Short Circuit

So far this year has started off with some nice little adventures.

Yesterday my car battery died. And it was just when I was already a few minutes late to pick up my oldest at school. Ordinarily this would have sent me into a mad panic, calling numbers at the school and putting out an APB for help. But having been through this 2 other times already, in the exact same scenario, I just sort of laughed.

And my younger daughter just said "The car's not working again? So I can keep watching my show?" And back she went to the TV. And luckily I hadn't woken up my son yet from his nap. It's generally the last thing I do after everything and everyone is in the car ready to go.

A quick phone call to my carpooling friend, some bartering of pick up days, and the problem was solved. Then I sent a text to my husband telling him to FINALLY get a new battery for the car. He's been fighting me on this one but I just put my foot down this time and said I'd be taking the car in the next day if he didn't do it himself (which I knew he'd insist on, so I had him in a corner).

A short while later my husband arrives home with a battery that "could power the Titanic" he says. So now I think we have at least one problem solved.

The other problem has a bit more trickery involved. It seems that about a week ago, a wee little field mouse found his way into the wall of our kitchen and passed on to greener meadows. And while this happens all over the world every day, especially around our house which is surrounded by (and built on) marshland so nature's furry and feathered wonders are everywhere, for it to happen in this exact spot is a bit of a bummer.

How do we know he's passed on, you ask? Well there's a bit of a smell. A foul order that I mistakenly thought was just the garbage after we had shrimp for dinner one night last week. But after days of the smell lingering, and me cleaning every nook and cranny of our kitchen, we knew something was amiss. When my husband made the suggestion of perhaps there being a dead rodent nearby, I knew he was on to something.

So now we had to really start looking around. Or should I say, he had to start really looking around. I made myself scarce lest I throw up a little in my mouth at the thought of it all.

The result came in as it being inside the wall, or else under the cabinets, as there is no behind the cabinets.

Quick haste I made a call to our friendly neighborhood exterminator who we keep on retainer.

That statement is quite sad, really.

But the Orkin guy came out and in a very polite way he told us we were screwed. Just gotta live with it. Keep spraying the Lysol he says. Spray it into the wall if there are holes. Which there were, but they aren't in the area where the specimen might lie.

So my husband decides to cut out a little hole in the wall around the existing one, which is there for a plumbing pipe. And while cutting out that little hole, he also cuts said pipe.

Ooops.

Now we have to shut off the water and we can't use the sink. Or the dishwasher. It's the drain pipe, so luckily there was no leaking or flooding when this happened.

But it made the thought of making dinner a bit difficult. And unappetizing considering the smell we were trying to mask with our candles and Lysol.

"Let's go out to eat" I say. So we all pack up and head out to the car to get dinner out.

Oops.

The battery is still dead and the super duper turbo one is sitting on the ground awaiting it's new home. "I can do this in 5 minutes" my husband exclaims, and he starts digging around his tool box.

In the mean time I decide to put the extra carseats in his car and then call him off the project. Just in time as he's starting to get a bit (more than) frustrated at this point, as evidenced by flying objects in the garage.

But this works out well because then he can swing by Home Depot to pick up something to repair the pipe.

After a fine meal at Chipotle and a quick errand done, we decide to splurge on Jamba Juice for dessert. We arrive to see that it seems like they are trying to close early. We soon find out that their cash register is broken down, so they decide to just start doing everything the old fashioned way, adding it up with a calculator and counting back the change. They are very appreciative of our patience during this process.

Hey, we know what it feels like to have things not really go the way you thought, so we are plenty patient at this point.

After that we head home and my husband is ready to begin his evening of being a grease monkey.

I put all the kids to bed and by that time he declares that the good news is he fixed the pipe and all is well again in the kitchen. Except the stink of course.

But the bad news is he has the wrong kind of battery for the car.

So we keep the old battery in there and my husband charges it up and drives it around for a bit, running a quick errand to the grocery store to get more air freshener.

This morning I'm driving the car and I can't even remember what the numbers are to all the radio stations that I like (since the radio has been reset when taking out the battery). Talk about short circuiting.

Happy 2010.

May we always have a back up plan. And plenty of air freshener.

