Tuesday, November 6, 2012

This Woman's Issues

Yesterday, for more reasons than I care to consider, I was beat down.   So I did what I do best in these hardest of times, I crawled into bed, talked to a friend, puzzled, processed, and proceeded to move down to the kitchen to prepare power/comfort food.  Burgers, red-meat, 100% Angus beef, iron rich and about to be grilled to perfection.  And what goes best with one of my famous burgers?  Fries, fresh cut wedges of Idaho’s best, deep-fried and sea salted.  Cure for what ails me, at least temporarily.

As I’m preparing the fries, or trying to toss the second batch of a few fresh cut wedges into the splattering grease, my darling son is attempting to take a fry.  This is not a good scene.  Well it was, until he decides he needs it to be a smidge browner.  He wants to throw it back into the hot splattering grease while I’m near by.  While I’m near by maybe slightly on high alert and edgy.  Tweaky and twitchy and about ready to pounce, eyes all a flutter.  One false move and voila grease fire and ultimate death…I yelp or squawk or do whatever the hell I do in these situations of high-alertedness under duress and protective wing nut mode.  I make sounds that are foreign and shrill-like. Short, quick sounds.  He stops.  A small splatter of grease hits the coils, a quick, shortly lived fire sparks.  I let him know not to ever do that.  He responds.  OK ready?  He responds:

“Sorry, I didn’t know you had that issue.” 

Sigh.   No really, siggggghhhhhhhhh.  What issue would that be I wonder?  That issue along with the long list of other issues?  What are my issues, pray tell, sweet, lanky, tall trusted one?  "Listen, Grasshopper," I want the wind to whisper deafeningly in his ear, "Never, but never, say to a woman in a kitchen with hot grease on the burner, anything about her issues, real, or imagined."  But I snarkily laugh and say something like, "Yeah, hrumph, that issue, the one about burning down the house with a grease fire?"  Oh, maybe he meant the issue of exaggerating fatalities and certain death from kitchen stove incidents.  I don’t reveal that I may actually have that issue.  I may have been honing it and nourishing it and stroking it into a manifestation of motherhood joy and elation.  It could have reached jubilee proportions by now.  The kitchen has seemed crowded with jubilation of late.

And of course I start to wonder about my issues and I am hard pressed to come up with a list of issues that would cause a stir or slight murmur…..Let’s see, issues….well I take issue with the lack of an Equal Rights Amendment as a woman and all.  I have an issue with the campaign rhetoric regarding women’s reproductive rights.  I have an issue with the lack of power I was granted throughout my divorce proceedings, but I suppose that one is related to the lack of power I have as a woman in general.  I have an issue with the tall sweet lanky one emptying the box of granola bars but leaving the empty box on the shelf.  But that’s not really an issue is it?  That’s just a fact of life, right? men being all big and strong except in the case of those super sized heavy pressed paper board empty boxes of granola bars, and cookies, and cereal….

Maybe I don’t want to make this list of issues.  Suffice it to say, I am a tad vocal about women’s issues and never, but never get behind me, to the side of me, or within a train cars distance of me and hot grease.  Or buy me a “fry-baby” and pour me a martini while bringing me my slippers.   
Dirty.  

Shaken.  

Issues?......  Me?  Never!

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