13
Jul

Let’s not make it a tradition….

   Posted by: Ashley Moreno   in Chaos, random funny stuff

I am all about traditions.

Take Thanksgiving, for instance. I mean, is there any other holiday so steeped in tradition as Turkey Day? I have eaten the same thing every Thanksgiving since 1968. Well, maybe since 1969. I don’t think I had teeth yet that first Thanksgiving. Although I did find a doctors note in my baby book where he recommended bacon as an appropriate first food for a 4 month old. I think it was on the same page that recommended Crisco as a sunblock. Ah, the good ol’ days….

Anyway, every Thanksgiving we have the same menu. The Hubby once asked me if I got bored eating the same meal every year. Yes, because having the same meal ONE TIME A YEAR is oh-such-a-rut….

One year I got really crazy, and changed things up by making mashed sweet potatoes instead of canned. Not only that—instead of topping them with mini-marshamallows—-I made a custard topping. I know, I am a rebel.

Since moving into the Halfway-finished House, we have developed new holiday traditions. Every year, we celebrate 4th of July at Rancho de la Roca. We spread our blanket on the lawn, I take the kids canoeing, they do some bounce-house-jumping and some snow-cone-eating, and then when darkness falls we settle back and watch the fabulous fireworks show. Afterwards, we head home for another Moreno 4th of July tradition: Daddy’s Backyard Firework Extravaganzza.

It’s generally a pretty low-key event, just me and the kids on the back porch while The Hubby sets off his wares in the pasture. There was that one last year that exploded too violently, throwing itself off The Hubby’s homemade launch stand and sending giant purple fireballs at his head. But other than that one incident, it’s pretty tame.

Until now….

Back when The Hubby and I got married—which is coming up on 20 years this September—I promised I would never let him get bored. At the time, he thought that was a good thing. He has since reminded me that there is no physical, binding document to force my compliance, and has graciously agreed to let me out of the terms of that particular arrangement. Nice try….

But really, it wasn’t my fault. I mean, it wasn’t precipitated by one of my infamous ideas or anything. The story goes like this:

We got home from Rancho de la Roca a little before 10. For some reason, Mason was scared of the fireworks this year, so rather than put him through the trauma of even more loud noises and bright lights, I went ahead and put him to bed.

I came out of his room to sheer chaos. I know—you’re shocked.

I could hear the screams of the children coming from the backyard. All three older kids were down at the chicken coop in hysterics. Ethan and Ramie were outside the coop, and Riley was inside yelling—–

—if you have a teenage daughter, you are familiar with melodrama. Now imagine a teenage girl with MY genes. Oh yeah, now you’re getting the picture….

Where was I? Oh, yeah—so, Riley is in the chicken coop, and she’s screaming, “It’s got Ethel!!! A snake has Ethel!!! It’s killing her!!! She’s not moving!!! She’s dead!!!”  Meanwhile, I come to the back door and scream back, something along the lines of, “Ethan! Get your sister OUT OF THE CHICKEN COOP NOW!!!”

Now, can I just say that if you had told me 20 years ago—10 years, even—that I would ever in my life be screaming any sentence that included the words “chicken coop,” I would have thought you were crazy. Yet, there I was, screaming for Ethan to convince Riley to get the heck out of the chicken coop.

I ran down to the coop, passing a sobbing Ramie and an exhilarated Ethan on their way up to the house. That boy thrives on some chaos. Don’t know where he gets it. Riley, meanwhile, has finally come out of the coop. She’s sobbing, too, but she’s composed enough to shine the flashlight on the far side of the chicken coop to show me where, indeed, a snake has climbed up the chicken wire among the roosting hens. And Yeti, who is decidedly not a hen, but that fact was only discovered after we’d paid for him and brought him home.

