The condo my parents have rented for a couple of months is part of a golf resort on St Simon’s Island, Georgia. A few days ago, we noticed that the plumbing was not working particularly well. As in, when someone took a shower on the second floor, the first floor bathtub backed up and overflowed. Plumbers were called, pipes were examined, and we were told they would return with additional equipment to fix the problem.

Except that the problem couldn’t be fixed. At least not for a while. So the rental office offered us the keys to the vacant condo next door to address all our water needs. Which was a lovely solution. We just needed to swing by the rental office to pick up the keys.

As we were driving back from the grocery store, I reminded mom to stop by the rental office to pick up the keys. As we got closer to the turn, I pointed out the left hand turn that led into the parking lot. True, it was dark. True, the road wasn’t very well lit. But that didn’t prepare me for what was to come next.

She slowly drove past the road that led to the parking lot. I started to say something when she quickly turned left. Right into the yard of the rental office. She whipped her head towards me and said, “This isn’t a road!” as if it were my fault. I was momentarily stunned into silence. “Ummm. No. The road is about, oh, 20 feet behind us. Where I, um, asked you to turn.” Intuition warned me not to laugh, as humorous as I found the situation.

She harrumphed and proceeded to do a three point turn, on the beautifully manicured lawn, approached the road, and drove into the parking lot. It it weren’t dark, I’m sure I would have seen a “Keep Off the Grass” sign.

As we were driving to St Simon’s Island, the place where my parents are temporarily living, my dad casually mentioned that their neighbors were celebrating 100 years of marriage. I thought about this for a moment, somewhat befuddled, and asked for more details.

“Well, she was married for 54 years. And he was married for 45 years. Both of their first spouses passed away, and then they met and got married. And today is their one year anniversary. So between them, they’re celebrating 100 years of marriage.”

I like it.

Seeing Past What it Seems

I can so relate to Allison at Motherhood, WTF. Sometimes you just don’t have the energy to deal.

I used to be married to a Greek man. Who traveled a lot for work. Whose mother would visit us and make the most delectable Greek food – spanakopita, moussaka, baklava. At the end of one of her visits, she left us with a refrigerator full of delicious treats. As well as a pan of baklava – sticky, honey-ey, sweet baclava – on the kitchen counter.

She returned to her home in a neighboring state. My ex-husband flew to his work site,  to return in a week. And I went to my job at Oracle. It was a particularly stressful time at work and we were under a tight deadline. I ended up pulling an all nighter, returning to our house mid-day the next day.

I opened the front door and could sense movement. I gingerly walked through the foyer, into the dining room. And there I saw them.

Ants.

Millions and millions of ants. They formed a solid black ribbon from the back study, through the master bedroom, through the guest bedroom, down the hall, through the dining room, into the kitchen. Destination – baklava.

I, like Allison, started screaming. I didn’t know what else to do. There were way more of them than me. I grabbed a can of Raid and doused the house. And there lay millions of dead ants in my house.

I couldn’t deal. I knew that eventually I would need to vacuum, or mop, or do something to dispose of the millions of ants. But in that moment, I was exhausted. I could not face the task. I could not stand to be in the house.

So I booked myself into the nearest spa, got a massage, and spent the night there. Sometimes, you just can’t be Superwoman.

I’m back in the United States, coming down with something – a cold, a flu, something that makes me tired and wanting to sleep a lot. I have the urge for homemade chicken soup. I find myself in the poultry section at the grocery store. A whole chicken seems like the right ingredient.

Until.

I’m back in my kitchen. And I remember the choice I made during my first year out of college, working as a public school teacher in North Carolina for $12,000/year. I lived paycheck to paycheck, with very little money for extras. And yet, for some reason, I decided that I would only buy pre-cut, de-boned chicken. I didn’t want to deal with carcasses. My mother had tried to teach me how to work with a whole chicken and I just wasn’t interested.

And now I wish I had listened to her. The recipe calls for a whole chicken to be cut into eight pieces. I struggle, I pull, I hack and that chicken is not budging. It is as determined to stay whole as I am determined to butcher it. I pull out my Joy of Cooking cookbook, hoping the illustrated step by step instructions would offer assistance. No luck.

And now I have another choice to make. Because I want to know how to de-bone a chicken. Either fly my mom out to San Francisco for a week to belatedly teach me what I wouldn’t listen to years ago. Or enroll in cooking classes.