Well, runny nose season is in full-swing at the House. At this very moment, I am the only person here who isn’t coughing, sneezing, snorting, dripping, or sniffing. Of course this could change very rapidly and then I could make my own contribution to the nasal cacophony around here.

Spring and fall are usually my noisiest seasons. I am allergic to trees (especially cottonwood, the devil’s tree), grass, ragweed, cats, mold spores, and some flowers. These allergies and their loathsome effects have been my seasonal companions for better than thirty years, so for portions of the year, my nose hates me. I also have a very sensitive sense of smell, I can smell things that no one else can. My nose has saved us from food poisoning several times. Maybe it’s my super-power, Super Schnauze to the rescue! My nose is also generally sensitive, I hate to have it touched, so naturally Mr. Prairie loves to poke at my nose.

One of the worst things I have ever had to do to treat my allergies involved using those nasal inhalers that are so popular now. It feels bad and leaves a funny taste in my mouth. But apparently there are some people who have way more fun with their noses than I. Which reminds me of my sister.

I don’t believe I have ever written extensively about my sister, but I really should, she’s hilarious! I will call her “Sissy” to preserve whatever tattered shreds of her dignity remain after she reads this story. Sissy is younger than me by six years, she’s married to Fireman and has two kids, my 14-year old nephew who I’ll just call Nephew because he’s at that easily embarrassed age, and my 6-year old niece I’ll call Flower.

Since there are six years between us, there were large swathes of our lives during which we were at vastly different stages and had nothing in common except shared ancestry. And to tell the truth, early on I was bitterly resentful of her mere presence in my life. I was happy, content, I had mom and dad to myself, and along comes this loud, smelly interloper who ruint everything! Things have become so much clearer now that I have two children, I understand my son’s feelings towards his sister, because I went through the same thing, which in turn has caused me to finally see and understand some of my own motivations and feelings way back then.

All very nice, Prairie, but what pray-tell is the point, you may ask? What does all this stuff about motivations have to with noses and your sister, you wonder? Wonder no longer. My sister shoved peas and shoe-string potatoes up her nose.

Of course she was four years old at the time, and the peas and shoe-string potatoes were two different nasal incursion incidents. I don’t know which was first, peas or potatoes, but the potatoes were nowhere near as entertaining as the peas so I won’t dwell on them. But I remember the pea-insertion incident like it happened yesterday.

My mom usually made very basic, meat-potatoes-vegetable dinners and she had a particular fondness for La Seur peas. Sissy did not share that fondness, and one evening she came up with a unique solution to the pea problem. Something, anything, had to be done with the accursed peas. Clearly they had to go, but where? Her nose seemed like the obvious hiding place. Because she was only four years old, Sissy didn’t really think through all the possible ramifications of shoving peas up her nose. At ten years old, I just mostly thought it was funny.

There was my little sister, with her big blue eyes and cherubic golden curls, furtively pushing peas up her nose. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen and still reduces me to tear-inducing laughter to this very day. I imagined the peas made a little vacuum sound as they each disappeared into her pert, little nose. Fwoop, there goes a pea, fwoop, and another! About five or six peas into this bizarre little ritual my mother finally noticed what was happening under her nose, or under my sister’s nose, rather.

And because it was her job to do so, my mother freaked out. After her usual operatic “NOOOOO!” mom got right to business. She and Dad held Sissy’s head immobile and used tweezers to remove the offending vegetables from her nose. Luckily they were able to get them all or we would have taken a little trip to the emergency room, which would’ve mortified my mother. Nothing embarrassed my mother more than taking imperfect children out in public, too bad she had human children; and peas up the nose definitely qualified as imperfect.

When they finally got around to questioning me about why I didn’t immediately report such atrocious behavior I was stumped for an answer. I’m sure I just shrugged and uttered the universal answer of busted kids, “I dunno.” I know now. At 10, I didn’t have the sophistication to understand that Sissy couldn’t be held to the standards to which I was held. And I resented her blonde perfection at a desperately awkward stage in my life. For just a little while negative attention was deflected from me and onto her, it was strangely gratifying to see her being scolded instead of “polishing her halo” as I once told my mom. But the overriding reason why I just sat and watched is because it was darn funny! It never occurred to me at the time that my mother might not think it was funny, too.

