Sorry I burned your dinner; I was looking for the right emoji

What follows is a bit of satire for your pleasure... I’m sorry about the lasagna. I know you don’t like it quite so crispy, especially on top.

Believe it or not, while it was baking, I was texting you! I was making lasagna--your favorite. 💗 But how to put that all on 📣 to you without using too many words, because I know you said you hate to scroll. Gives you carpal tunnel while sitting at🚦.

So I figured emoji would be my friend! 😆

That’s why, the message read, “Making 🍝”--but then I thought that was kind of misleading. I mean, why would you leave work before 10 p.m. for spaghetti? So I went searching for an Italian flag emoji to elaborate.

Which is, I guess, when I neglected to hear the timer going off. 😮You know how immune to that I’ve become to the sound of the oven timer, especially after all the times you would tell me to set it when we’re about to have a 😡😡 because you didn’t want it to last more than 10 minutes. Of course, even when the timer was going off, you’d still be waxing on about how it’s all my fault; yet I’m supposed to just be all 😶 and 🙆 and 👸.

Basically, while I was searching for the Italian flag emoji, I ignored the oven timer. So, I just sent the text and then followed up with “🔝means lasagna, lol.”

That was partially a lie. I wasn’t actually laughing out loud. I wasn’t laughing at all. Because that’s when the smoke detector started blaring. I wanted to send you a text not to come straight 🏡 but I didn’t want to panic you. The whole 💥💭💂😖💨was my attempt at saying, “Gotta go.”

Now that I look back at that message, I can see why you immediately called and asked if a Russian spy had tried to kidnap me. That’s when I literally did LOL, except only for a moment because then I smelled burnt cheese ♨ and the kitchen started seriously 💨💨💨.

I started another text to you, but then I realized my time would be better spent calling 🚒

The dispatcher was prepared to walk me through using the fire extinguisher. 💦I looked for it under the sink and to my surprise, discovered your small but fine collection of women’s 👙👙👙. I suppose you never thought I’d be looking for a fire extinguisher since I myself am, as you say, “not exactly a nine alarm 🔥🔥,” but now it looks like there had already been a few in the house. ㈫🏡 ㈫

Sorry about the lasagna. 😂😂😂LOLOLOLOL.

That one time I got to rant on Fox Television

Thanks to Scott Moore at Fox 61 Chattanooga for the invitation to share my true feelings about school drop-off and pick-up. You may remember an extended version of this essay that appears here. MyFOXChattanooga

When your kids' jam is not your jam

Our girl has been singing Dynamite all day. When she is not singing that Taio Cruz song using all the wrong lyrics except for a strong repetition of Dynamite/AY-O/Let Go, she is humming it. Or whistling it. There is only one person who enjoys whistling and it is the person whistling. Everyone else is:

Pow-pow with that Dynamite. It was really proud-making, hauling my kids en route to Vacation Bible School this morning where they would spend the morning with throngs of children named Josiah and Jedediah and Jeremiah, all rocking their VBS camp shirts, eating little campfire-themed snacks and doing mini-campsite lantern crafts, singing around the proverbial campfire at the top of their lungs, "God's love is like an ocean!", while, in preparation, my kids were belting out:

We gon' rock this club, We gon’ go all night, We gon’ light it up, Like it’s dynamite!

I think it set just the right tone.

By dinner, Baby Girl was still doing her best rendering of Dynamite and, oddly, I was experiencing a similar set of explosives igniting in my frontal lobe. I usually have no problem in asking my children to cease doing the annoying thing, but the girl was just beyond. She didn't even realize she was singing it on loop, muttering unconsciously. Finally, as I stared across the table, I was trying to piece together a diversion from her club-thumping rhythms, when Little Man had just the right words.

He said, "Sis, do you have another jam?"

I wanted to smother-hug him and cover him with thousands of kisses. How sweet and polite is he? And also, how hip, to just ask little miss pop songstress if she had another track in her rotation.

Then, I realized. He was wondering if she literally had another jam.