"Hey, Mommy! Mommy! We made sandwiches. Come eat one!"

Any mother reading this right now (particularly if she is, like me, a mother of young sons), is cringing slightly at what might be coming...I swear, it's not that bad. No slugs or other creepy crawlies. No leaves, twigs, dog hair, or dirt. No items that do not actually qualify as "food"...

So, here's how it all happened. I feel like crap today. Don't know if it's something I ate, or a lack of sleep, or a summer cold coming on...Could just be that I'm going so crazy, now that I'm in my 7th week of being in a cast, that my body is just giving up and saying, "Hey, if you can't go anywhere or do anything, anyway, you may as well just be sick!" Anyway, I just woke up feeling really crummy. Headache. Yucky tummy. Overall aches and pains. So, I did what any self-respecting sick Mommy does -- I bribed my children with promises of a late-morning viewing of "Bolt", if they would play nicely for a while, while I tried to rest. Well, to my great surprise, my boys really rose to the challenge. Yes, there were a few arguments, but they resolved them on their own, without bloodshed this time, and they actually played together very well from about 7am to 10:00am, while I semi-napped on my bed. Thank goodness for small miracles!

Then, I got the call...

"Mommy! Come here!"

"Hey, Mommy! Mommy! We made sandwiches. Come eat one!"

"For real, Mommy! We cooked. You can have one too!"

Oh, boy. Wincing in anticipation of what I might find, I grabbed my crutches and headed up the hallway to the kitchen. Dum da dum dum... There, I found my boys, each holding a HUGE bag of bread, big grins on their faces. (They had used an entire loaf-and-a-half of bread!) On the counter was our block of cheese, which had been hacked into pieces with (gasp) one of the sharp knives my boys are forbidden to use without parental supervision. My visceral reaction, after checking to make sure both boys had all of their fingers, was to holler at them for using the knife without me. But, then Spencer looked up at me with big eyes and a shy little smile and said, "Mommy, I was very, very careful with the sharp cutting knife. I wanted to make you cheese and cookie sandwiches. Want one?" And Foster piped in with, "And I didn't use the sharp knife at all, 'cuz I'm too little." How could I yell at them after that, I ask you? So, a firm, but gentle reminder that they are never to use the sharp knives without Mommy or Daddy, even for surprise sandwiches, was all they got. Then, I noticed the other sandwich ingredients on the counter. Pieces of mashed up banana. Ginger snap cookies. Whipped cream. And, there was an odd, familiar odor in the air, that I just couldn't place...

"What's that weird smell you guys?"

"What weird smell?"

"It smells funny in here. What else did you use in your sandwiches?"

"Oh. That was the sauce we were gonna put on the sandwiches. But, it didn't taste good. It's in the sink."

I looked in the sink. There was reddish-orange liquid, mixed in with whipped cream, splashed all over it.

"What IS that?!"

"We told you, Mommy. It's the sauce. But, it wasn't good."

"What did you use to make the sauce?"

"This red stuff!" (Spence reached into the refrigerator and pulled out...Tabasco sauce. Yep, I have no doubt that Tabasco and whipped cream sandwiches did NOT taste good!  Thankfully, I didn't have to find out.)

So, for a mid-morning snack, today, Spence munched on ginger snap cookie and cheese sandwiches, I added some peanut butter to the mashed banana sandwich for Fos, ate a couple of bites of cheese, and forced down one bite of the whipped cream sandwich that Foster had made "...Just for you, Mommy, because you LOVE whipped cream so much! It's to make you feel better."

Needless to say, I'm still feeling crappy (especially after the whipped cream sandwich). But, I had a good belly laugh with my boys this morning, and that's the best medicine there is, eh?

Cheers!