Exploding Things

This morning my daughter decided she wanted to play a game with plastic toy soldiers and giant legos that emulated a Wii game she likes to play with her brother.  The game is TANKS and it's basically a shooting and war game.   She asked me to play with her and I agreed, but after a couple of minutes I said, "you know I love you but this is a really boring game."  So she went and woke up her brother even though I asked her not to do so, and then he wouldn't play it with her either and so there was a big exploding argument between them.  Now the kids are in their own rooms and it's quiet and neither tanks nor kids nor mom's head are exploding.  Welcome to Saturday morning.

Breakfast just came out of the oven.  It's not hummus.  The kids think hummus is gross.  They still think kissing is gross, too, so what do they know?  Breakfast is crescent rolls, the kind that you make by first taking the paper off the roll and then banging the cardboard against the edge of the counter until it, well, explodes.  I LOVE doing that.

Apparently a bad batch of hummus can explode, too.  Fermenting bean juice in a closed container past the Best By date is potentially a weapon of mass destruction.  I've yet to experience this first hand myself, thank goodness.

I have had a battery explode in my kitchen once.  Actually it was when I lived in Ecuador in a two room "chozita" which means "little hut."  You may wonder why a hut would need to be identified as little.  Well, this was little even as huts go.  My kitchen was also my bedroom, living room, and library.  The other room was the bathroom, shower, laundry room.  I could almost cook from my bed.  So.  One day my camera battery died.  It was a weird kind of little battery not readily available in Ecuador, and I was kind of distressed because I liked taking a lot of pictures.  My man told me you could get a new battery like that in Ambato, an hour away by bus.  I was so bummed that I actually listened to him when he also said you can warm up a dead battery and it will last longer.  In a fit of magical thinking I agreed to let him heat it up on top of the stove in a skillet.  About the time I started to have second thoughts and really I'm sure I was about to say "nevermind, this seems like a really bad idea..." there was an explosion and black chemical dust settled all over the kitchen bedroom library room.  On me and my man and my books and my bed.  ACK!  Did I explode?  Yes, I confess I did. 

But I lived to tell about it, marry the man (more magical thinking), later divorce him ("never mind this seems like a really bad idea..."),  and come to love hummus.  And become friends with the man over the raising of our kids who play with tanks, and are now out of their rooms and playing nicely by my side.

When the kids were toddlers we would sit together on the love seat by the front window in the mornings and drink coffee (me) and juice (them) and say "This is the good life."  Last night the man stopped by in the evening to play a little Nerf Basketball with the boy, then stayed to sit on the couch and have a glass of wine and some homemade hummus with me.  And he said "This is the good life."  Which in a strange way, it really is.