For Mother’s Day week, I have added my own game show to the tradition of “Deal or no Deal?” I’m calling it “Meal or No Meal?”

I think I can compete with “Deal or No Deal?” host Howie Mandel but I refuse to shave my head.

My show works this way.

I have just been on a homeschool field trip to measure the width at the widest spot in the Fox River, the pediatrician, the post office, the oil change place, and pharmacy. But, of course, I am expected at 6:00 Pm to be home and produce a sumptuous, savory, and satisfying meal.

It’s my 26 or is it 6 kids who are opening up the briefcases showing clues as to what they want for dinner. My kids claim they really aren’t all that picky when it comes to eating but it’s not true. One of them wants Kosher and organic, one is eating Atkins, and another one is eating carbs only. Then I have the child who wants no refined sugar or caffeine. Finally I have two who refuse anything unless you have to peel it or crack it to find the natural food inside like bananas or peanuts. Try making a meal out of that!

In the 17 days over Christmas break our college age kids joined us at home and with all of us bellying up to the table three times a day I estimated that before “vacation” was over I would have prepared 408 meals. That’s eight people at three meals a day for 17 days. You do the math.

My son Pooka had the nerve to ask me, “Why wasn’t I getting out more? Didn’t I want some “me” time?”

“You’ve just got to make the time,” he advised.

So the lights come on and here we are in front of the “Meal or No Meal?” studio audience. I open the refrigerator and produce the frozen pheasant my husband shot last fall. It’s frosty, somewhat red, and has a tail feather sticking out.

“Meal or no meal?” I ask.”

The kids huddle and confer. “No meal!” they yell.

I then walk over to the microwave and open the door so all can see the macaroni and cheese plate that got set on 10 minutes instead of 1 minute. They look like taconite iron pellets painted black. My husband plans to use them to shoot more pheasants. I point at both and say, “Meal or no meal?” (I am thinking I should have made it in the oven instead of the microwave because when I do that it’s so much easier to pass off ready made meals as my own.)

They hesitate for a moment and then start jumping up and down, “No meal!” Everyone cheers.

I then casually walk over to the oven and open the door. There are two turkey legs from Thanksgiving that fell off and have been covered by aluminum foil for the last three months. Each one now appears to have the rough skin of a tyrannosaurus Rex. “Meal or no meal?” I ask.

“Maybe we should take it,” one desperate kid pleads.

I tell them it’s from the new genre of cooking called “minimalist.” It suits an extremely busy mom just fine. Some defeathered turkey legs and eight washed plums in an earthy, homemade basket in the middle of the table puts me on the cutting edge.

“No sirree!” the others respond. “No meal! No meal!”

“Very well,” I say. I stroll over to the pantry closet, open it, and show the kids five potatoes that have grown horns like Santa’s reindeer. They are soft, pliable, and now a lovely green. Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. “Meal or no meal?” I ask with a smile.

“Don’t do it!” our youngest shouts. “I hate green.”

The older children relent and say, “No meal!”

I casually close the doors and walk over to the couch in the living room. I warn them we are getting down to their last choice. I then lift up the middle couch cushion and produce the bag of Cheetos that was left there when my oldest son entered first grade.

“They’re still orange,” I say, “at least when you pull them apart. It fits in with the trendy medieval style of eating where no silverware is used.”

The kids start to waiver. Someone lunges for the bell but then pulls back. “No meal!” they announce.

At that I take my coat, purse, and keys and casually answer, “You win! There’s No Meal tonight. I’m going to Panera to eat supper with the Banker (your father). See you tomorrow night, same time, same channel.”

Behind me I hear the oven door open and one of the kids asks, “Why are those turkey legs still moving?”

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

By Cheryl Moeller

Cheryl Moeller is a stand up comic, author and syndicated humor columnist for moms. She has six kids ranging in age from 9 to 26. She wants to make moms laugh until they feel better.

Cheryl has written (with Jill Hart) a free ebook for Mother’s Day – you can download for free and print off, punch holes and tie with ribbons and give to all the special moms in your life.  It’s called “I’m Thankful I’m on Planet Mom:  99 Reasons I’m Glad I’m a Mom.)  Or you can just send the link to them.   http://cwahm.com/wordpress/mothers-day-gift-for-you/