Some panic ensued here for a while. I’m not clear on all the details, but there was some confused running up and down the hill between the house and the coop, some “WHERE IS YOUR FATHER?” being shouted back and forth, some “GO TELL YOUR FATHER TO BRING THE SHOVEL,” and some ear piercing wailing courtesy of the 6 year old, who was sure Ethel was that snake’s belated 4th of July chicken picnic dinner.

I do remember grabbing the flashlight from Riley, and showing The Hubby where the snake had cozied up to the sleeping chickens. I found the snake’s head, and because I like to think myself some sort of pit viper expert (mostly just because I really like saying the words, “pit viper”), determined that he was not, in fact, a venomous snake. At least, he wasn’t a Texas venomous snake. You know, you can never really be sure that someone didn’t buy one of those exotic ultra-deadly imports, get tired of supplying it with live rats, and release it into the wild. But in the heat of the moment, I was comfortable with my assessment.

Besides, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the snake that only a few weeks before had leapt out at me as I tried to determine whether itwas venomous. If you heard that story, you will remember that the hubby didn’t wait for my answer before severing the beasts head from its body.

Now, I am not a snake hater. In fact, I really like snakes. They eat nasty rodents. Nasty rodents that invade your garage and make nests in boxes of wedding keepsakes that you have no choice but to throw away because there is no amount of sanitizing that is going to take “rodent” out of a bouquet of silk flowers. I have coffee mugs that I’ve bleached, scalded, and run through the dishwasher ten times, and I still can’t bring myself to drink out of them. I save them for company.

But a snake’s gotta know his place. Me, human. Dominion over all the animals. You, snake. Crawl on your belly on the dust of the earth. And leave my chickens alone. Genesis, right?

So I have my flashlight expertly trained (it’s an art) on the snake’s head, while The Hubby deftly pins him to the chicken wire with the shovel. Now, chicken wire isn’t really the firmest of surfaces. The snake is pinned, but The Hubby can’t really do any severing, because there’s too much give. The snake isn’t really contemplating the give factor of chicken wire; he’s just looking for something to hold on to. And it just so happens that the closest thing to him is…Ethel.

Before I knew what was happening, the wily serpent had his body wound around Ethel’s body. Ramie is watching out the back door in tears. I’m still feeling mommyguiltfrom having to put the cat down last month; no way am I going to be able to face the 6 year-old and tell her the snake killed her chicken.

So I did the only thing I could do. I grabbed the snake. Of course I did. Doesn’t that sound just like the kind of idiot thing I would do? “How’d ya get those two holes in your arm, Ashley?” “Oh…see there was this snake…” So I have a hold of the snake, and he’s coiling tighter around the chicken, and I’m worrying that my pit viper identification skills far outweigh my constrictor identification skills, and it hits me that I’m not sure which way to pull the snake. I mean, there aren’t really any directional markers on a snake, no easy way to tell “front” from “back”. Wrong way, and I’ve tightened the noose.

Now, the chickens have evidently been to the Jurassic Park T-Rex school of Snake Avoidance, because during this whole time, Ethel does…not…move. None of them do. They are still as bricks. Puffy feathered bricks. Kind of like the squirrel scene in Christmas Vacation, where Diane Ladd is laying unconscious on the floor, and Chevy Chase whispers, “Mom—don’t move!”  (Yes, I just fit two completely different movie references into one paragraph. My blog, my rules to break…).

So as I’m trying to solve the Chinese rope puzzle that is the snake, I say to The Hubby, “Whatever you do, don’t let it get away.”  To which he replies—

“TOO LATE!”

Now, I ask you: does the snake go for the guy who’s been trying to separate his spine at the base of his skull? No. He goes for the crazy woman who has ahold of the rest of his body. So the snake makes a go at me, I throw him to the ground and grab a rake—which The Hubby commandeers, because evidently my rake handling skills don’t live up to my snake handling skills—and The Hubby chops his head of with the shovel. I like to think he put extra vengeance into the act; you know, like “Take THAT, you vile viper. Try to bite my wife, will you?”

