Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson
When the giant bottle of Lycopene smashed to the ground 5 minutes ago, I said it.
When Laylee asked if she could lick it up off the floor, I said it again.
I believe there are much worse words I could be using at times like these. At least Magoo doesn’t think “friggin’ crap” is the answer to all of life’s questions, or anything like unto it.
Are your kids on a first name basis with your car rental return guy? 12 hours ago I would have said “Neither are mine.” Not anymore, people, not anymore. We are all now intimately acquainted with Brian and he with us.
When he leaves our side, Laylee asks, “Where’s Brian?”
“Oh, he just went to forage for food or check on the road conditions,” I will answer, “He’ll be back in a minute.”
Sometime after the flood and the first freeze and well before the wind storm and subsequent attack of the Ents, our minivan Vinny got rear-ended and went into the shop (this was during the pre-rat era).
We’ve been driving a rental car for the past 3 weeks, a sweet rental car, a rental car exactly like Vinny only 5 years younger and much more pimped out.
Today we got Vinny back.
2:45pm — After determining that the “big storm” was just a “big non-event,” we head out to a doctor’s appointment in the rental van.
3:30pm — The body shop calls to tell us our van is “ready for pickup”, a secret code that means “if you don’t come pick it up today and return your rental car, you’ll have to pay a gazillion dollars because the insurance company won’t be footin’ the bill any more.” I get the hint and we head to Hertz.
3:45 — Crazy hail pelts my skin as I frantically scoop crumbs from the car at a gas station. Have you ever traveled 2500 miles in a borrowed car with 2 kids in tow, only to be suddenly told that you had 15 minutes to get the car back to its meticulous owner?
3:50 — Magoo lays waste to the Hertz office, attempting to use the contents of the water cooler to create a recreational wading pool. Brian’s co-worker distracts the children with a nerf ball while we finish filling out the paperwork.
4:00 — We begin the one mile trip to the body shop in the continuing hail with Brian at the wheel. I am SOOO glad not to be driving. He possibly thinks my children are cute and still considers having a child of his own one day. Tee hee hee.
4:15 — The hail turns to snow and Brian carefully makes his way down a hill as cars are spinning out all around us. Soon no cars are spinning because no cars are moving. Traffic comes to a complete stop and Laylee wants to know why we’re not going anywhere. I call the body shop and the owner agrees to stay open late until I can get there.
4:20 — I ask Brian his name and introduce him to Laylee. It looks like we’re in it for the long haul. Magoo cannot stand being strapped in anymore. The sight of me sitting next to him doing nothing to ease his sadness is too much to bear. He begins to wail. “Brian, do you mind if I move to the front seat with you. I think Magoo will be happier if he can’t see me directly.” Brian would be much obliged to have me ride shotgun while my son screams like a banshee in the backseat. It would be the best thing ever.
4:25 — Magoo calms down and the peasants rejoice.
4:30 —I remember that I can’t remember the last time Laylee’s been to the bathroom. I ask Brian not to mention anything related to the p-o-t-t-y.
4:40 — Laylee urgently calls out that she needs to go POTTY. This means NOW. I ask her to wait. She can’t. I tell her she can go in the snow on the side of the road or I can change her into one of Magoo’s diapers right there in the back seat. “That’s alright, isn’t it Brian? The car’s not going anywhere.” Of course it’s alright.
5:00 — Having convinced the loudly protesting Laylee by brute force that a diaper IS a good idea, I get back in the front seat with Brian. Realizing that this may turn out to be bloggable, I ask Brian if I can take his picture.
5:15 — We still aren’t moving, Laylee and Magoo are starving to death and the only food in the car is emergency protein bars. I walk up and down the cars trying to buy goldfish crackers from the stranded travelers but find no suppliers. Motherhood can make you desperate.
5:20 — I return to the car empty-handed, vowing to keep a Costco pack of animal crackers in my handbag till college do we part. When I suggest to Brian that I may run over to the office building up the hill to see if they have a vending machine, he graciously offers to do it for me. According to Brian, the kids asked for me when I left the last time. I think he’s making it up.
