Mother Pucker

No it's not a typo. It's my new favorite phrase.

After our Olympic fiasco on Saturday Tim and I sat down at the kitchen table and started a list of names for his sister Susan's pepper peppers. No, I didn't studder. They are peppers (like salt and pepper) made from hot peppers like jalapenos. (Yeah, it took me a minute too.) Susan has several different kinds of hot peppers (six different colors) that she's turning into peppers. It was six o'clock in the evening after the big birthday bash and Tim and I were staring at each other from across the kitchen table wondering how we were going to stay awake till 8pm. It seemed like the perfect time to get creative. Susan had already come up with one name, Dante's Dust, very cool, elegant and catchy. We were having trouble with cool and elegant so we just went for catchy: Twisted Blister, Witches Twitch, In Heat, OMG from the Garden of Eatin', Eve's Very Bad Day also from the Garden of Eatin', Cocoa Conniption (for the chocolate colored pepper)and Holistic Heat. Those were some of the ones I came up with.

It turns out that men will buy a hot sauce, for example, because of a name that says what it will do to you, and not in a good way. Evidently the quicker the hot sauce comes back out the hotter (and better) it is. Some of Tim's names: At First Blister, Butt Blister, Buns of Heat, and Green Skids.

Men are disgusting.

On Monday we were just chillin' at the lake house feeling the effects of sleeping at the lake house and being again on the edge of delirium we decided to put our heads together with Tim's sisters Robin, Tam and Susan, and see what other names we could come up with. (The great thing about the lake house is that our kids have their cousins to play with so we didn't have to worry about being overheard. In fact the only time I heard from my kids was when they were hungry. And then I just pointed to the kitchen and said "peanut butter sandwich". What a beautiful thing. I did realize Sunday morning that Isaac's breakfast consisted of fruit snacks, a granola bar and some caramels he snuck out of the kitchen drawer. If you can just relinquish proper nutrition for a couple days the lake house can be very relaxing. ) Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the kids were busy so we had creative freedom.

So we came up with a few others: Butt Pucker (Tim's favorite) Hairy Navel (for the peach colored pepper), and let's get right to the point: Colon Cleanse. And it just went downhill from there until Tam came up with Mother Pucker and that was it, that was the mother of all pepper peppers, Mother Pucker.

So it's my new favorite phrase. Tim warned me last night that I need to be careful so I'm mostly just saying it in my head and, when I can, to him. (It's amazing how many times you can work that phrase into your day to day chit chat.) Too many little ears around to hear. And let's face it if there were a priest standing next to me I'm not going to say Mother Pucker and then say "Hey father, I didn't say the "F" word you know?"

With my new favorite phrase in place Tim decided there must be a cuss gene and that I have it. If you know me you might be surprised to hear this because I don't generally throw around the f-bomb or any other such words for that matter. But if I spend a weekend with my best friend I inevitably come back talkin' like a sailor, no doubt about it. It's like I need a twelve step program when I get home. Then there's the real test of the cusser's gene. Whack your head getting out of the van, stub your pinkie toe on a dresser and phrases fly out of your mouth that a marine couldn't put together and then you know - you have the cuss gene. Like any addiction it's hard to hide it from you kids. It was why Eva started saying "shit" at the tender age of two. Now that they're older I say "just ignore that", and " you didn't hear that" and "if I ever hear you speak those words then you're in a shitload of trouble." Well, mother pucker, you see my dilemma.