It's Always Something

A friend invited the kids and I to dinner tonight. I offered to bring dessert.

Now, I'm no gourmet, but I can cook. No one's ever died from eating it, so I take that as a positive.

I decide on cheesecake. A real cheesecake. I mean, who doesn't like cheesecake? I bake it for an hour, according to the recipe. The sides are set but the center is soft. As I remove the sides of the springform pan, a little crack appears along the edge. By some miracle I manage to remove the sides while keeping the cake in tact. Disaster narrowly escaped. I leave it to cool on the top of the stove and go back to chasing my brood of wild monkeys.

I return about ten minutes later to find my perfect cheesecake defiled. The crack gave way to an avalanche of cream cheese filling and buttery, graham cracker crust, laying in a heap on the top of my freshly scrubbed rangetop (See how clean it is? Looks pretty good, huh?).

So what do I do now?

I grab a fork and eat the part that fell off. Occupational hazard, you know.

We take the scarred cheesecake and head out to our friends' house. Dinner was delicious. The cheesecake was scrumptious, even if it wasn' t pretty. We had a great time eating, chatting and playing games. Around 8:00 Baby starts to fall apart. Bedtime. So, after saying I need to go about five times, I finally make it out the door with my traveling circus sometime around 9-ish.

It's almost completely dark when we pull in the driveway. Baby has fallen asleep, of course, and the other two are nice and whiny. All I want to do is get them in the house and put them to bed. I juggle the leftover cheesecake, Baby and my keys, performing a spectacular feat 0f skill and agility to get the door unlocked. The door swings open and I smell it.

Gas.

It's not just a slight odor. It is thick in the air. I immediately turn and tell the kids to get out in the yard. My heart is racing as my mind plays pictures of my house exploding. I don't know what to do. I go back in, leaving the front door wide open. I enter the kitchen to find one of the knobs turned ever so slightly. No flames. Just gas. I turn it off and head out into the yard with the kids. I call my husband at work, who goes into drill sergeant mode. I go back in and open the back door, as he instructs me to do. He tells me to leave it for three minutes and call him back.

It's dark. It's hot. And we're all being eaten alive by giant, killer mosquitoes. The kids think it's great. They are running up and down the driveway like it's one, big, happy, night at the park. I, on the other hand, am a nervous wreck. I call my friend - the one I just had dinner with - to tell her what has happened. She suggests I call the fire department, just to see what I should do.

Yeah, that would be good.

But instead of just giving me instructions over the phone, they send out the truck. Sirens, lights, the whole shebang. This brings the neighbors out of the woodwork. So I have to tell my story a few hundred times more while the fireman check out my house.

Luckily, I had washed dishes and picked up the living room before we left. However, the litter box needed to be changed. But they probably didn't notice the smell, seeing as the house was filled with deadly, noxious gas and all.

Yet another exciting day in the life of a supermom.

After finally getting the kids all tucked in, I watched the news to what other exciting things were happening in this fine city. Top Story: Woman has her toes licked in Wal-Mart parking lot.

No, I did not make that up.

See, it could always be worse.