When I picked up her little friends (Heaven age 8 and Hope age 6) I asked their mom if there was anything I needed to know. She replied that there was not.
“Bedwetters?” I asked.
“No, they’ve been doing really good actually” the other mom replied. (Apparently “good” is a loose term).
Heaven piped up and said, “We get stickers! When he don’t wet the bed, we get stickers and when we get 10 stickers we get a prize.”
“Really,” I asked, “How many stickers to you have?”
“Seven.” (Ohhhh great. They’ve gone a week without peeing the bed. How delightful. I can’t wait).
“Oh, one more thing” the other mom continued. “The six year old has seizures and they can’t figure out the right medication. Just blow in her face and she’ll snap out of it. It usually only happens when she gets hurt.”
Hmm. I wonder how stupid this woman thinks I am. I’ve never heard of anyone having a seizure and the medical caregiver saying ‘eh, just blow in her face – she’ll stop.’ Mental note to self, no playing in the tree house – the probability of getting hurt just rose exponentially.
“Oh, and she cries when she goes to bed” other mom added as a side note. (Good Lord. Wonderful. Perfect.)
So I load the bicycles in the trunk of my car. I put the three bags each they had loaded with crap into the car, make sure the kids are all buckled in, I sit in the driver’s seat and then hear, “I have to go potty” out of the six-year old, Hope. Shit. I get out of the car, get the kid out of the car and walk her far enough back to her apartment so that I can still see the girls in my car and see her at the same time. It was at this point that I knew it was going to be a long, long night.
On the way home the girls wanted to stop at Taco Bell for dinner and eat at my house having a picnic on the living room (hardwood) floor while watching a movie. Aries selected Charlie’s Angels (the second one). I realized that though Aries loves these movies, her little friends were unaccustomed to watching Cameron Diaz scantily clad riding a mechanical bull, throwing a leg into the air and laying back on the bull. Damn, the legs on that woman… whew. Where was I? Oh, yeah… It was at this point that they disappeared into Aries’ TV room to play with dolls!
Thinking that they would keep each other busy, I disappeared to the deck, Patron Margarita in hand and a cigarette that never tasted so good! As I walked back into the house, I was abruptly approached by two of the girls screaming for me…
AA: "Heaven just threw up all over everything."
AP: “WHAT?!” Threw up? What EVERYTHING?”
AA: “On the comforter, on the carpet, in the hallway, she filled the sink with puke and plugged it, it’s on her clothes...she even threw up on my Mickey Mouse ears!”
AP: “OKAY, OKAY, I got it!!!”
The story was true. Apparently Heaven had been sick with a cough and a cold and got spun up into a coughing fit and hurled undigested Taco Bell nachos all over the gd place. I stood there paralyzed and assessed the damage. I was actually going to have to clean up someone else’s kid’s puke - for the love of Betsy. Good Gawd.
Heaven showered while I
30 minutes later Heaven announced that soup would settle her still queasy stomach. Naturally, I was out of soup. The girls donned in their jammies threw on slippers and we were heading to the store at 9:30 p.m. Or so I thought. There on my office floor sat Hope – sad because Aries had slippers and let Heaven borrow slippers but she didn’t have any. Good Christ does this bullshit ever end!!
I took the easy route:
“Come on, I’ll carry you and buy you slippers at the store.” Three cans of soup (yes, they all had to have soup) and three new pair of slippers later (oh, hush, I took the path of least resistance, I admit it) and $40 lighter in my checking account and we were out of there.
At 11:30 I attempted to get the girls to go to bed. Oh the bedding, there’s another story. In order for all the girls to sleep near each other, I pulled the futon mattress Toddy had given Aries into the living room and put Aries’ mattress along side it. In light of the bedwetting information, I took a 9’x12’ brand new drop cloth and spread it across all three mattresses so no one’s feelings would be hurt. I then covered the mattresses with sheets and blankets.
Prior to the girls laying down Heaven asks me to do something about her sore throat. What?! Like I’m a fucking magician? I don’t like medicating other kids but trusting the other mom when she said they had no allergies, I went for it. One small teaspoon of Triaminic Night Time Cold and Cough…
It took 10 minutes and it was lights out for Heaven.
I was, however, not so lucky with Hope. Because she’s so freaked out about wetting the bed (thanks Grandma), she literally got up every two minutes for 40 minutes straight to sit on the potty because she thought she had to go. I should have just handed her a thimble! I was blogging when I finally got tired of hearing her walking back and forth and told her to stay in bed.
Then the tears came. “I miss my mommy.” Plenty of rocking later, I finally laid her down and she fell asleep.
I decided to sleep on the couch that night to keep an eye on the seizure-bound, sore-throat riddled, plastic drop-cloth rattling girls. Waking up every 10 minutes all night blows, by the way.
When I awoke at 7:15 a.m. I told Aries I was heading to bed and crawled under my down comforter. It was marvelous. I heard the girls get up and go into Aries TV room at which point Aries shut my bedroom door.
I laid there alone with the cool morning air against my skin. I couldn’t sleep. I started thinking about someone - a certain person who’s had a grip on me as of late - and couldn’t get the images out of my mind. The erotic images just kept building and before I knew it I had myself worked up into such a snit that I knew I couldn’t move forward with my day until I…danced with myself.
In the quiet of the morning and with the girls playing, I reached down to take care of business. I knew it wasn’t going to take long to get there. About the time I closed my eyes and completely lost myself in those images…my bedroom door was pushed open and “Mommy, can we have breakfast now” thundered over my thoughts.
No rest for the wicked, dammit.
Though I stayed preoccupied most of the morning with a job left undone, it quickly faded to the background when I realized that when Aries and Heaven took their shower they literally flooded the bathroom floor. I walked in to find nearly every towel I own soaked and slung over the shower curtain rod, dripping…back onto the still soaked floor.
We got the girls home and Aries and I continued our day.
Overall when asked, I’m sure Aries would tell you it was a big success and that she had a blast. Myself, I was left exhausted, cleaning the residual mess three girls can create and frustrated from well…you know.
Eh....what's a Mom to do?!
No comments:
Post a Comment