Alex and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
My real life friends have heard this story. Wednesday was a truly terrible day right out of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. Well, the version where he's grown up and is a stay at home parent. Of course yes in the grand scheme of things compared to illness, death and destruction it was a great day! However, this is my blog and I can cry if I want to! Or tell you about how I literally cried. It actually is funny to look back on it and yes I did try to write this post on Wednesday, but oh yeah my computer crashed and lost it.
The day started off oddly. The boys were up when I got up to go spinning and I was running late. I got back and had plans to go to the RMV lest I be caught driving my "illegal" car and be thrown in the slammer. I've only been to the RMV once (that's what the DMV is called here) and apparently there was a blip in the universe that day because I had a wonderful experience there. There wasn't any line and I had my pick of parking spaces.
The RMV opened at 9. I put OS on the bus at 9 and then arrived at the RMV at 9:10. I had YS all set to go so that we went immediately from the bus stop to our car . I found the place without a problem. See, it really was going to be a good day! Until I couldn't find a single parking spot. I tried positive thinking. A spot would open a spot would open. It was 9:10 AM and apparently everyone and their dog were in there. A spot wasn't going open.
No sweat I would just go to a paid parking lot. I could already see the street parking wasn't going to be an option. Except all the paid parking lots were full or you had to be a court employee to use them. I finally found one four city blocks over and one city block down another street. It was really crowded too. That's when I started crying.
I finally did find a spot there. Suprisingly, looking back and considering the day's events, there was an old stroller in the Big Giraffe's car. Yes, it was his car because if I dared to drive mine the SWAT team would descend on it. Had I known that stroller was there, I would have gotten rid of it, but seeing as it was there it was quite handy. YS sat down in it and we headed to the elevator.
Except we couldn't find it. We wandered up and down and had no luck. I considered just collapsing the stroller and walking down the stairs with him. I finally saw a business woman there and asked her where the elevator was. Yes, it was over a curb and behind the stairs. It wasn't visible from the parking lot much less handicapped accessible. In fact I even walked straight by it while following her directions. She then personally escorted me to it.
Positive thinking positive thinking. We walked over to the RMV. We got in line. We waited and waited and waited. YS annouced he needed to poop. I wasn't going to get out of the line and YS has always had an obession with public bathrooms. Very recently it's been going number 2 in public bathrooms. Don't ask. Plus he had gone number 2 right before we left. I said not now.
I found out we waited in the wrong line. Argh!! Postive thinking. We got a number and waited in a new line. Positive thinking no longer worked and I fought back tears as I instant messaged and tweeted to pass the time. YS was busy playing peek a boo with a woman sitting behind us.
All of a sudden I smelled a terrible smell. I just knew that someone had sh*t their pants. Perfect! I looked around for the offender. Not seeing anyone I could positively identify as the offender I went back to waiting. Then I smelled it again. Seriously, what was wrong with people? Wait a minute...was it YS? I felt his clothed bottom. No lumps.
I cast a general dirty look at those around me. But yet the smell still persisted. As I looked around yet again, was there a turd under my bench?, I noticed that YS was lying on the bench with his feet up in the air and his legs pressed against the back of the bench. The legs of his shorts were bunched up. A terrible smell seemed to be wafting up from them. I peeked. I'm still not sure what happened but there was a giant tire track in his underwear. There was nothing to flush though. I don't know if he didn't wipe well before we left or if maybe a little something came out because I didn't take him to the bathroom when he asked. It will remain one of life's great enigmas. Maybe not, but I do know that a little bit of poop gives off a really big stink.
There was still no way I was getting out of line and besides YS was as happy as a clam. Of course I didn't have a change of clothes for him because I can't even remember when he last had an accident and I know I haven't carried a change of clothing for him in a long time. Fabulous. I told him to sit up and keep his legs together. The silver lining was that no one would sit near us and this was paritcularly good as there was an electronic ticker that kept on running ads for the H1N1 vaccine. It read "2 billion people are estimated to get H1N1 this year". Nice atmosphere all around.
We were finally called. Phew! I gave the woman the expired registration card and everything was all set to go. Except that it was cash only. Are you kidding me?! I was short a couple bucks. She was very nice and told me to go get cash from across the street and come back and see her. She wrote "no wait" on my card.
I never found the ATM across the street. A couple blocks later I did find an ATM. I tried not to cry. We went back and only had to wait a few minutes for the woman to finish up with another customer. Everything was all set. I found out that I didn't need to have gone myself ie I could have sent the Big Giraffe. We had thought that since the car is only registered in my name I had to be the one to do it. No, they only care about the money and having your current address. Seriously, that's what she told me. If my address changes, I can send someone else in with a Post It note with my new address. Yes, she did say that too.
