Or “How To Remove A Water Ring That Is Shaped Like A Gigantic Egg From Your Dining Room Table Before Your Mother Sees It And Verbally Chastises You For The Rest Of Your Life”.

I’ve had a water ring on my dining room table since Easter, you know, on the dining table that used to belong to my grandmother. You might wonder how one gets a giant egg shaped water ring on their table and it is simple: with a large egg shaped plate.

My mother gave my this for Easter because she’s never met novelty servingware she didn’t like.  I washed it, dried it off (not very well apparently) and put it on the table so I would remember to put it away in the buffet.  When I picked it up, I noticed the water ring of death.

I kept going over the spot every few days with my Murphy’s Oil thinking it would take care of it magically and I had no such luck. I remembered reading a long time ago in Martha Stewart Living that mayonnaise was supposed to remove water rings, so I dug around in the fridge and found a jar that was just about to expire, so I didn’t feel bad  about wasting it. We use vegenaise, so I’m pretty sure that was my mother’s almost expired mayo that I was about to slap on her mother’s tainted table.

I guess I could have used the vegenaise, but I don’t remember Martha saying anything about using fake mayo, so I said a small prayer and smeared that almost expired not vegenaise all over that water ring. I might have been a bit overzealous in my application.

I left it on for about three hours and boom, it actually worked.

Something about the combination of fat and mild acids penetrates the top layer of the finish to replace the water with nourishing oil, how you like them apples egg shaped plates?

Don’t tell my mom.

I’ve been thinking a lot this past week about how difficult it would be if the kids grew up and were bad people (hear me out). Like dickheads that just had a blatant disregard for people’s feelings or god forbid hurt people, emotionally or physically, on purpose. I would feel like such a failure on so many levels. Not to mention devastated.

That’s the scary thing about this raising children stuff: there are no guarantees.

I was putting him to bed on Friday and when I finished his story, he gave me a kiss goodnight. As I was tucking him in, I gave him a reciprocal kiss on the forehead and he quickly reached up and feverishly wiped it off.

I said, “Hey man, don’t wipe my kisses off. What if that hurt my feelings?”

He said earnestly, “Oh Momma, I wasn’t wiping your kisses off, I was just rubbing them in. It makes me feel extra better.”

And I immediately felt extra better too.