The Maltese Starling

So, no shit, there I was.

The guys were working late again, and I was worn down to the nub from a day of Wendy pecking me to death with her questions and songs and lookatmelookatmes. I had a kid, a teenager, a baby-daddy, and a hippy to feed, and I was a gamut of emotions, from A to B.

I started dinner, anyway, and things were starting to look up. I was riding the euphoric crest of the SuperMommy wave. The cards were all falling right, and there was a nice pile of blue and yellow chips on the table.

For bright, shining moment, I was that hill of beans I knew I could be-sauteing mushrooms for my fancy coq au vin with one hand, paying our unpaid Comcast bill over the phone with the other, shouting directions to the Duck on the potty: "Turn on the light! Now Wipe! Three squares is fine! Yes you CAN. You're a BIG GIRL now!"

And then this bird flew into the kitchen.

Flew down the chimney in the living room and into the kitchen. A bird.

Of all the kitchens in all towns in all the world...

This was a bird like any other bird, only more so. It was diving and swooping around my head, feathers flying, and crashing into the windows, and leaving little splats of bird grease all over the glass. It flew at the stove, and I threw my phone at it. So much for the Comcast bill.

The cats were suddenly everywhere all at once-skittering over the counters, leaping over each other, flinging themselves into space with claws (or paws) flying. Chaos.

You learn a lot in this crazy, mixed-up world of Stay-at-Home Mommying. You learn that sometimes, you're not playing a game of life; life is playing you, with a deck of marked cards, and the stakes aren't any blue and yellow chips. They're dynamite, see? Dynamite strapped to flying birds in your kitchen.

You learn that life will slap you in the face and you'll take it....and like it.

Because when your elegant feast is in peril, and your kid is hollering "Who's in trouble? Why are you yelling fuck? Don't say shit, Mommy! WIPE ME!" and you are holding back a ninety-pound dog while trying to fling an afghan over a BIRD IN YOUR KITCHEN...

...you have an epiphany.

Nobody is coming to your rescue. No one is putting you on a plane to anywhere, not today, not tomorrow...but that's good. No one to save you means you get to be the hero.

And I got this, baby. I'll bag the bird and wipe the kid and cook the food and herd the cats. I'll feed everyone, put the food away, pajama my Duck, and Windex the feather grease. Later, I'll go pick the broken vase out of the herb garden where I knocked it whilst wrestling the window open with one hand. I will laugh out loud at the teenager's outrage over the internet being cut off for 48 hours.

And then I'm having a drink, because I'm one hardboiled skirt who deserves one.