5:25 — Traffic moves 3 inches. Laylee asks where Brian is and begs me not to leave him. I make no promises.
5:30 — Brian returns with chips, Cheetos, a Twix bar and a head covered in snow. Apparently the machine wouldn’t take my $5 so he paid for the snacks himself. I kiss his feet and the children munch away happily.
5:45 — At Laylee’s request I begin singing Kookaburra, Baby Beluga and the 3 Bears song. Our lyrically challenged car rental return worker turns down my offer to join in the singing.
Shortly after 6pm we arrived at the shop, transferred our ten tons of stuff into our beloved van who now looks prettier than when we first met him. After bidding Brian a fond farewell, we drove 2 blocks to a local shopping spot, where we ate dinner, went to the movies and just generally wasted time for 4 hours. At 10pm we headed home across the layer of ice covered in hail covered in snow. It was like driving on ice coated gravel 15 miles per hour. Around 11:30 we arrived home after the scariest drive of my life.
I will say that the conclusion of this weather event is the best we’ve had all season. We still have heat and power, several inches of snow to play in, fresh banana bread to eat and a new friend Brian at the Hertz dealership. Last I heard he was planning to walk back to work and try and find somewhere to sleep in the area. We wish him well. I hope he’s man enough to have kids one day despite the hazing we put him through. They are worth it. I bet Brian had no one to comb their hair with a dinglehopper during dinner last night, no one to wipe cheese dust off of, no one to build an imaginary snow cave and sip hot cocoa with this morning. Poor guy… on so many levels.
He’d probably put white tile floors in my breakfast room with acres of graying grout.
Oh…
wait…
Reasons I think my flooring is of the devil:
1. He specializes in things that look pretty on an initial walkthrough but in the end will eat away at the fiber of your soul, one blob of crusty jam at a time.
2. They say he likes it hot. It would be just like him to torment me with a frigid slab of freeze that turns our feet to solid ice every morning as we eat our Eggos.
3. Dirty, nasty, sick and wrong are his favorite things.
Imagine a world that was impossible to clean, a world where you could spot a breadcrumb from 30 paces, a world where Magoo dumps all his food overboard to signal that he’s finished dining. This is my world. The grout gets greyer daily but somehow the tile around and beneath the filth seems to grow brighter and whiter, making the play-doh dust stand out decisively.
Personally, I think God would have chosen Brazilian hard woods.
On another note, Michelle from Scribbit is holding a writing contest you should think about submitting something to. She also did an interview this week featuring yours truly in which I said nothing for about an hour and then she compiled it into something worth reading. Check her out.
Last night Magoo’s month-long-already-been-to-the-doctor-and-she-says-it’s-nothing cough turned nasty, he sprouted a decent fever and some pretty sweet green elevens. All night long he coughed and hacked and yelled, “Mo-mmy! OWW-EEE!” He slept best when sitting upright on my lap so you can imagine how much sleep I got.
This was complicated by the fact that we thought we’d take one more whack at getting Laylee to stay dry through the night. We’ve tried pretty much everything. She just really likes peeing in her pull-up. You think I jest, but oh no, I do not. She will wake up, walk into my room, get this spaced out look on her face while I’m talking to her and then announce that she just had a “pee-splosion”. Sometimes she refuses to use the potty before bed but then goes in the pull-up 3 seconds later while I’m reading her story.
So we thought maybe switching her back to diapers at night would make her want to stay dry. Not so, my friends. Switching back to diapers is the funnest thing EVER. Switching back to diapers at night means you can talk baby talk and stick your butt up in the air, commentating on the entire process as your mom wipes you down.
Last night I decided that enough was enough and she would simply have to stay dry through the night. At about 2 am, I was leaving Magoo’s room and I found her in a pee-soaked shirt, new underwear, no pants, sleeping in a sleeping-bag on the floor next to her saturated bed.