I have no pictures of the snake. So I can’t disprove The Hubby’s claim that the snake was only 4 feet long, not 6. And there is no video of the event, either, so The Hubby can’t prove I said anything stronger than, “Oh my goodness.” His word against mine….

3
May

An open letter to the male of the species….

   Posted by: Ashley Moreno   in Marriage, random funny stuff

I am directing today’s message directly to the male of the species, specifically to those who inhabit a dwelling shared with one or more females of the species.

It may have thus far escaped your notice that we women are plumbed differently than men. This difference in equipment dictates that we do not have regular occasion to lift that ring of contention known as “the toilet seat.” That’s not to say that there aren’t those among us who, at some point during our formative years, didn’t experiment just to revel in the liberation of  carrying out certain necessities of nature while standing upright. But such attempts are generally one-time occurrences, being met with varying degrees of failure  and subsequent clean-up efforts.

And coincidentally, it is the very topic of “clean-up efforts” that concerns us today. For you see, having but rare motivation to lift the seat, those of us who lack a Y chromosome are ignorant—perhaps blissfully so—of the ecosystem which from time to time lays claim to the territory below. In fact, it is generally a great shock when we do find ourselves exploring the porcelain realm of man and discover the proliferation of flora and fauna establishing their colonies like coral along the Great Barrier Reef.

While diversity of life is to be celebrated in the ocean or the rainforest, the underside of the toilet seat is a different matter entirely.

It’s called a Clorox wipe. Would it kill you to use it?

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8
Apr

Running away from home….

   Posted by: Ashley Moreno   in Chaos, Parenting

I am running away from home. Don’t try and stop me.

As far as my destination is concerned, I’m not all that picky. Some less-traveled European berg along the Normandy coast, some as-yet-undiscovered-by-tourists island where locals sit at brightly-painted cantina tables swapping stories. Or Morocco. Would I have to wear a burqha in Morocco? Just someplace where the passage of time is unimportant. Somewhere without schedules. And without laundry.

I’m not sure exactly which straw broke the proverbial camel’s back. Maybe it was the child who swore that he’d already unloaded the dishwasher, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

Or maybe it was the shopping cart that rolled off the curb while I was putting groceries in the car, tipping over on its side, leaving two dozen eggs to hemorrage slowly on the blacktop…

…or the myriad cross-county trips in a vehicle with a broken air conditioner…

…or the fact that after an entire winter of complaining about the fact that the cold weather had rendered my garage-door opener  just that—an OPENER, and not a CLOSER, which meant that I had to get out of the truck, pull the release cord, jump up and grab the door and pull it down by hand (no small feat since there isn’t a handle on the outside of the door), and then upon returning home had to squeeze my fingers underneath the closed door and lift it all the way up, then fight to get it back on track so it would stay open for me to back the truck in (inhale)—after all these months, the release cord BROKE, so now the garage door opener is just a big black box o’nothin’ hanging from the ceiling…

…or the dog who managed to wrap her chain around me before bounding toward the yard, nearly severing my leg at the ankle, or the senile cat who’s taken to jumping up on the kitchen counter and drinking out of my water cup, knocking it over in the process.

Or maybe—just maybe—it was the fact that Mason not only learned to say “SHUT UP!” this week, but also how to turn doorknobs, which is oh-so-convenient since I didn’t realize when we built the house that we were going to have another child so I picked the interesting, egg-shaped doorknobs that don’t fit inside the plastic keep-your-child-from-opening-doors covers; OR the fact that I have had it UP TO HERE with packing a school lunch every morning for the 6 year-old who is neither a sandwich person nor a macaroni-&-cheese person, nor a—well, you can pretty much just fill in that blank with anything other than candy, because I have yet to find out what kind of person she is; OR the fact that the 14 year-old has tricked-out her trademark eye-roll by adding a Clint Eastwood-style upper-lip sneer; OR the 10 year-old who agreed to play with the 6 year-old on the condition that she pay him in Easter candy….

