Please tell me I didn’t just get caught doing that!

Do you have people who you are forever doing something awkward in front of? Well I do. It’s our friends 20 something year old son.

Once I reached out to give him a hug goodbye and I still had a baby attached to my breast. I honestly didn’t even think of it—for me it was so unremarkable that there was a child nursing on my exposed milk machine that it didn’t occur to me that it might be weird for someone else. To be fair, it is a common occurrence in our house right now (it happens every few hours) and I was sitting in our living room.

He was like, “Ummm. Okay. Awkward,” and leaned in to give me a pseudo hug. I should say also that this man is one of the funniest people I have ever met. I wish I could give an example, but let me just say the stuff he can come up with in about 1 ½ seconds sometimes makes me cry it’s so funny. It might also be why I have this internal “Oh GAWD!” at myself about the things that happen in his presence. I can almost here him describing the scene later to someone else —and in my description I’m always this totally awkward, nearly 40, dowdy, home-towny, completely un-hip woman who is doing something so strange that it makes your eyebrows cinch together in a “for real?” kind of face.

It’s happened on more than one occasion. But the last time hands down takes the cake.

Here is the scene. My kids have just gone for their nap and miraculously they are sleeping at the same time. The house is awash with child accouterments and other less than tidy household situations. (Laundry in need of laundering, breakfast and lunch dishes on the counter etc.) I need it to be clean again so that I can think, and I also don’t want to spend their whole naptime doing this. I’ve also got high hopes for a shower before the first one opens his or her eyes. So in a mad dash, I’m literally running around the house putting toys away and picking up stuff. In my sprinting I spot a pile of laundry. As I throw it in the washing machine, in what feels like the ultimate act of efficiency, I strip naked and put the clothes I’m wearing in with them. I’m on my way to the shower when I spot the blow-up sleeping mat that’s been on the living room floor lending itself to fort making and car ramp driving purposes. I’m ready for that to go away- so of course I have to do that while my son is sleeping. I get down on all fours with the mat and am pushing the air out of it. That’s when I hear the knock on the door.

Need I remind you that I am naked? And that my white bum is straight up in the air in the middle of the living room floor which, incidentally, is entirely visible from our entry way. I freeze in horror. You see I know there is a shade covering our door window. I also know that there are slats in our door shade that most of our friends look through as they are waiting for us to say, “Come in!” Therefore I also know without a doubt that no matter how fast I bolt toward my closet— my position has most likely already been spotted.

I almost close my eyes with a wish that it’s just a girlfriend. But as I look under my lashes toward the door I see, dum dum duummmmn, none other than JC Freeze (the man in question).

I mean seriously. How do you explain this to someone? It’s so awkward that neither party really wants to mention it and yet you feel compelled to defend yourself… Even the explanation you are bumbling through in your head sounds ridiculous. “Children napping, super-speed house cleaning, laundry efficiency, shower?… Yes, naturally, this all adds up to me, butt up in the air, naked on our living room floor, on top of a sleeping mat the moment you arrive. Welcome. Smile.”

Blush is the only color that can describe me at that moment.

At least I make a good joke.