Today I discovered that the propensity for shoving stuff up one’s nose might possibly have a genetic component. Pumpkin has had a runny nose for about two weeks which developed into another ear infection, number two in as many months. We’ve been to the doctor, gotten her medicine, and indulged most of her whimsies, but she’s still pretty whiny.

We were relaxing together on the couch, I was perusing a blog I frequent and Pumpkin was playing with her “Yo Dabba Dabba” guys. She sprang to her feet, looked at me, flapped her hands and started yelling, “I CAN’T BREATHE!!!! I CAN’T BREATHE!!!!” Thinking she just needed to wipe her nose, I handed her a tissue. She looked at me, took her tissue, then she promptly tore a little piece off and tried to shove it up her nose. Because it is my job to do so, I freaked. After my own operatic “NOOOO!!!”, I pulled her in front of a window and tilted her head back. There were little pieces of tissue shoved up each nostril; she had managed this while sitting literally right under my nose!

So I put her on the couch and pulled the little tissue pieces out of her nose, very carefully. I thought that I had stopped her before she had managed to put much in there. I was wrong. Her nose was like a clown car–I would pull out what I thought was the last piece and there would be another piece right behind it! Finally I got the last, gruesome piece out of her nose. Then I went around and put all the tissue boxes up on tall windowsills and the like.

I’d say what I normally say when faced with the weirder aspects of parenting, “I swear this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” but I’ve seen it happen to someone else with my own two eyes. And right under our noses.

My supernatural klutz powers are as strong as ever. I’ve always been a klutz–that saying about not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time? That’s about me. But this week has been a veritable showcase of accidents.

Tuesday evening I stopped at the store for a few things and went through the express lane. Just as I was turning to leave I slipped on a puddle on the floor and nearly hit said floor. But I only hit the puddle with one foot, slipping while the other foot remained in its original position. So I ended up nearly in splits position on the floor, which is no small thing for a chubby 40-year old woman with a bum hip. As always, innocent spectators were appalled while it was no big deal for me.

Then on Wednesday morning I fell on the front porch. It was raining and the porch was wet, and I was retrieving the stroller from the car. I hit a slick spot and then hit the ground. When I fall out in public I make a real effort not to yell or scream or cry or yelp, that way fewer people take notice of my humiliation. But that morning I was at my own house and nobody else was in view, so did I ever holler! Hubby heard me while he was in the shower. I told him that I fell, again, but that I was ok. I wasn’t, but what was he supposed to do about it? My leg is feeling much better now, thank you, but I re-hurt the foot I tore a ligament in when I was preggers with Pumpkin. That is not a happy foot.

The central problem seems to be shortage of synapses. If I try to do too much or even think about too much while trying to perform some kind, any kind of physical task, something fails. Usually my feet. You see, my body wants me to give my full, undivided attention to every little physical task. Not that I blame it, every time I don’t remain perfectly motionless my body is in mortal peril. But I’m not sure that remaining perfectly motionless would solve the problem. I’m the kind of person who would be struck by a meteorite while sitting on her own couch.

Apparently, when I’m walking, I should only be thinking “Right foot left foot right foot left foot…” This also applies to simple things like making lunch.

Today, while making lunch, I experienced a synapse malfunction of epic fail proportions. Boil water, insert pasta, sounds easy right? But there was a problem–I wasn’t just thinking “Open bag of pasta, pour into water.” I was planning an anti-Palin post in my head, and then I started thinking about grating some Parmesan for the pasta and wondering where my rotary grater thingy was. The cheese was the last straw, the straw that broke the synapse’s back.

