Caught Blue Handed!

Yep, it happened. Why Blue handed? Mostly because Erik and I (me after making it through an entire day and morning on program) resorted to our typical crutch when fate gives us another knee to the groin…FOOD! Just before we got the phone call from the school to pick Tanner up, I had shown Erik a picture of one of those cookie cakes someone had just posted in my feed on FB. I remarked that I felt posting of said picture by a supposed “friend” mandated immediate removal from my friend’s list because they obviously could care less that I was in sugar withdrawals and resisting the urge to cheat when every fiber of my being was crying out for a sugar fix. Then I realized that said “friend” was just innocently posting a picture of her nephew’s birthday “cake” and I should probably cut her a break since she probably had no idea I was back “on the wagon” for the eleventyith-hundredth time this year. Let’s just blame it on low blood sugar shall we?

So, we get this phone call from the school, Erik dashes off to bring our happy wanna-be-felon home, and I sit there in a daze reliving our last tussle with the law. The prospects were not at all humorous at the time, but I’ve had a few days and as we always seem to do, struggle to find humor wherever I can. No matter how inappropriate it might be for a parent to find humor in something so serious, if it keeps us from retreating to our beds for the next month it has to be worthwhile right?

Erik gets home with Tanner, we have a short talk with him where we try to discuss what happened but can see by the glazed look in his eyes that he is comprehending NONE of what we are trying to get across which is pretty typical. Seeing that isn’t working, we decide to restrict him for the rest of his life to the dog crate and tell him we hope he likes bunking with Thunder from here on out. That’ll learn him!

No….of course we didn’t, but it is honestly what I wanted to do with him when he got home…put him somewhere to keep other people safe, but also somewhere I can keep HIM safe as well. *sigh* This kid is going to be the death of me I’m tellin’ ya.

What we did do is take away all his earthly possessions and tell him he was going to be our slave for the next three days. He’s actually done fairly well and helped with all kinds of household projects including cleaning the kitchen, his room, organizing his closet and more. He did most of it with very little arguing even though he knew he wasn’t making a dime off any of the extra chores. One thing we both noticed is how much calmer he is when he doesn’t have video games and TV. This realization also prompted us to drastically limit his time on both once the restriction is lifted.

I’m sure you are wondering where the blue-handed thing comes in aren’t you? Well, once we got him home and up in his room, we were ready for lunch. At that point, I wasn’t feeling any kinds of humorous about the situation. I flat out didn’t care about my diet so I told Erik to go get BBQ for lunch. He came home with BBQ AND two of these HUGE cookie monster cookies (oh yeah, side story: erik read the blog from yesterday and said “Thanks for making me look like a lush! I EAT TOO!” so there you have it folks, Erik is a lush AND a glutton…so sorry to have given you a false impression that he only had one vice…he has two. Is that better Erik?). They were made out of TWO chocolate chip cookies, filled with icing and then topped with more icing in the bluest blue so that it looked like cookie monster’s face. They were probably full of way more trans fats than anyone should eat in a year, much less at one sitting, but WE DIDN’T CARE…I’m tellin’ ya..could care less!

After lunch, like two true addicts, we whip out the cookies and hearing Tanner getting restless upstairs, start to eat them as quickly as we can. Erik finishes first and runs to the bathroom to wash his hands (there was no way to eat this thing carefully ya’ll).
From the bathroom I hear

Erik: “Oh Shit”
Me: “Wha wrng?” I ask with a mouth stuffed with cookie monster cookie.
Erik: “My lips and teeth are BLUE! And it’s NOT COMING OFF!”
Looking at my hands caked in blue icing I utter some kind of non-verbal ???
Tanner from upstairs: Mom? Dad? What’s going on down there, you ok?”
Erik: “Holy fuckballs! He’s coming down, put that somewhere!!”
Sitting there with blue hands and I’m assuming a blue mouth and bright blue teeth
Me: “Where?”
Erik: “Forget it! I’ll go up and stop him and brush my teeth. Hurry up and finish and then take care of your face because you are one hot mess!”

We both start laughing hysterically as he races up the stairs and I try to destroy the evidence as quickly as I can (not before pausing to take pics for the blog though…always thinking about you guys :) I get my pics and then finish it off (you didn’t think I was being literal about destroying it did you?) and head to the bathroom to see what damage it did. Un..real. I looked like a freaking toddler having their first piece of birthday cake instead of the almost 40 year old adult I am. After brushing my teeth and scrubbing my face and hands, I still wasn’t able to get it all off. Luckily Tanner wasn’t being all the incredibly observant and we got away blue-handed! We just won’t talk about the rainbows our toilet saw for the next two days. That would just be gross.

Well shoot: I was going to insert a pic of my blue fingers here, but it's uploading HUGE! It isn't as impressive as I thought it would be anyway. You get the idea though ;) thanks for reading!