant MY wages, too. Oh heck no, little lady.  Instead, I offered that we could drive places and the three of us could sing songs for money, like Hanson or the Jonas Brothers or that monkey from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. I guess he didn't sing though, he turned that organ grinder thing. Whatever. I'm not spending my hard earned money to fix my dumb AC, that's all I know.  

Ding! Ding! Ding!

That's the iPod telling me we have more cake orders coming in for tomorrow. Maybe the kids will get that AC fixed sooner than I thought, after all.