Somehow, only slightly less than half the bag of pasta ended up in the pot. The rest spilled on floor and on the stove top, right around the burner I was using. Just barely on time, I remembered to turn off the flame before I started a massive kitchen fire. I’m pretty disappointed, it was a bag of tri-color fusilli from Italy. My favorite. Still, Pumpkin and I did have enough for lunch. And it was good.

Now if only I could manage to stay upright.

We did an inordinate amount of running around this weekend, pretty much like always. We needed some stuff for the House and Hubby wanted some wine and wineglasses for Father’s Day. This was all on the whiteboard I keep on the fridge.

Along with some other things, all written by Hubby (except for ADAM, which was written by Monkey of course). He has the worst handwriting. To the untrained eye, our list may appear as this:

• Tvash Caus
• Smoke Detecnvs
• Surge Supressov
• ADAM
• o x o corn holders
• 11 choppers
• more chip clips
• wine
• wine glasses

Hug-and-Kiss corn holders? And don’t you think one chopper would be enough, even if you weren’t sure if we were talking about motorcycles, helicopters, or vegetable choppers. It’s that last one by the way.

We took the whole crew to Bed Bath and Beyond and came home with a bag full of this:

Apparently, the House is keeping OXO in business. The coffee mug and the (one) chopper are fairly self-explanatory, but I think some background will help on the other stuff.

Chip clips–I cannot tell you how many of these things I have thrown away, usually stuffed down in cereal boxes. We’re on about our tenth package of them. Hubby thought the big red ones would be good, he’s probably right, they are more noticeable. Maybe I won’t be so inclined to throw those away.

Corn holders–the set we bought last summer fell apart, because they cost about a dollar. And we’re gonna need them soon, it’s nearly time to go buy a couple of bushels of corn from Conrad Farms in Bixby.

Measuring cups and spoons–I don’t care for cooking, but I love to bake. Over the years, various pieces from my previous sets of cups and spoons have gone missing. The spoons have largely fallen prey to the garbage disposal, even some of the metal ones. The cups are a little harder to explain, I think one or two of them have been left in bags of flour. If it’s been a while since I baked anything, and there’s not much flour left in the old bag, I’ll start over with a new bag. It’s very likely that some cups have been thrown away with flour remnants.

We did buy two items not made by OXO–a little trash can for Monkey’s room (he loves having his own trash can and has been finding things to throw in it), and a sleep mask for me. I’m still debating whether I should wear it or not, at night of course.

That was yesterday. Today we went to a bookstore, finished grocery shopping, and ate an early dinner. Hubby took a nice, long Father’s Day nap when we got home. The kids absolutely did not stay quiet or calm, but he managed to sleep through all the ruckus.

After one of my many, futile tries at getting them to pipe down, I found this little guy.

For all the world, just sitting there, looking like he’s waiting for a bus. And then this:

The crime scene. And the culprit?

Pumpkin.

You know, that harried-mom-look. I really have to work on my facial expressions. A couple of weeks ago when we were at the grocery store, and my children were up to their usual antics, the cashier took a look at me and asked, “Are you o.k.?” Of course, I answered, “Uh, yes.” Now really, what am I supposed to say to that? Well, actually the little monsters are behaving even worse now than they did all day home, and let me tell ya honey, at home they were horrendous!

Tonight we planned to get carry-out from our favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican place but our plans were quickly dashed when we pulled up to an empty and dark building. The paper signs on the windows said they were closed due to the electricity being out. Still. (The storm that knocked out a bunch of people’s power was on Saturday morning.) So we went over to Utica Square and ate at Pepper’s, another of our favorite places. By the time our server arrived to take our drink orders the children were already fighting over the crayons. He asked us what we wanted and I said, “I’ll take a water and water for the kids, too.” He looked at me and asked, “How about a Margarita?” Surprised by the idea, I said, “Uh, o.k.” Then he quickly rattled off my options-frozen, to which I immediately and forcefully said, “NO!” He continued, “O.k., on the rocks and with salt?” I think I said yes to all that because that’s what I was served. Hubby must have ordered a pop, because it was delivered with the rest of the drinks, you know, the ones I remembered ordering.

