circuskitchen

Thursday, August 27th 2015

Sometimes my husband and daughter work out:

EXTREME FIT GIRL [14seconds]:

While checking out of Trader Joe’s and feeling tense on account of the above depicted *FIT* -which Paul had mercifully taken out into the parking lot- there was a lovely elderly woman behind me in line who asked about my kids.  As we chatted briefly I said, “It makes me wonder ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ Would Jesus slap his kids?? JESUS didn’t even HAVE kids!”

Without missing a beat she chuckles and replies, “Not that we know of!”

I froze as my jaw dropped down and my eyes shot up, scandalized by the humor. “Man I needed that!” I said. “I LOVE this town!” Perhaps other places but definitely in Cambridge you can randomly bump up against enlightened, liberal, intelligent humor.  YES.  God yes.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/12/opinion/parini-new-text-jesus-married-with-kids/

Then this amazing woman followed it up by saying, “There’s MY oldest child.” I turned around to see a middle-aged woman slightly older than me looking at us, not particularly amused. Facetiously I said to the elder, in reference to her middle-aged daughter, “Well she looks VERY well behaved.”

“Don’t be deceived,” retorted the daughter tersely, with the same speed of wit as her mother.

I don’t know what they were going through, but I took leave to join the party with Paul outside… under the concerned watchful scrutiny of some Trader Joe’s staff of course. (They need to be prepared to answer potential questions from concerned non-parent customers;  you know, “What is that awful man doing to that poor innocent child?” and stuff like that.)

Once outside, after having been tense with each other, Paul and I see each other and just start laughing.  I load the car while CJ continues her ear-splitting struggle.  A nicely dressed man in a gray beard and suit passes by and says, “We’ve all been there.”  I thank him as he gets to his car and he calls back, “Wait ’til 14!”

This solidarity in the trenches is the GREATEST.  If you are a parent, you know what I’m talking about.  If you’re not, he meant “years old.”  Wait until they’re 14 years old.  Huzzah.

Mercy

We finally wrangle the groceries and kids into the car.  Paul informs me that another lady locking her bike had said to him, “I used to hold mine under the shower, now they call it water boarding!”   And he’d said, “You can’t do that any more!  They call child services on you now!”  Because, sadly, that is true.  [Insert expletives here.]

Anyway, the ride home was totally peaceful, as you might imagine, because of course ClaraJane was FINE.

Post Apocalyptic Fit Girl [7 seconds]:

So there you have it, about 5 minutes of 24 hours of a day in the Parenting Life.

Kids.  SO ADORABLE!