So how was your Easter? If you celebrate, I hope that you had a wonderful time with family and friends.
I know, it was several weeks ago. But I’ve been working through my post-traumatic stress and this is really the first time I feel like I can talk about the experience without having a psychotic break.
In hindsight, it’s really my own fault. We had virtually no plans. With my family spread out all over the country for the holiday, we had a very mellow morning scheduled. Some eggs, maybe a few bagels (a rare treat that I don’t usually allow in the house due to the celiac issues) and maybe a mimosa or six, with a couple of our dearest friends.
But something just didn’t feel right. Growing up in a huge family, not spending a holiday with a small army of people felt odd and uncomfortable. Something was missing. So I invited a dozen more people. Because what was missing, apparently, was stress.
Don’t get me wrong, I was really happy that most of them said yes. We don’t spend nearly enough time with my husband’s family and I adore each and every one of them. I totally hit the jackpot in the in-law department. They are funny, kind, generous, wonderful people. They all have very entertaining lives and I love hearing the stories and catching up.
It’s not their fault that I decided to rearrange all the furniture in my house and redress all the windows, 36 hours before their arrival. Nor can they accept any blame for my need to cook for exactly three times more people than I had invited. Or that my stove stopped working five days before the holiday. And they are especially not responsible for the fact that I have too many freaking pets that shed a whole other animal’s worth of hair. Every day.
I thought I had planned it out perfectly: one day of cleaning and one day of cooking, with time set aside for last-minute prep. I even dusted. This is a big deal, as I would rather sit in a kiddie pool full of snakes than dust my house, which is obvious if you walk into my house at anytime other than when I’m having a house full of people. My kids sometimes like to sign their names in the dust under their framed portraits.
I gave a whole day to the eradication of filth. I washed curtains and floors. I scrubbed toilets and windows. My husband washed the carpets. We did a pre-vacuum vacuuming. Because with animals, you need to vacuum six minutes before everyone arrives or it will look like you haven’t cleaned since ’82.
I was feeling pretty good, like the Department of Health could come by and I wouldn’t have my children taken away for unsafe living conditions. The only thing left were the bathrooms, which are a day-of task anyway. I had the linens ready and I even went to bed before midnight.
Day two was all about the food. Morning parenting insanity over (when did we give up our weekend mornings to kids? Oh that’s right, at birth) and last minute shopping done, I got to the tasks at hand: chopping, whisking, sauteing, grating and mixing.
Eight hours and three pounds of butter later, I was wiping down the last counter top. My fridge looked like a massive Jenga puzzle and my entire family was warned that moving anything could cause an avalanche and if that happened, I would rain fury down upon them. I had hidden a double batch of cupcakes in the microwave, so the cats couldn’t jump on the counter in the middle of the night and lick them. The ingredients for the waffles were waiting on the counter and several bottles of champagne were on ice. (Thank you, Jesus.)
My very loving and thoughtful husband had spent the last couple of hours gently suggesting that perhaps I should stop and relax. “You’re frazzled.”
Really? I’m not sure how that could be. I mean, two days of cooking and cleaning, while still taking part in my regularly scheduled life (it seems my kids still expected to eat, WTH?), how could that possibly tire me out?
Unfortunately, he has yet to find me my own wife, so there was no help on the way. Much to his shock and dismay, I was unwilling to just stop, leaving whatever was undone, undone. And much to my shock and dismay, at no point did I hit him.
I cannot understand this concept. How does one simply stop, when there are muffins to bake? How does one put up one’s feet, when all the fine china needs to be washed? Where is there time for a nap, when the kitchen floor looks like the “before” portion of a Swiffer Wet Jet commercial?
Needless to say, we were unable to come to an agreement.
The next morning, I was icing cupcakes by 7:16 a.m. I had slowly and steadily crossed items off the to-do list and each time I did, Brian would say, “We’re in good shape.” Finally, when it was an hour and a half before guests were scheduled to arrive and I was unshowered and had not yet scrubbed the bathroom, I started to get a little cranky, “You keep saying that. And you keep being wrong.”
But, I didn’t want to be “that” woman. I didn’t want to be the raving lunatic that screams orders at everyone, insisting that our house look like a Martha Stewart ad, when even Martha Stewart could not make my house look like a Martha Stewart ad.
So I tried to rein in the raving lunatic, at least a little bit. We were exactly 48 minutes away from go-time. I smiled at my family as I headed to the shower. I looked each of them in the eye and gave them a chore. And then I told them that when they completed that task, they were to come to bathroom door and I would provide them with another one. There would be no sitting, no snapchatting, no YouTube surfing of any kind. Or my head would explode and spew rage and misery upon them.
It’s possible that I was struggling with the raving lunatic thing.
After I was dressed and ready, I donned my festive apron and plugged in the waffle iron. The kids were hiding in different corners of the house and Brian was doing the last-minute vacuuming. And that’s when the vacuum died.
We’ve never had one problem with the vacuum. It has faithfully served us, time after time, for years. There was no indication that it might stop working. It just stopped. No suction. No power.
I like to think of myself as a problem-solver. We have a hard floor sweeper that finished up the kitchen floor. We had done the pre-vacuuming a day before, so it wasn’t as terrible as it could have been. However, the entry rug was in a sad state. I needed something to clean the rug and the children were pretty against hand picking the debris. Enter the shop vac.
I was fairly proud of myself. I was certain that Brian would quickly suck up the last bits of filth and then he could make me a mango bellini. And it probably would have happened like that, if the shop vac hadn’t been set to “exhaust.”
As I laid over the bowl to protect the waffle batter from the cascade of debris, I wondered what lesson I was supposed to be learning here. I’m not sure that I learned anything, but my family learned that when I throw back my head and laugh at completely inappropriate moments (and there is a string of dust stuck in my eyebrow), it is best to start handing me booze.
The mango bellinis were delicious. And probably saved more than one life that morning. It’s a simple recipe that translates well from a glass to a pitcher. I recommend the whole pitcher. To simplify the recipe, pick up some mango nectar instead of using fresh mango.
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Laurie Nigro, a mother of two, is passionate about her family, her community, and natural living. Laurie resides in downtown Riverhead and is co-founder of the River and Roots Community Garden on West Main Street.
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