So, this guy took a look at me and saw something in my face that just screamed “THIS WOMAN NEEDS A DRINK! STAT!” Well bless his heart for seeing it, because that Margarita was perfectly done and perfectly hit the spot. Hubby took a picture of me and my drained glass, with a caption of “Now happy momma” and put it on his Brightkite.

And I was “Now happy”, that drink really took the edge off. I am so at a place in my life where I get the “Valium Housewife”-thing. Not that I would do that stuff, but self-medicating with the occasional Margarita doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

Today, after its absence of too many weeks, the sweet song of the dishwasher is once again heard throughout the House. Music to my ears. Please forgive me, dishwasher, I’m sorry I ever called you “alleged dishwasher.” I swear that thing got offended and broke on purpose just to spite me. The whole broken aspect of the dishwasher was very minor and easily remedied and completely stupid that it was not resolved earlier, but I’ll discuss the specifics in a bit.

But first, I’d like to sing the praises of labor-saving devices in the home. With all the many things going on in my life and in my House, I don’t always (ok, hardly ever) get to keep the House as clean as I would like. Truth be told, I’m fairly lazy all on my own; left to my own devices, I would let the House get very cluttered. My clutter is of the books-and-papers variety and I have to force myself to go through it all and discard most of it when it gets overwhelming.

Now, add to my clutter one man and all the many messes that come standard with most of them. The trash bags that literally have to be blocking his way into the kitchen before he notices them. The towels and clothes that can land within inches of the hamper but never quite make it in. The cups and glasses and half-empty pop cans that land everywhere but my kitchen. The toilet paper rolls that never make onto the holder.

After eleven years, like water, we had reached our own level. We had found a comfort level somewhere between utter slob and clean-room. The dishes got washed, the food got cooked, the bathroom got cleaned, the clothes got laundered, all when they needed to happen. True, we did eat out somewhere close to all the time, but there was still plenty for both of us to do and plenty of us to do it.

Then, cue the dark foreboding music that signals doom, we had the kids. Kids are loud, smelly, messy little creatures that generate an enormous amount of filth. The astounding number of poopy or wet diapers, multiple clothing and bib changes for the spitters, multiple clothing changes for moms of the bazooka-barfers, meal-time mayhem, feces-throwing, and seemingly thousands of toys. And clean rooms never stay that way once the kids are out of bed.

So, I was not keeping up with the six thousand things that go along with keeping a household running smoothly. Then my nearly 10-year-old dishwasher broke. And all of a sudden the limited amount of housework I was able to stay on top of–got on top of me. I took my household labor-saving devices for granted and even grumbled about them when they didn’t deliver absolute perfection. Then one of them left me. It wasn’t a huge deal, just a little piece of plastic less than two inches long, but it presaged the collapse of my rickety little attempts at order. The plastic retaining bolt that attaches the lower spray arm assembly to the bottom of the dishwasher came apart–the threaded part detached from the top. I found a place online that carried a replacement part but, as the threaded half of the bolt was still lodged in the machine and I didn’t know how to remove it, I didn’t order it.

How hard can it be to do all the dishes by hand? I don’t know how housewives did this job a hundred years ago, before dishwashers and vacuums and washing machines and Swiffers. Cleaning up after the meals was arguably one of the easiest parts of the job for your average early 1900’s housewife, even without hot and cold running water. Here am I, spoiled little 21st century mom, beaten to a pulp by a sink full of dishes when my 100-years-ago doppelganger was extremely fortunate if she had one of the first electric washing machines, called The Thor, which was first mass-marketed in 1908. If she didn’t, laundry was a hard, heavy, all-day task. A sink full of dishes probably looked something like a trip down easy street to my past-times counterpart.

But to me, a sink full of dirty dishes meant too much time spent scrubbing by hand, not being able to keep an ear open to kids for too long, and a sopping wet shirt. Finally, after a busy holiday weekend during which I had no time to give over to hand-washing dishes, I decided to get serious about fixing my dishwasher. Now follows the embarrassing part of my sad tale. The part which has provided an inordinate amount of amusement for my husband.

