Saturday, September 18, 2010

The Anti-Midas Touch

Yesterday and today have been a bit clumsy. It seems everything I try to do somehow causes injury to myself or others.

My first clue that I was meant to stay in bed came immediately after I put my makeup on, when I emerged into the bedroom in the dark and walked across the floor to my closet. In an instant, I was tripping on something terribly painful and it was biting me! Could a jellyfish possibly survive on my bedroom floor this far from the coast???? I limped to the closet and turned on the light. I had tripped on Mabel’s chew bone. Hard, jagged, lethal…

The drama continued at work. In a public ladies’ room I always flush with my foot. But on this particular occasion, as I reached with my foot, my sandal got caught on the handle and I lost my balance. The shoe wasn’t about to turn loose from the toilet or my foot, and I toppled forward, slamming my head into the bathroom wall. FOOT STILL ATTACHED TO THE TOILET.

During the lunch hour, I decided to go bra shopping. You may feel this is TMI, and I would generally agree. However, this information is pertinent to the story. Any time you try on a bra you have to see how it is going to look under clothing. So, I had grabbed a tank top from the rack for this purpose. The bra had a huge theft deterrent device attached to the back of the strap and the tank top had a dangling tag at the back. As I tried to remove the tank, the hangy-tag got caught on the theft device on the way up. I couldn’t get the tank top off of my body! It was wrapped around my head, the strain forcing the theft device to imbed into my shoulder blade. Amid pain and confusion, I wiggled and struggled until I could see out from under the neck of the tank, and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Remember those cartoons where someone gets a frying pan smashed over the head, their neck disappears, and they wobble around bouncing off of walls until they spin and crash into the floor? That was me.

Then, last night when Dom and the kids came home I could hear Victoria crying. She immediately sought me out at the computer, and I could tell something was terribly wrong. Barely understandable, she cried out, “I busted my lip on Lucas’s head!!!” Sure enough, her top lip was swollen so that she resembled a duck-billed platypus. I reached for her and she threw herself into my arms. She was still standing by my chair when I decided to reposition myself in order to comfort her better. So I moved my chair and ROLLED ACROSS HER BARE TOE.

Bad mommy. Bad, bad mommy!

And the touch continues this morning. I was carrying a load of freshly folded towels up the stairs to where the kids were putting away clean clothes. The basket was piled high with my cushy clean towels, and I could barely see over the top of it. I definitely could not see the gate at the top of the stairs which was inappropriately closed. When I struck the gate with my legs, the basket of towels and the top half of my body tumbled over the top. Towels went everywhere. Fussing and growling, I opened the gate and stepped over all my strewn towels.

Then my offspring rescued me and broke the spell. Aaron and Victoria scooped down and began re-folding the towels. All the while, Aaron was explaining to me, “It’s okay, mommy. See, whenever something seems too big for you to do, we will always be there to help you. We may not be great folders, but you will never have to do it alone!”

Man, I love my kids!!

Thursday, September 02, 2010

You Have GOT to be Kidding Me!

You know, sometimes people just really get under my skin.

My sweet friend Jessica had run-ins with little old ladies this week, and while I laughed until my side hurt on the story about the mole, I came home to find I had my own beef with an old lady.

Actually, this lady might not be so old. Her children are probably younger than me, but her granddaughter is Victoria’s age. Here’s why my ears are steaming:

The granddaughter (we’ll call her Susie for the sake of protecting the innocent) is a friend of Victoria’s. Susie lives with her grandmother and her uncle. Vic made painstaking efforts to telephone Susie over the summer, at the cost of being yelled at by Susie’s uncle. Once, when she asked him why Susie wasn’t at home, the uncle growled at Victoria, “CHILD, you are not the BOSS of me!!”

Did I mention this dude is an adult? I forbade Victoria to ever dial that number again. I did NOT forbid her to play with Susie. I’ve had my misgivings about the adults in Susie’s life, and for that reason did not feel the need to converse with them at Back to School night. Perhaps I could have taken the higher road and wished them a good evening, but I was tired and it had been a long day and I just frankly didn’t feel like being kind if it meant being fake.

Today I picked Victoria up from school and she felt bad. Tummy trouble. Figuring some upset (pardon the pun) must have been the trigger, we began to discuss her day. We talked about the boys who bother her (I’m sure she gives as much as she takes!) and how she was sad today because of Susie.

(Sigh) “What happened with Susie?”

“Susie told me that I’m not allowed to play with her anymore. She said her grandma doesn’t want me anywhere near her. Her grandma thinks I’m irresponsible.”

“Why on earth would she think that?”

“None of the adults in her family like me. Her uncle REALLY doesn’t like me. And I was nice every time I called.”

I reassured her that her politeness had no impact on these people because they were obviously unhappy with themselves. I further explained that this was no great loss in my opinion, because Victoria had done nothing wrong.

“But her whole family HATES me!”

“Speaking of her whole family, where are Susie’s mom and dad?”

“They’re on parole.”

:-\