On the nights I work, I go in at 4 p.m. A few minutes prior, I drop the kids off at a drop-in daycare that charges $12 per hour. They are there for at least an hour and my mother picks them up and takes them home. However last Friday, she was out of town and that is usually Jeff’s day to stay out late. The kids were going to be at the drop-in daycare for at least 5 hours, almost 6 before Jeff could pick them up. At that rate, what’s the point in working.

I was in bind.

I know, I should just hire a babysitter. We had a babysitter last year, a real sweet high school girl that I have known since she was 11. While watching the kids, she decided to take a NAP and itty bitty Baby Troy crawled up the stairs while Zoe played Barbies in the living room. My mom came in the front door with groceries just in time to see 11 month old Troy, who couldn’t walk, tumble down the stairs like a sack of potatoes before coming to a stop by slamming his head onto the hardwood floor.

Needless to say, the babysitter was relieved of her duties.

So, last Friday in order to avoid paying $72 in drop-in daycare fees, I called in a favor to my ex-husband to ask him if he could watch the kids. Plural. Like including the one that isn’t his.

He actually said yes.

Zoe said they had fun and Baby T only cried once, when he got his crumbs on his hands and her dad didn’t know to wipe them off. Baby T does not like crumbs, he’s very tidy that way.

They also came home with this: Tackball.

I asked Zoe where she got it and she said she made it with stuff she found in her dad’s desk, stuff being 1,284 tacks and a ball.

This gives me a heart attack just looking at it. Why do you think a 22 month old would be interested in Tackball? Because he sees a buffet. Nevermind the $24,ooo worth of toys in our living room, a major UFC fight broke out in our house this weekend over Tackball because I took it away from them. Zoe opted to plead her case because she could see Tackball’s future was grim.

“Can I just play with it when Brother goes to bed?”

“You don’t understand, it’s an invention.”

And my favorite: “It’s not like I’m going to eat the tacks!”

There are a few things in life I’m sure of. The sun will rise and set everyday, I will breathe in and out (hopefully), the Earth is round and I wear a size 10 shoe. These things are a given. These things I know to be true.

I may not know much, but I do know there is no such thing as a steak “halfway between medium and medium rare”.

If you ask for a steak prepared in such a manner, you are wishing upon a star, spinning tales of fiction. And when I stand before you with my pen posed over my important order taking pad and you utter those godforsaken words I hear at least once a shift, I will smile, nod and take your menus, leaving you to sit with fingers crossed in hope, dreaming of fake meat temperatures.

I will then take my important order taking pad and make my way over to the important restaurant computer and punch in your steak. Temperature? Medium.

Last night at work, I voiced this opinion and we all agreed and had a good laugh. We all weighed in with our tales, told in different voices but oddly the same. Later as my shift was winding down, I sat down at the bar to enjoy my dinner, a lovely ribeye with bleu cheese crumbles and a salad.

I cut into my steak and peered at the bite on the end of my fork.

“Does this look medium to you?” I asked my friend Kory. “It looks too red…”

“Well, it’s not bloody, but it’s definitely not medium”, he replied while looking it over.

I chewed in silence, contemplating whether or not to have the steak thrown back down on the grill. I was already sitting down and it was already slathered in bleu cheese and I still had a lot to clean up.

Kory then leaned over and said, “I believe what we have here is halfway between medium and medium rare.”

Dammit, if he wasn’t right.

And in that moment, I knew nothing at all.

P.S. Don’t order your steaks like that. It was an anomaly, like my kids walking by a bag of Oreos and eating a carrot instead or my husband saying he really doesn’t feel like watching Nascar because Ellen is on.

You Capture-Happiness