“I’m just trying to think of something to write about for my MamaPop post today.”

He thought about it for a while.

“Why don’t you just type random letters?”

“Just like 10th grade geography papers?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

*

This involves me setting the timer on my iPhone for 10 minutes. For 10 minutes, there is only playing – no cleaning whatsoever. It is important to start with a playing segment. When the alarm rings I start the timer again. For 10 minutes there is fast cleaning. We get as much accomplished as we can in 10 minutes.

Sometimes we do it in 20 minute increments, if the house is really trashed we’ll do 20 minutes clean, 10 minutes play. We do this over and over until either the house is clean or we get distracted.

Generally it is the latter.

Either way, we were playing The Cleaning Game today and I was doing dishes for my 10 minutes when Ian came into the kitchen crying.

“Claudia gets to do all of the fun cleaning.”

“No cleaning is fun.” I said, “I mean, what kind of cleaning is fun cleaning?”

“She gets to clean the bathroom!”

“And you think cleaning the bathroom is fun cleaning?”

He nodded.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said “If you do a really, really good job on the living room and getting all of your toys out of the hallway I will let you clean my bathroom.”

And he said “Yes!” and did that thing with where you make a fist and pull your elbow to your hip – like he just scored a touchdown.

It doesn’t seem to happen that often lately, but for today everybody wins.

Full disclosure: I was not at all able to refrain from laughing at that last one. I think I may have even snorted causing him to say “But Mommy, it’s true. My upper nut hurts.” which crushed me on my insides and made my outsides laugh even harder.

On a related topic, what do you call the area right above a person’s penis? I guess I should have sucked it up and taken anatomy and physiology after all.

“Sure,” I said “Lots of people probably never drink chocolate milk.”

“You can live without ever ever drinking a single drop of chocolate milk?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Claudia said you can’t live if you don’t drink chocolate milk.”

Then a little voice came from the other room.

“I said you could not live happily without drinking chocolate milk.”

She has a good point.

Well, crap. I guess I have neglected to tell my children about The Resurrection.

“Yes, Honey,” I said. “Easter is the most important holiday for Christians.”

Then I proceeded to tell him all about the son of God, and the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I will have you know that I tried very hard to be fair and unbiased. I tried very hard to say that “This is what Christians believe” without any sarcasm in my voice.

I will also say that when you tell a person that God sent his only son to Earth to die on the cross so that we could be forgiven for our sins and then he came back to life and ascended to Heaven it might sound like crazy talk to someone unfamiliar with these concepts.

I thought I did a pretty good job remembering the talking points considering I have not attended a church service that wasn’t wedding or funeral related since before my children were born, and even then it was only because the church was paying me to sing. I have not belonged to a church since the 80s.

I was mistaken about my comprehensibility.

My son later told his father that he talked to me about Easter and he pretty much figured that Jesus must be a zombie.

If you think about it, he is a pretty astute kid, but that totally is not what I said. What I was trying to articulate was that Easter was a very important holiday to Christians and that no, it was not at all surprising that Paige would be going to church on Easter – that to some people Easter is a sacrosanct time and not just the day when kids get candy in a basket.

I have no idea what became of the zombie Jesus conversations, but I do know that on Sunday morning Ian climbed into bed with me and said “Remember what happened today a long time ago? Before the dinosaurs?”

I bit. “What happened today before the dinosaurs?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “You know, Jesus came back to life.”

I always thought it would be less confusing to raise children without religion.

I was wrong.

As usual.

IAN: Where are his flappy wings?

ME: I don’t know. It doesn’t look like he has any. This robot dragon appears to have arms instead.

IAN: All dragons have arms.

ME: I don’t think that is true.

IAN: Then how do they pick up their utensils?

Then he looks at me like I’m an idiot.

You know, we tried to give our children large vocabularies in order to give them a leg up but instead they just act bizarre.

And then he threw up all over the couch.

“Hey Ian!” said the older boy. “You know how squirrels eat nuts?”

Because I think like a nine year old boy I could see where this was going a mile away.

He continued “Ahhh! Squirrels are after my nuts! They are in my pants!”

Ian laughed, but he was clueless and the older kid knew it.

“Get it? Because I have nuts in my pants!”

Ian asked “Why do you have nuts in your pants?”

“Because your nut is your penis!” neighbor boy replied.

I had a conundrum. Your nuts are not your penis and I know this. I don’t want my kids to go around with bad information or making jokes that don’t make sense. On the other hand, I don’t really want to talk about scrotums with a random 3rd grader. I am friends with his parents, but I don’t really talk to them about testicles that often so I don’t know how they would feel about me giving their children lessons about anatomy and slang.

I am not a patient woman, but I bode my time. I was a relatively mature adult and I waited until we got home and I was alone with my children.

“Listen guys,” I said “Remember when Jack said that your nut was your penis? That isn’t exactly true.”

I said penis. I had their attention.

“Your nuts are really your scrotum,”

*blank looks*

“your testicles”

*blank looks*

“the thing under your penis. You know what I am talking about?”

Claudia said yes and walked away.

Ian said “Under my penis?”

I was always under the impression that boys were obsessed with their balls, but here is my son, almost six years old and he forgot that there was something under his penis.

I said “Yeah, the thing under your penis.”

Then I actually said “Put your hand in your pants and feel under your penis.”

He figured it out. I am an excellent mother.

So far there has been no further discussion of the nuts, but I have a feeling that this is nowhere near over.

And oddly, I feel like I did the right thing.

Just to prove my point about my life being funny I got this text message from my husband less than five hours later:

While yes, I would like to take credit for presenting things in a funny way, the truth is that my family is hysterical, my friends are hilarious and I see humor all over the place.

There is actually more about the panel, Why Women are so 2.0, here if you are interested.