No Domestic Goddess Here
©Lisa Barker

I was enjoying a cinnamon bun candle – one of my favorites. It looks and smells so real I couldn’t help myself and leaned in closer, taking a deep breath. Zzzt. Zzzt.

I didn’t know you could inhale a candle flame but apparently that’s what I did and now I have no hair in my left nostril. I know, because I checked, fascinated by my idiocy.

So if you start reading warning labels on candles that caution, “Inhaling flames can be hazardous to your health,” then you know who the fool was that did the unthinkable to warrant such a statement.

I’m a burn magnet. I have burn marks along my hairline beneath my bangs. No candles were used for that feat, just a hair iron on wet hair. The heat is so intense it makes the water sizzle right down to the root.

Even though I stay at home and have nowhere to go in a hurry each morning, I still can’t wait for my hair to dry first. And yet, I’m surprised each time I try to iron wet hair and it goes badly. I haven’t lost any hair yet, only a few layers of skin. I do this two or three times a week.

I am a magnet for domestic disasters. You should have seen the carpet in our living room before we tore it out and replaced it with laminate flooring. There were patches of melted carpet where the vacuum cleaner hovered too long while I used the attachment to pull threads on the sofa – I was trying to clean, really I was.

So naturally I chose motherhood as a fulltime career. There’s nothing more disastrous and death defying.

Each night I always manage to dip at least two fingers in boiling oil or water, steam my face while draining pasta or burn my wrist on the oven rack while preparing dinner.

I can’t imagine my high school calling me up to join them for career day.

I went to school with people who now work for the National Institute of Health or write books on the development of man’s collective religious conscience. I don’t think there’d be anyone lining up at my table to hear about the life of a homemaker. Not because there’s anything wrong with being a homemaker. But look who’s doing the job at my house.

Take that candle I was sniffing. It might have been accident, a mere ‘oopsie’ on my part. Everybody makes ‘oopsies.’ But who burns the hair out of one nostril and then immediately contemplates taking another deep whiff to burn out the other side and make it even?

I’m not a rocket scientist. I’m not a domestic goddess. I’m Slapstick Sally.

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Jelly Mom™ is written by Lisa Barker, author of “Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane…Doesn’t Mean You Are A Bad Parent!” and syndicated through Martin-Ola Press/Parent To Parent. To publish Jelly Mom, buy the book or leave comments, please visit http://www.jellymom.com.