Me: Mimi has swimming today at 5:30.
Jon: If you have work to do I’ll take her.
Me: Wow. Thanks. That would be a big help.
Jon: Sure, I’ll finish work by 5 and… wait, is she swimming in the big pool or the little pool now? What about dinner? Can you fix a snack for her to eat before her lesson? Can she eat before swimming? Is her stuff packed? What does she take to swimming? Where do you keep her swimsuit? Do you know if she has anything at school to bring home? Do I have to bring extra clothes for after swimming? What about her hair? Is she still putting it up for swim? Where’s that stuff you put in her ears before she swims? Have you washed the swim towels yet? Where are they?
Me: You know what? I’ll take her.
Jon: I don’t get it.
Me: Trust me.
There are days when I am just who I want to be. Don’t you love those days? Days when the right words come out of your mouth? When you ask your child to help you with something, and she does? Happily? When you squeeze in the gym before dinner, remember to drop your mother’s birthday card in the mail, go to bookgroup even though you didn’t really feel like it? Days when you get up and go rather than giving in to the urge to lie in front of the TV with a bag Cheetos.Remember this post ? My, but I can feel like the sky is falling sometimes. I so appreciate the emails and comments … the sky isn’t so threatening when you have people to commiserate with you about it.
But of course, the saga didn’t end there. Apparently tree roots have broken into the main sewer line, far away from the house in a corner of the yard (it’s a lovely tree, by the way, with purple and white flowers in spring, you’d never guess it was so lethal) and anything that uses water, including the washing machine and the dishwasher, stopped. Including our one and only toilet.
I’ll just say this: a reluctant-to-potty-train preschooler and bad plumbing DO NOT MIX.
So it was off to a hotel for us. Three nights in a hotel! It was a budget hotel, sure, but it had a tub I didn’t have to clean and beds I didn’t have to make and carpet I didn’t have to vacuum and TELEVISION. (I got to watch the GOLDEN GLOBES. Weren’t the dresses dreamy?)
We got ROOM SERVICE (the first night. We were too weary to deal with an equally weary Mimi in a restaurant. After that I brought food from home. Our room had a microwave!)
Clearly I am easy to excite, as I am now speaking in exclamation points.
We also solved a wrenching domestic mystery. We had the line snaked, something Jon had tried with a machine rented from Home Depot but it didn’t work when he did it. The plumber got it cleared, and what do you think popped out? Mim’s Little EInstein Annie doll. She’d disappeared last week after a fight with Little Einstein June, and I had assumed the worst. I predicted that she’d been confiscated by a dog in need of something to shred, or handed off to another child at preschool, or perhaps we would discover her one day deep under the couch … but given Mimi’s general attitude toward the toilet it should not have been a surprise that she met a watery end.
Annie was, sadly, not recoverable, and despite Mimi’s long neglect of the toy that looks a bit like her in favor of the ballet-dancing, tutu-twirling, vaguely exotic June, she was devastated. We were as surprised as she when the plumber emerged from the bathroom cradelling the muck-caked doll; we could only identify her by her red dress and one blue foot (she was missing the other foot and most of her head). The plumber handled her gently, and this assuaged Mimi’s grief a bit. That plumber is either super sensitive, or he has children; without knowing the toy’s story he automatically assumed the best tactic was to take care with Annie. And from Mimi’s tears one would never guess that she’d not asked after Annie once since her disappearance. So callow!
And more good news! We’d anticipated a horrible, horrible plumbing bill, and his bill was nowhere near what we’d feared. It wasn’t our first choice of how to spend $500, but it could have been thousands.
So now we are home. Everything appears to work. I’m getting caught up with laundry, on my way to pick up Mimi from preschool and take her to swimming lessons… life is good at the moment.
Oh, and did I mention I quit my job? I’ll write about that as soon as my fingers stop shaking every time I think about it.
So, I’ve attached a new button to my template, one asking for ‘reactions.’ It lets people read and offer a one-click reaction, if they don’t have time to leave a comment (or don’t have anything in particular to say). It’s kind of like the ‘likes this’ button on Facebook.
That made me think: no sense asking for reactions if I don’t put the truth out there.
I haven’t been untruthful, but I haven’t been full disclosure either. A big part of that is that I don’t have any clue what my own reaction to my story is yet. Most times I feel too messed up to begin anywhere, and that scares me, because I don’t want to be THAT messed up.
Look through my blog roll and you’ll discover what I did: everyone has something to worry about, but no one has the plate I do right now.
First, let me be clear that I am being pecked to death by ducks. I have no tragedy to lament. I have food to eat, a roof over my head, people who love me, and a healthy daughter. I know this. I do. I also know that I am overdrawn at the bank; I don’t own — or even rent — the roof over my head; I have no job prospects; my marriage has failed; and my daughter needs eye surgery. There are lots more complicating factors than that but you get the point.
I only have to go to sites like Stephanie’s, or Alyssa’s or, dear God, Heather’s for a much needed reality check. And I do go there often. I do not claim such territory, not at all.
But being pecked to death by ducks does hurt.