All day today I walked around in my pajamas, smelling pee in every room. What did she do, take a pee tour of the entire estate? It was driving me nuts. About 4:30 this afternoon I bent over to pick something up and realized that the smell was coming from my t-shirt. When I picked her up last night, I guess she had rubbed off on me. Blick! I’m considering beginning a strict regimen of personal hygiene the next time I get more than 3 straight hours of sleep. This will involve showering daily and possibly wearing new clothes each day, particularly when the ones I have on are drenched with dried human waste.
But the day was not without humor. Laylee has started a new style of joke.
Laylee: Ding ding. Now you say “Who is it?”
Me: Who is it?
Laylee: Awaura.
Me: Awaura who?
Laylee: What?
During dinner she asked to play outside and I told her to pretend she was outside.
Laylee: I want to go to real outside.
Me: It’s too dark and wet and cold. Why don’t you just pretend?
Laylee: I hate pretend. I can never never pretend.
Me: Okay. Why don’t you just stare at the wall?
Laylee (settling herself in a corner with a huff): Okay.
All through dinner the little coughing melon-head cried his brains out. We did everything we could think of to make him more comfortable. Juice? Loosen your high-chair straps? Tylenol and cough syrup spritzer? Hot stone massage?
Nothing helped. We decided bed was the answer. As I picked him up, Dan noticed the giant splotches of ooze, spilling over the bottom half of his gingerbread PJs. The one thing we hadn’t thought of! All he needed was a new bum. Now he’d been sitting in killer sandy acid pear poop for half an hour. OH, the humanity!
As I was soaking him in a warm bathtub, Laylee and I had this conversation:
Laylee: Magoo was so sad at dinner. It makes my heart hurt.
Me: Oohhh. Me too.
Laylee: Why was he so sad?
Me: He had ouchy poop and it was burning his bum-bum.
Laylee [eyes widen. A minute goes by.]: Can I see the light?
Me: What light?
Laylee [peering sideways over the side of the tub]: The fire light.
Me: What fire light?
Laylee: The fire light that was shining out his bum when it got burned.
Now you want to know if I let her see it, huh? I would tell you but I’ve got to go change my shirt and teach Magoo that he’s pronouncing one of his favorite words incorrectly. There is no “H” in “sit”.
This year instead of resolutions, I’ve written up a few family commandments. If these really take off, I may consider licensing them to other families. Stay tuned.
1. No Comparisons Shall Be Made:
Walking through Costco yesterday, my children were staring into space immobilized, momentarily mesmerized by a stack of bargain-priced designer jeans. At that moment, a woman came around the corner with her daughter squeaking softly and straining at her lap belt.
The woman pointed to Laylee and Magoo and said to her daughter, “Look at those kids. They’re not screaming and trying to get out of the cart.”
“Catch us in five minutes,” I laughed, earning a glare from the “comparison shopper”.
Seriously, I say down with comparisons. There will be no comparing myself to the woman with 8 kids who still wears a size I haven’t been acquainted with since second grade, no comparing Laylee’s fits of personal expression with Magoo’s sleeping form, no comparing my salary with Dan’s (Honestly how can he possibly compete with what I make teaching one piano student and blogging? It’s just demoralizing.)
2. All Children Must Needs Nappeth — Laylee made the mistake of asking for a nap yesterday and then… actually sleeping. It’s all over now. Last week I would have said, “My daughter stopped napping over a year ago.” Next week I’ll be saying something much more witty and fabulous because I’ll have an hour every day to LET MY BRAIN RELAX. (Of course you know now that I’ve typed this, she will never sleep again, day or night.)
3. When Thou Cuttest the Hairs of Thy Head, the Shortest Layers Shall Not Be in Length Smaller Than One Half the Length of the Longest Layers, Resultething in a Mullet or Anything Like Unto It.
This does not mean necessarily that I’m cutting off Magoo’s curls. I think a bushy mullet is an acceptable mullet, at least for 2007.
If I think of any more, I’ll let you know.