Kenzie’s dream was a lofty one — to sit upon her own throne on her 9 th birthday and unwrap her gifts. So she talked me into buying a Strawberry Shortcake inflatable chair to be used to fulfill not only her royal ambitions but another dream as well. When we moved into our current home four years ago she exacted a promise that I would decorate her room in pink. As you guessed it is still blue, but for one Strawberry Shortcake throw pillow, a Strawberry Shortcake poster, and an inflatable pink throne she would consider her room officially decorated until she reaches the age of 13.How could I resist?I must have been blindfolded and taken by a UFO because in a matter of minutes I found myself walking through the aisles of Party City . It was there I bought her the apparently indestructible Strawberry Shortcake Inflatable Chair.It was now the day before the party and time to blow up the inflatable throne because — well — it’s inflatable. Being a gifted mother however I informed Kenzie we must read the instructions first.That’s when the trouble began.The instructions promise that if the item is inflated properly it may last up to 10 years (the perfect gift to send my daughter off to college with). In fact, the instructions promise, if you take proper care of the chair it can become a cherished family heirloom (”Yes, dear, it’s true. Your great grandmother, Queen Cheryl, sat upon this very inflatable throne and ruled the upper waste water management district of the state of IL in the early 21 st century. Her portrait is down the hallway”).

The instructions also warn you that if you want your Strawberry Shortcake Inflatable Chair to look like the one on the box you need to look at it under normal light. (Do you know anyone who looks at chairs with abnormal light in their homes? If you do, put this down and calmly dial the police giving their address and description).

Perhaps they’re talking about extreme weather conditions.

Let’s say there’s a major tornado in your area and you just saw Dorothy and Toto fly by outside. Apparently the throne will change colors.

Back to the instructions:

“ To preserve this chair for future generations you must do the following: Do not use around sharp knives or objects . (Oh, no. I guess I’m going to have to resign my activities with the Shopping Mall Mama Gangstas.)

Do not touch with a cigarette or open flame (And I wanted to sit in my inflatable chair and have a fondue party.)

Do not rub against a rough wall or a rough wall surface . (Now they’ve taken all the fun out of life. Haven’t you ever been to a party where everyone rubbed an inflatable chair against their head to form static electricity — then watched how long they could get their chair to stick to the wall?)

Do not jump on your Strawberry Shortcake chair . (So we can’t do cannon balls off our sofa onto the chair anymore either? What do these depressed, lonely, joyless shells of human beings who invented the inflatable throne do for fun on their long winter nights at home anyway?)

Do not use in your pool as a flotation device . (I guess that means the 5,000 inflatable thrones on the USS Abraham Lincoln are all going back to Party City another awful case of wasteful government misuse of our taxpayer monies).

If you are sitting out in this chair in a cold climate added inflation will be needed . Now, I understand why in the movie March of the Penguins (filmed in Antarctica ) the mother penguins all pushed their inflatable thrones 400 miles across frozen wastelands to the warmer waters of the ocean. It was so they would need less air when they sit down.

Aren’t Mother Nature’s instincts nothing less than amazing?

If you are sitting in a hot climate your Strawberry Shortcake chair may expand and cause over-inflation . This explains why there are no inflatable thrones today in Saudi Arabia . It seems the grandfather of Prince Faisal was launched in sub-atmospheric orbit when he purchased a fleet of the first Strawberry Shortcake chairs for his twenty palacesand failed to read the instructions. One minute he was sitting poolside in 125 degree heat, the next minute they found him sore but unharmed in the Libyan Desert 1800 miles from Riyhad.  Apparently directions for the Strawberry Shortcake inflatable throne do not come in Arabic.

This chair is made to last but caution is required to avoid damage to this or any other inflatable product. (At least I am not reading this in vain since these principles are transferable.)

Please follow all of these instructions carefully and enjoy your new inflatable furniture (What if I deliberately choose not to enjoy it does that void the warranty?) You know, just thinking of having to follow all these instructions just to enjoy an inflatable throne made me want to sit down, no, stand up, take a nap, Oh, whatever.

Where is my sharp object?

by Cheryl Moeller, stand up Christian comic for moms and syndicated columnist. Read more of her outrageous humor for moms at www.momlaughs.blogspot.com 

There’s a reason that Cupid’s commemoration comes so soon after the Super Bowl. It’s an obvious test of the depth of men’s romantic tendencies, and, sadly, it’s a test they fail more often than a Cosmo relationship quiz.

My husband, God love him, is no exception. He will not become aware that it’s time to pay homage to the holiday of the heart until he begins slipping on newspapers that I place in front of the shower. As he steps out, dripping wet and then quickly ends up face down on the floor, staring at a full-page ad that mentions Valentine’s Day in a font large enough to be seen by the astronauts on the space station, a light will begin to dawn.

It has taken a mere 20 years of this type of subtle training for my beloved to become adept at interpreting signals from his sweetheart. This year, I can expect a heart-warming present designed to compensate for past transgressions — something like a useless kitchen item that we already have or an exquisitely wrapped collection of hotel toiletries. I haven’t, however, always been so fortunate.