We walked all the way back to car. I know cry me a river. Hey, there are no sidewalks where I live. 5 city blocks of walking is unusual here.
I couldn't find my car. I knew that I had gotten the elevator on the third floor, but I had walked around a couple floors. Where was my car? I finally found it between the 4th and 5th floor.
I got lost coming home. Great. I had been gone 3 hours at this point. I missed everything I had planned for the morning.
We came home and I had a cup of coffee and resolved to return to a zen-like state. Breathe in, breathe out. I remembered that I still had to take the jar of dog pee that was in the fridge to the vet. I got in my newly registered car with the jar o' pee and off and I went.
We walked into the vet's office and no one was there. But there were cars in the parking lot and I heard voices. I didn't want to just leave the pee. Maybe they were having a late lunch? I could hear laughing coming from a door marked "Private". I knocked on the door. Yeah, I walked into a staff meeting. I felt like an idiot standing there with my jar o' pee. A receptionist pointed out that the door was marked private and I shouldn't have knocked on it. Apparently the office was closed. But the front door was open...It was an oversight. The door was marked "Private".
We went home and I made a meal that I had promised to bring to a good friend who just had a baby. I made her a curry dish that we all like. I even went out and bought all the extra special ingredients that I never have. Like raisins. I put the decorative cilantro and cashews on the finished meal. It looked so pretty. I never buy decorative cilantro...or raisins. OMG raisins! Her husband is allergic to fruit! He's allergic to the meal that took me an hour to make! The tears began.
OS came home from school. After a while we headed out to drop off the meal and then headed for soccer along with the Big Giraffe's stinky sneakers that he had left at home. He's the soccer coach. The day was almost over. We would get through the practice and get home. Here's the grand finale of my truly terrible day.
I got to the field and saw the team with all of the moms I hung out with last season. That was no longer my team. We had switched teams so that the Big Giraffe could coach. I was doing my best to be friendly with the new moms on the team while watching the moms on my old team chat away together across the field. All of a sudden YS began to excitedly gesture. What was he so happy about? I turned my head and followed his gaze. It was his long lost friend...the outhouse. But wait, it gets better.
He just had to use it. He was all smiles. He immediately burst in to see if his old friends the orange and the coffee cup from last spring were still nestled deep inside the bowels of the outhouse. Why yes they were despite the fact that the town allegedly cleans the outhouse on a regular basis. But there was also a new friend. The plastic water bottle. YS quickly pointed it out. I told him to hurry up. Oh, no he couldn't do that. He had to go number 2. I drew the line. There was a spider web all across the seat plus YS has decided in his very recent obsession with going number 2 in public bathrooms that he no longer wants me to hold him. And sometimes he falls in a little. But you can't just fall a little in an outhouse...and you don't just hit water when you fall. Um, no. This was not going to happen. I told him I would just take him home. He had a fit. I wanted to move to Australia.
That is my truly terrible day. I think the worst part was how silly I felt about getting upset over everything. That made me realize how silly I felt about my day to day activities as a SAHM and question my decision to be at home. When I went through everything that had happened it wasn't like I was in a car accident or BG had lost his job or anything near that level. Yet I had cried several times. At the end of the day the big question was "did I make a mistake by staying at home?" and I couldn' t honestly say "no". In the end that's ultimately what made it a bad day.
A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: The silver lining on a bad day is that it makes a good blog post.
I can relate to this on so many levels. While I'm happy with my decision to stay at home now, it has been really hard to go from presenting in court and conducting important investigations to presenting at swim lessons and checking to make sure H wiped. I think it's hard when you're starting to be in the up-swing of the change cycle...your time is a'comin!
Oh Alex, it seems that everything that could have gone wrong did! I would have been in tears too. Some days just are like that and there's nothing to do but throw your hands up on the air and laugh.
Oh honey. These things would have happened whether you work outside the home or not. We all have bad days where the errands go awry and the kids poop their pants. (I wonder where that poop is? Under the bench??) It doesn't mean that you aren't supposed to be a SAHM. It just means that you had a bad day.
That said, I am totally laughing at the outhouse story!
I've had days like that too. Going to the RMV is never a pleasant experience as it is, but having your kid poop in line - horrible! My three-year-old loves to use public bathrooms too. Then, I'm like, "Don't touch anything!!!!"
Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 5 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.
I can relate to this on so many levels. While I'm happy with my decision to stay at home now, it has been really hard to go from presenting in court and conducting important investigations to presenting at swim lessons and checking to make sure H wiped. I think it's hard when you're starting to be in the up-swing of the change cycle...your time is a'comin!