Monday, December 19, 2011

From Padawan to Jedi

Up here in Washington, there is a lot going on and much to talk about.  I'm sure I'll put my memory to use and talk about some of it here in the days to come.  I need to take some pictures.  Or at least paint a picture with words about this place.  The kids need some attention too.  I could cover the food fight we were having at the table the other night.  I'm sure I'll get to the mental meltdown I had the other night listening to christmas music.  Right now I gotta talk about Shelli, mother of the year.

When I was younger, she baby sat me.  And even then she was very domestic and tidy.  She went through the rigorous training of my mom giving her the assignment for the day.  Mom was like Mr Miyagi, just giving unreasonable jobs for the young learner to do-as training for the years ahead.  As it turns out, my mom was pretty particular about how to get stuff clean.  For example, she had Shelli clean the windows with razor blades on the parts where windex wouldn't cut it.  And that was just the start.

It seems that the table was being set for a domestic super force mega vortex of cleanliness and motherhood  back in the late 80's and early nineties.  She has now reached the unstoppable black hole event horizon where no mess can escape.  It's funny that she was influenced by my mom in so many ways, but the household here is so much different than the one I grew up in.  It's as if the old adage of do what I say, not what I do actually worked.

I think a good example of her domesticity was yesterday, when her dad was like, "this is the type of weather for grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup".  He said this to me in a kind of wistful, and off handed way, like, it'd be sweet if Oakland won the superbowl.  Welp, six minutes later, 7 of the cheesiest, golden brown grilled cheese sandwiches were whipped up with tomato soup.  Unbelievable.  At least it was to me.

She is a force.  She gets it done.  She is Shell-tonia.  And she wins.  Her training is complete and she is now a domestic Jedi.  She wills soup and sandwiches to being... Impressive.  Most impressive.

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