Plot: Parent One and Parent Two have been working from home all day. The kids, ages ten and eight, are on summer vacation and have been at home most of the day, save a short trip to the beach to play, and a rather risky venture to the grocery store at 6pm. No casualties to date. It is nearing dinnertime, and the beasties are hungry.
Act One:
Kids are playing in Child One's room, no one is yelling, tattling or crying. Parent One is making dinner. Parent Two is still working at his desk.
Parent One smugly removes her Brussels Sprouts from the pan and, ignoring the fact that she is allergic to peppers, adds newly purchased Scorpion Chilies to Parent Two's portion. She is clearly a good and thoughtful wife.
Except... because she is allergic, the moment the peppers hit the pan her throat starts swelling, she starts coughing and runs out of the room.
Parent Two rushes in to save the food and get the seeds off the heat because it is making death gas seep through the entire house. The pan is like a pepper fumes grenade. No room is safe.
Parent One can't find her inhaler. Parent One has been slacking and taking risks and pretending she's not actually that allergic to peppers. Parent One is wrong. Parent One is having a hard time breathing. Parent One is fucked.
Parent One chugs a glass of wine because alcohol has been known to stop her allergic reactions in the past and in her mildly panicked state of low oxygen levels coupled with failed dinner expectations it is all she can think of to do.
She finally finds her inhaler in the depths of her closet and takes two big inhales. She can breathe again. She is relieved. Parent Two looks mildly traumatized.
Parent Two also deals with Parent One's ex-husband who is at the gate picking up kid shit. Parent One goes back to cooking. Parent One feels like an asshole.
Act Two:
Parent One is trying really hard to get it together and cook the things she should have cooked before the Great Pepper Debacle.
Things are looking okay. The loud sounds from Child One's bedroom go from being obnoxiously tween to possible actual danger. Parent One takes angry Parent One steps from the kitchen to the bedroom to discover the children have taken the adult scissors and are "cutting out paper dolls" on Child One's bed. Except they are not. They are fighting. With scissors.
ASSHATS.
Parent One takes the scissors and puts them away (again. For like the third time. Today). She lectures the children and goes back to cooking.
Act Three:
Child Two enters the kitchen, and says Child One yelled "F YOU" to him. Parent One sends Child Two to the shower and summons Child One. Parent One lays a big, fat, well practiced guilt trip on Child One until she gives up the ghost. Parent One asks, not batting an eye, "Did you say 'Fuck you' or 'F you?'" Child One is stunned. Child One gives side eye. Child One wants to lie, because she realizes what she said could have been so much cooler than it actually was. Child One missed her moment of glory. Child One mumbles "just F You."
Parent One lectures ignores the "F you" and goes right into a new lecture on the word "hate" (also used, same sentence, second clause) and how Child One has the intelligence and vocabulary to accurately articulate her emotions and HATE isn't it. Unacceptable. We do not use that word. We do not hate.
Parent One sends Child One to her room and goes back to cooking. Kind of.
Act Four:
Parent One is still trying to cook dinner. Child Two starts crying in the shower. Like, crying, crying. Parent One goes into the bathroom. Child Two has gotten soap into his own eye, because he is awesome like that. Parent One steps into the shower fully clothed to save him. Child Two says he doesn't know how the soap got there, but he also got it in his hair. He refuses to open his eyeball.
Parent One attempts to wrangle slippery naked child into her arms with the detachable shower head and get his eye open. This does not work. Parent One turns off the water and puts her hands on her hips and yells things like "Okay. Fine. Keep the soap in your eye then" because she is totally a grown-up right now. For real.
Child Two keeps crying, then finally agrees to hold his eye open, while insisting that his "body won't let him." Eventually, the soap is removed. Parent One turns off the shower and then almost wipes out on the tile because the open shower curtain has turned the bathroom floor into a scene from Genesis, and she is pretty certain the ark is just around the corner and that she won't be let on the boat.
Parent One is frustrated. Child Two is wet and has forgotten how towels work. Child One is staring at her door with puppy dog eyes. Parent Two is on alert for the agreed upon SOS signal.
But it does not come. Parent One has got this. Parent One finishes making dinner. Parent One decides that rather than serve the meal now, she's going to write about it first. Everyone gets cold dinner at 8:15. Her pants may be wet, but they are still bossy.
Don't like it? "F YOU!"
End Scenes.