You know I could go on….

In the tumultuous years between junior high and high school, I planned to run away several times. We had a heavy, solid wood double garage door that sounded like a freight train when it opened, so I’d prop a tire underneath it before I’d go to bed, thinking I could just slide underneath unnoticed. I always changed my mind. But once I was so mad at my father that I actually snuck down to the garage with my packed duffle bag, only to find the door closed and locked, the tire propped up against the wall. That was the end of my runaway aspirations.

During a summer trip to Europe, I ditched my school group and hopped the train across Germany to visit the blond Bavarian guy I’d fallen in love with in West Berlin. There was something so liberating about being on my own at that point in my life. The next morning, my roommate called to tell me I’d better get my butt back to the hotel, because she was running out of things to tell the chaperone about where I was.

I read a short story once. I mean, I’ve read more than one short story, of course. I’m just referring to one in particular. I think it was in my Good Housekeeping magazine. My mother keeps renewing my subscription. I guess she’s hoping one day maybe it will elevate my housekeeping to the realm of “good,” or at least, “okay.” So far…notsomuch. But I really love the magazine, so I hope she doesn’t give up on me just yet.

I was going somewhere with that…Oh, yeah—short story. Got it. Anyway, it was about this woman who runs away from home. She checks into a hotel, orders room service, goes to the spa, watches whatever the heck she wants on tv without anyone complaining that Suite Life on Deck is on and it’s an episode they’ve only seen 17 times. She actually—get this—puts her dishes out in the hallway for someone else to wash when she’s through with them. And she gets to eat her own dill pickle spear without three sets of forlorn eyes begging her for it. And she can have a glass of wine at lunchtime because she’s not going to have to drive to pick anyone up from school. Her family calls to ask when she’s coming home…and she tells them she doesn’t know.

In the end, of course, she packs her bags and catches a cab to the airport, where I’m certain she must have had a few lemondrop martinis before boarding. She probably convinced herself that her family would have a renewed sense of appreciation for her when she returned, that they would start putting their own dishes in the dishwasher and feeding the dogs without having to be repeatedly reminded over the course of 3 hours.

And I’m pretty sure she was right…for a day or two.

Up until last June,  I hadn’t spent a night away from my kiddos in nearly 14 years. Hadn’t woken up to a child-free house, hadn’t gone a day without somebody calling me from across the house to come wipe at least one body part. So when one of my writing buddies asked if I was going to the Writers’ League of Texas annual Writers and Agents Conference, I couldn’t help but feel that twinge of exhilaration at the thought of going off on my own for a few days. A hotel room. Alone. No noise. Nobody calling me to come wipe anything.

So I went. And it was wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that when it came time to pack my bags on Saturday night, I was a little sad. I missed my family terribly—I called home several times a day just to hear their voices. But I could have used one more day—just one more day of quiet. I spent a few hours that last night just sitting on the bed doing nothing. It was blissful.

Back at home the next day, I was greeted by an offensive-line worthy rush at the door. There were some shouts of “MOMMY!!!” and “yea!!!” and “I missed you so much!” There were eight arms wrapped around me and a couple of sets of feet trying to climb up me. And somehow I managed to hug all four of them at the same time while dragging them to the couch for some much-needed snuggle time. It’s amazing how much you can miss somebody—a bunch of somebodies. And we haven’t even gotten to the ‘welcome home’ I got from The Hubby yet. And we’re not going to, either.

So maybe I don’t want to run away. I mean, these people might drive me crazy at times, but I love them. Fiercely. I’ve got a pretty sweet gig. Not a day goes by that they don’t prove once again how much God must love me to have planted me squarely in their midst. And while I realize I need some alone time now and then, for the most part, whatever I do is better when I do it with them.

But if I suddenly turn up missing, you might want to check Starbucks….

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