One year, just after our second child was born, I received a bottle of stretch mark-treating cocoa butter clearly purchased last minute at the nearest 24-hour drugstore. This was accompanied by a box of Christmas candy with a 75-percent-off sticker and a card (sans envelope) featuring two kissing chimps. In an attempt to personalize the card, my man had tenderly tried his hand at poetry. Under his name, he’d written:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
You want my body
I know you do.

I’ve also received my share of ego-shattering lingerie, little bits of fluff that would barely fit the anorexic hips of a Victoria’s Secret model. But the worst was a pair of silk pajamas – size XL — that my husband brought back from a business trip to China. Designed for the smaller Asian woman, these pernicious PJs wouldn’t go past my knees. I can tell you, nothing gets a wife in the mood for love more than struggling to fit into anything marked XL. I’m still in therapy over that.

My spouse has also tried to be sweet with scent. One year, he gave me two sample-size bottles of the same perfume worn by his mother for the past five decades. Big, big mistake.

Another time, in a bid to impress me with his thoughtfulness, he procured a cylinder head from a World War II-era airplane (if you don’t know what this looks like, consider yourself lucky) and created a lovely lamp that added a certain je ne sais quoi to our living room décor. It took me weeks to arrange an accident that sent this romantic piece of wreckage back to the junkyard.

I’m hoping that by our 30th or possibly 40th anniversary, my mate will have progressed to the point where he’ll fill a vase with a single rose and a diamond necklace, or maybe the keys to a new Jaguar. In the meantime, I’ll try not to lose heart.

© Jackie Papandrew 2008

Jackie’s hilarious new book — Airing My Dirty Laundry — will soon be available. Please visit www.jackiepapandrew.com to read more.

January 1st: “My children and I will learn Modern Hebrew this year.”
February 1st: “My children and I will weekly eat one dozen bagels with lox.”
January 1st: “I will get the kids the pet they’ve always wanted.”
February 1st: “I will buy a collar and a leash for my chia plant.”

January 1st: “I will make only home-made yogurt from only organic ingredients.”
February 1st: “I will allow my children only two Gogurts in their mouth at a time.”
January 1st: “I will take my children to a museum once a month.”
February 1st: “I will show my kids where I ate super chili dogs in high school.”

January 1st: “I will make sure my children eat multi-grain fiber filled items at each meal.”
February 1st: “I will store my bag of Krispy Kreme doughnuts next to a bottle of Metamucil.”
January 1st: “I will feature a Van Gogh each month on our coffee table.”
February 1st: “I will fill up our Van at The Stop and Go.”
January 1st: “We will never eat food in the car in 2008.”
February 1st: “We will quit using our gas grill in the car in 2008.”

By Cheryl Moeller

Read more humor by this mom of 6 at www.momlaughs.blogspot.com

Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead. — Erma Bombeck

By some strange twist of fate, I’ve brought forth a football fanatic. My son is one of those addled individuals whose very DNA, I’m convinced, has a pigskin membrane. Unfortunately for him, he has a mother who wouldn’t know a touchdown from a hoedown. For the life of me, I can’t understand the appeal of the game – a chaotic mix of men pushing, shoving and bellowing, slobber and obscenities flying. And that’s just the fans.

But my boy has been hooked from an early age, spending countless hours watching, playing and dreaming about football. He’s consumed whole forests of paper drawing intricate plays marked with Xs and Os. And I’ve grown tearful remembering other Xs and Os my sweet child long ago scribbled on construction-paper cards, right under the words “I Love You, Mommy.”

I’ve tried, occasionally, to fight back. Once, I suggested he end a six-hour football fest and read a book. But my son has the same regard for reading that I have for cellulite, and his withering response cut me to the quick.

“Print is dead, Mom. Nobody reads anymore.”

“There is no way,” I wailed, “no way you came from my loins!”

He gave me a blank look. “What’s a loin?”

By the time he reached adolescence, his fixation had reached a fever pitch, and when he made the high school team, his ecstasy knew no bounds. He even figured out how to combine his pigskin passion with the only other thing that currently captures his interest. The kid who can barely find time to do his homework or hold a meaningful conversation with his mother nobly volunteered to coach his school’s powder puff football team, a fact that seemed to fill his father with pride.

“It is a great way to meet girls,” said my husband, his chest expanding. I just shook my head.

Realizing it was a losing battle, I decided, reluctantly, to embrace the madness. I boned up on gridiron lingo and proudly spread the word to all my pals about my boy’s performance on the team. Sadly, my football-averse friends failed to point out that I’d gotten his position slightly wrong. I found that out when I went to pick him up after a powder puff practice. Approaching a pack of puffs on the sidelines, I smiled warmly.

