How I Broke My Arm and Got Three Home Chefs

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This pretty much sucks.

The winner for “worst named bone in the body” is the arm bone known as the humerus.  Often referred to as ‘the funny bone’ because ‘humerus’ sounds like ‘funny’, there is absolutely nothing funny about it.  Especially if you break it.  I didn’t break my humerus – I broke the arm bone called the ulna, and there’s nothing ‘humerus’ about that either. So there I am, carrying a frozen casserole in one hand while climbing the stairs from my garage (where I had just visited the garage freezer), and BAM!  - I fall down the stairs and break my ulna.  No laughing matter, and the frozen casserole by the way, completely unharmed in the ensuing accident.

There’s an old expression: ‘When you’re handed lemons, make lemonade’.

Well, I can tell you that you can’t make lemonade with one arm.  Nor can you color your hair or take off your bra (very easily).  So here is my recipe for ‘lemonade’ – get your kids to make it.

Amazingly, this terrible accident actually brings a bit of a blessing, because my children are forced to cook, clean and take care of one another because they aren’t going to get much help from a one-armed mother.  Yes, they have a wonderful, helpful father, but he’s also a working actor who is actually gone long hours on the set here in town and on location.  At first they were delighted by the accident because they got to write on my cast with mutli-colored Sharpies.

But then I informed them that they would be “on their own” for the next six to eight weeks – they didn’t like that at all.  I could see in their eyes the horror of missing episodes of  iCARLY and the YouTube videos that they’ve already seen twenty times. They knew, however, that they would have to ‘suck it up’ as the expression goes, and do some extra chores.  How wonderful, I can report to you, that they’re learning how to make healthy lunches for themselves, work as a team to cook dinner and do the laundry, and basically let their mother say “Calgon take me away” although I can’t take a bath with Calgon because I can’t get my cast wet.

Now, this only happened ten days ago, and I don’t know if I’m going to make it to mid-May without losing my mind, but I’m happy to report that so far the kids have been pretty darn helpful and they actually seem to enjoy figuring out mundane solutions to the complexities of ‘portion size’, ‘calorie count’ and dishwasher organization.

Gotta run… Someone just yelled, “Dinner’s ready!”

Stuffed animals make everything feel better

Julia and Lily prepare their own lunches

I didn't even tell them what to make

Lunch tastes great when you make it yourself!

Tagged as: broken arm, kids cook