I was convinced that the threaded part of the bolt was well and truly stuck down in and its removal called for some highly original thinking from yours truly. Rube Goldberg would be so proud of me. I had an elaborate scheme involving keyhole saws, epoxy, and pliers all planned out. Hubby scoffed at my idea, so I told him “Fine, you get in there and you figure out how to get the damn thing out!” He didn’t. Until Sunday when I couldn’t take it anymore and I made him take a look at it. So he gets in there, I hold the flashlight on it, and he starts poking around what’s left of the bolt. Then he says, “This seems kind of soft, I wonder if I could just pry it out?” He gets a butter knife out of the drawer, has me hold the light just so, and starts doing something. I crouch down so I can see and he’s turning the butter knife, using it like a big screwdriver and just twisting the damnable think out! With a butter knife! !!!! So I say, “You are not!” Infuriating.

I called around today and found a place that carries that sort of thing and got to fix my dishwasher! But not before enduring much teasing at the hands of my husband and certainly not before he told the embarrassing tale to everybody he ran into at work this morning. Including the part about my Rube Goldberg ideas for removing the offending bolt. I asked him if everybody thinks I’m crazy now, he said that they just think I’m a girl, apparently forgetting that Goldberg himself was a, um, himself. Then he says, “Wait, wait. I just want to tell the story one more time!” And he does, including bits about “Epoxy and Popsicle sticks!” and “It took me, literally, under 60 seconds to take it out! With a butter knife!”

Well, it may have taken him under a minute to remove something that I had a hare-brained scheme all lined up to do the job, but it took me weeks just to get him in there to look at the thing. I seriously don’t know who I’m more peeved at–myself for all my complicated plans or him for removing the thing so easily. With a butter knife!

Anyway, I now have a working dishwasher again, and an empty sink. Because of a butter knife!

I meant to write about Mother’s Day weekend way before now, but such is life. Friday was my open house at nursing school, where I was inundated with valuable information; and I’m really glad they gave us paper versions of everything or I wouldn’t remember a word of it. Saturday was Monkey’s Day. We dropped Pumpkin off at my folks’ and took Monkey to his first movie theater movie. We took him to see “Speed Racer”, thinking the racing cars would be a good fit for his little racing mind. He made it through about an hour. He liked the huge bag of popcorn and the giant pop he shared with Mama (two potty trips, thank-you-very-much), but the movie was a little intense. About half-way through, he closed his eyes and told me he wanted to take a nap. That means he’s scared and doesn’t want to look anymore. So when we asked him if he wanted to leave he said, “Yes.” So we played an arcade game on the way out and took him to Peppers for lunch.

We sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather. And Monkey spilled salsa on my feet. After lunch, we made the much-dreaded trip to the mall. But we didn’t have a choice because that’s where the Apple Store and Sephora are. I got my Mother’s Day presents a day early–an iPod and a nice, long time browsing in Sephora all by myself. Not only did I get my mom some great philosophy products, but I also picked up some perfume for myself, V by Valentino. It’s yummy. Now, I am not the fanciest of girls, but I LOVE Sephora! It’s like a candy shop for grown women.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been a bit of a Luddite when comes to all this computer stuff. That is until I needed to get proficient, fast, for my first online class. Now I have three blogs (how’d that happen!) and pay bills online and shop online and can even put together a pretty good Word document. But the last personal music player I owned was back in probably 1989, a Walkman that played actual tape cassettes. Most of which were mix-tapes recorded for me by sympathetic friends. Now, I am the proud owner of Pinky, a (big shocker) pink iPod nano. She is named Pinky, not only for the obvious reason, but also for Pinky Tuscadero, ex-love of the Fonz. I always loved her, and ached to be that cool. Wow, that’s a lot of pink.

