Author: Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

In the Interest of Peace

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Here is a list of things not to do when someone in the house has a raging, throbbing ear ache:

  1. Vacuum…especially at 8am….especially if you don’t normally vacuum.
  2. Suggest taking the kids swimming.
  3. Rile the kids up by picking them up and tossing them on the couch yelling, “Flying monkeys!”
  4. Then walk away before the kids have had their fill of flying, leaving them jonesing for just one more toss.
  5. Let ear acher know how pissed you are that you lost at last night’s poker game — a game mere days after a poker weekend. A game hours before you go to a baseball game. All activities leaving me with two toddlers. Two toddlers who have dropped their naps. While ear acher has an ear ache.
  6. Hum mindlessly.
  7. Tell ear acher that ear aches aren’t bad if there is no accompanying fever.
  8. Eat the last of the Honey Bunches of Oats.
  9. Put a spoon used to give the boys honey (cough soothing in the early morning) on to their dresser when we are battling sugar ants.
  10. Put 4-hour-later sugar ant infested spoon in the kitchen, the one room ear acher managed to keep ant free.
  11. Ask ear ache victim if she has PMS.

#11 is always a bad move.