Cocktail

Today, I worked.

When I got home from work, my oldest child decided it would be nice to make me hot chocolate. (Forget the fact that if I drink hot chocolate after about 2:00 pm, I toss and turn, waiting for the small amount of caffeine to get out of my system. Caffeine and I are not best friends. That's why I order almost everything decaf. It was, for the record, nearing 5:00 pm.)

I was upstairs so I didn't know that this was going on.

I didn't know that Matthew decided to help.

Garrett brought me a bowl with a straw sticking out of it. For some reason, this bowl was wrapped in a dish cloth. A previously white, almost brand new, dish cloth. I think it goes without saying that the cloth had dipped into the bowl and turned, well, coffee colored.

"Mommy," he said. "We made you hot chocolate."

I took the bowl. Aside from the fact that the bowl was very cold, I instantly noticed the assaulting smell of COFFEE! WAY TOO MUCH COFFEE. "Oh! Thank you. That was so nice!" I took a sip and nearly died from lethal doses of WAY TOO MUCH COFFEE. I used my theatre degree (Method acting. In the zone. My character loves herself some WAY TOO MUCH COFFEE!) and I smiled. "Yum!"

Except, suddenly, my senses were being scrambled. Taste upon taste slid down my tongue and into the pit of my stomach.

I quickly walked out my bedroom door. The kitchen is visible from the top of our stairs. On the counter sat the following ingredients:

1. Powdered cappuccino.

2. An empty single serving of Starbucks coffee (oh the waste! oh the humanity!)

3. Powdered hot chocolate.

4. Orange juice

5. Prune juice.

6. Chocolate syrup

7. Caramel syrup

8. Regular syrup

9. Mustard

10. Soy sauce

"Is there mustard in this? And soy sauce?" I questioned because, clearly, that's the only place he'd gone wrong.

"Those were Matt's idea."

"Garrett, honey, I appreciate that you were trying to be nice but, would you want to drink this?"

"We both tried it before we brought it to you," he answered.

"DID YOU LIKE IT?" 

"No, it tasted like A LOT of coffee. And I don't like coffee," he responded.

Oh, sure. It tasted like coffee. If, by "tasted like coffee" he meant "tasted like swallowing the leftover grounds and then licking the machine clean and chasing all of that with a prune juice, mustard, soy sauce cocktail."

And then I totally lost my cool because I was standing in a puddle of syrup. Syrup was dripping from my counters. A stream of Nasty Concoction was creeping down the front of the trash can. (He'd tell me later, "It was too strong and I only swallowed a little bit. Then I had to spit the rest in the trash can." Yet, apparently, it was deemed good enough for Mom.) Soy sauce was everywhere. Honestly, I think those boys spent no less than several dollars making me THE WORLD'S NASTIEST DRINK. OF EVER. AND OF ALL TIME.The mess was, in a word, astounding.

I explained that I couldn't drink it. I told them that there are ingredients that don't go together and thirty spoonfuls of powdered cappuccino, soy sauce, and prune juice are some of them. To name a few. Others might include MUSTARD and ORANGE JUICE. Not to mention that even if I'd been able to suck it down, I would have been awake until a week from Friday. Between the caffeine and the prune juice I may as well have moved into my bathroom for the next week.

But I did tell them that we'll have a special cooking time soon. It will be a time where I teach my little chefs about ingredients and proportions and the fact that God did not intend soy sauce for coffee.

In the meantime, it's 11:47 and I'm still awake. Because, you know what, that single sip of ATTEMPTED MURDER had enough caffeine to keep me up until 2:00 am.