Last night I went to iTunes and bought my first 50 songs. No albums yet. And if I do say so myself, that is the oddest mix of songs; I’ve got everything from Ministry to Mozart. Lot’s of Eighties, some modern electronica, and very dark classical. Oh, and Johnny Cash covering NIN’s “Hurt.” Just odd, I tell ya.

After I downloaded all my new stuff, I played with my new iPod for about 2 hours. I was bouncing around to the music and Hubby started laughing at me. He told me I needed to go to the kitchen and make a sandwich, a la Terminator. I cracked myself up today, because after we dropped Monkey off at school and came home, I went into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. All while dancing around the kitchen and singing out loud to the songs. But alas, no cybernetic assassins from the future showed up. Just me and my sandwich, and Pinky.

Pepper’s Grill-1950 Utica Sq
Tulsa, OK 74114
(918) 749-2163‎
Yesterday, while Monkey was in school (shame on us!), Hubby and I took the Pumpkin out for lunch. We went to Pepper’s Grill at Utica Square. We could’ve been seated right away but chose to wait for a booth. Booths are great because the kids stay contained between the adults. I highly recommend this practice.

Hubby had the ridiculously large chicken strip dinner with a salad and baked potato. It comes with the best cream gravy evah. I had the cheese enchiladas covered with queso and accompanied by Spanish rice and re-fried beans. Tex-mex is one of their specialities. It was delish, and huge. Pumpkin had her usual grilled cheese sandwich and fries. But after she finished her sandwich, she snuggled up to me and proceeded to polish off the rice and beans that I couldn’t!

This is a great place to take kids, not just for the restaurant itself, but for its location. Utica Square is a great place to walk around and shop or just people-watch.

I give Pepper’s 5 out of 5 stars *****, and $$ for their moderate prices.

The Brook Restaurant 3401 S. Peoria Ave., Tulsa, OK 74105

Saturday was Hubby’s 43rd birthday and for his birthday lunch he chose one of our favorite places: The Brook. It’s technically a restaurant/bar but it is one of the best places in town to take the kids.

The Brook Restaurant used to be The Brook Theater, built in 1949 and one of Tulsa’s many outstanding examples of Art Deco architecture. And there are reminders of its storied past in its current incarnation. The entry way is graced with large photographs of the theater in its heyday and the original movie projector, which is larger than you might think. The bathrooms also appear to be in their close to original condition. The doors are marked “Bob” and “Sally”, which I find charming.

We tend to go early when the kids are still in good spirits, so we didn’t have to wait to be seated. We always choose booths because we can trap the kids on the inside (to keep them from terrorizing the nice people that never did anything to us). Monkey and Pumpkin entertained themselves with coloring pages and crayons and sugar packets while we waited for our Chips and Salsa. The chips were fresh and hot and the salsa, which was seasoned with the perfect amount of cilantro, had never seen the inside of a can or jar. The entrees arrived with a second round of chips. The kids loved their grilled cheese sandwiches and fries, as always. (Even though Pumpkin mostly uses her fries as a ketchup delivery system.) Pumpkin even ate some of her pineapple chunks.

Hubby had his favorite Spicy Chicken Tenders with Fries and ranch dip. His verdict: best chicken strips in town! I ordered my current favorite, Southwest Chicken Quesadillas (chicken, cheese and lots of it, black beans, tomatoes, ranch and chives with a side of salsa). The quesadillas were just overflowing and extra cheesy, these are not the sad, flat little things you’ll find at some chain restaurants.

The service, as always, was excellent, and it was busy! The atmosphere is great for families with small children. No one gives you “The Look” when they see you coming. There are TVs facing every corner of the place and they’re always tuned to sports. (Which is fine by me, even if I’m not a sports fan, it’s very engaging for the kids.) The overall atmosphere is loud and rumbly, perfect for loud, rumbly kids.

The prices are moderate and the portions are huge, we had enough leftovers for 2 lunches. I give The Brook 5 out of 5 stars and 2 dollar signs (for good value). ***** $$.