“My son is your coach,” I said. “He’s a loose end, you know, on the school’s team.”

For some reason, the group of girls began to giggle. Baffled, I later informed my son that some of his puffs were not the sharpest knives in the drawer. “They were laughing at me for no reason.”

His face acquired a look of dread. “Mom,” he said slowly, between gritted teeth, “what did you say to them?”

“I just said you’re a loose end on the team.”

He grabbed his head with both hands as if he expected it to explode and wanted to catch the pieces. “I’m a tight end,” he practically screamed. “Not a loose end!”

“Tight end, loose end,” I shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

He avoided me like the plague for several days after that. To redeem myself, I invited some of his friends over to watch a game on the obscenely enormous new television the men in my household had insisted was vital to our existence. I’ve noticed that when you combine 52-inch, high-def and TV in a sentence, it induces a Pavlovian response in males of any age. Sure enough, my son’s buddies began to salivate at these words and eagerly agreed to come.

I gained some yardage right off by offering snacks. Then, perhaps overconfident, I attempted to lose my rookie status by tossing out lingo I’d learned like blitz, field goal and third and long. But then I fumbled by mentioning how attractive I found the teams’ costumes. My boy’s mouth compressed into a scrimmage line of fury. “Mom,” he muttered, “stop it!”

Feeling unwelcome, I retreated to another part of the house, where my eye fell on several baskets full of clean clothes in need of folding. Taking advantage of the idle hands in my living room, I placed a basket in front of each boy. You’d think, by the looks of horror on their faces, that I was experiencing a Janet Jackson-style wardrobe malfunction right in front of them.

“You want us to fold during football?” one gasped as nacho cheese dribbled down his chin. My son was speechless, emitting only strange, inhuman noises that made me fear for his sanity.

“Never mind,” I sighed, retreating. That’s when I understood that football and I could never be allies; we’d have to remain wary competitors, sharing the love of our loose end. Then I went to fold my laundry.

© Jackie Papandrew

www.jackiepapandrew.com

The human psyche is a funny thing. Despite having inhaled enough calories during the holidays to keep Paris Hilton alive into the next millennium, when presented with limitless amounts of food on board ship, we fell to eating as if we were famine victims. We ate and we ate. And when we were bloated and seemingly unable to cram in one more bite, we ate some more. 

Naturally, we needed drinks to wash down all that “free” food. Fortunately, there were always smiling attendants nearby to bring us round after round of beverages that were definitely not free. Then we poured more money into the cruise line coffers by visiting the casino and the onboard shopping mall, and by that time, we’d worked up enough of an appetite to devour platefuls of food at the midnight buffet.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast, we stuffed our bodies into bathing suits and rolled on to the deck, where we sunned our globular flesh, careful not to fall overboard lest we be mistaken for well-fed sea lions. After a few hours, just when we were beginning to feel hunger pangs, the ship’s staff roused us for a hairy chest contest.

When you are cruising with thousands of your closest friends, you are bound to discover that quite a few of these friends are sporting furry chests, many of which are accompanied by bald heads and very round bellies. An astonishing number of these, er, hunks took the stage for the contest, every hair bristling with excitement.

That’s when the cruise director began to look for the “lucky” woman who would be required to select the best bushy chest. Luck was certainly not a lady to me that day. I never win anything – not the lottery, not a makeover, not even at bingo. But, sure enough, I “won” the right to judge the shaggy strivers before me. Each man was encouraged to strut his stuff, wriggling and jiggling his chest and various other body parts for my enjoyment. It was almost enough to ruin my appetite. But I managed to select a winner, and then my family and I headed back to the buffet.

That night, we donned formal wear, leaving the zippers open, and went to meet the captain, a dashing and slender man who gazed upon us the way I imagine Captain Ahab must have looked at his prey, the great white whale in Moby Dick. Then – surprise, surprise – we sat down to a sumptuous dinner and shortly thereafter, we had pictures taken to commemorate our nautical adventure. When we visited the ship’s portrait gallery to order reprints of a picture of my husband and I, the young man who waited on us referred more than once to the picture of “you and your son.” Each time, I corrected him, speaking between clenched teeth and glaring at my highly amused husband – who, I must point out, is six months OLDER than I am.

My spouse foolishly took to calling me “Mom” for the rest of the cruise. Now that we are home, he’s sleeping on the couch, not only because I’m mad at him but because, for some reason, I need a larger portion of the bed.

  © Jackie Papandrew 2008

www.jackiepapandrew.com