Please Remain Calm

As I've mentioned in a recent post, my son is experiencing a great deal of faceplants these days. Which are leading to a great deal of nosebleeds.

The worst one yet took place just after I wrote that post. We were at Pump It Up, the toddler birthday party version of Girls Gone Wild, for the party of one of my younger daughter's classmates. If you've ever been to one of these jumpy-house-places-on-crack you would know that there are any number of places he could have knocked his noggin. And most of them are soft. Although, while he played with the basketball in one of the jump houses, I was just waiting for it to land smack on his face as he looked up to see where it went. I at least figured he was in for a good body slam with one of the many "big kids" that were jumping like crazy and bouncing off the walls.

But, no. Nothing that complex for my son.

Instead he decided to, in the middle of absolutely nothing, spin around in circles on the floor (no, not a jumpy house) and make himself so dizzy that he fell over. Flat on his face.

It was a work of genius.

About two point two seconds after he looks up at me bawling, I see a gusher starting. I did stay calm and took him out to the bathroom where we eventually got it all cleaned up. It frightened the girl working there enough that she went running for an ice pack. But he's a tough guy and he didn't want that sissy ice.

Once he was cleaned up he just wanted to get back into the ring. So we went off bouncing and sliding again, thankfully blood free for the rest of the event.

I have to say that I was really calm during it all. Must be because of all the tactical, high level training he's put me through lately.

But then today I saw the aftermath of a little girls face meeting some concrete outside my younger daughter's school. And I almost lost my lunch.

I know, I know. Not even my own kid. But I guess when it's your kid you have more adrenaline keeping you in control. Or you aren't such a gawker because you are thinking about how the hell you are going to stop the bleeding, all the while scanning your Mommy GPS to figure out the whereabouts of the nearest hospital.

Plus, this poor little girl was bleeding WAY more than my son's nose ever did, most likely because she was bleeding in her mouth as well. There was so much blood that her mom couldn't tell where it was coming from, and all the while the girl is crying profusely and starting to gag, presumably because she's swallowing some of the blood. It just wasn't pretty.

My heart went out to them, and I offered wipes. Yes, wipes. It's all I could come up with. Another mom had gone for paper towels and help from the school office, and another mom was following directions and fetching the little girls pacifier from their car. Clearly they were a lot more helpful than me.

And while I'm there with what I'm sure was a terrified look on my face, doing so little that picking my nose would have been a viable option, the mom of this girl is staying very calm. She's trying to wipe her daughter's face and figure out where she's bleeding. And she even thought about getting the pacifier out of the car so the girl would stop crying and hold still.

Eventually all I could do was duck into my car and go. I did wait until other help arrived, and I even gave my feeble, but true, excuse that I had to go pick up my son.

So I got back in the car and for the next 10 minutes I felt nauseous and spaced out. I couldn't even hold a conversation with my 4 year old to save my life.

That one really knocked me for a loop. It made me wonder just how I would have acted in the same situation. I only hope that I will be as calm as this woman was today.

Because I can tell you with absolute certainty that I will be in a similar situation one day. The odds are just with me, given that I have three children, and one of them is a spin-around-in-circles-and-fall-flat-on-my-face kind of kid.

Oh No He Di'int

I don't usually write about other people's kids, but I thought this time I might share a story with you that made me chuckle. Well really, I'm not sure if it was funny or just so curiously gross that it made me stop in my tracks a bit. Either way, here goes.

The other day I was picking up my 6 year old from camp. The camp is supposed to be for 6-8 year olds, but somehow I keep seeing smaller kids hanging around, and at times my daughter has told me that this or that person is 5 or 4 years old. Not sure if that is true, but you'll see why it's relevant in a minute.

So I'm picking her up and I have my son and my 3 year old daughter with me as well. We are standing around waiting to check her out with her counselor and everyone is situated around a picnic table.

Suddenly the overwhelming smell of poop wafts passed us. At the same time that I notice this I overhear a little girl say "Daddy, I think the baby has a poopy diaper," while pointing at my son who is happily hanging out in my arms.

I smile a little at the girl and think, maybe he does. I just changed him before we left and he's just been in the carseat, which is an unlikely place for him to do the deed, but I take a sniff anyway.

Nope, it's not my son. I figure it must just be someone passing gas. Although admittedly, it really smells more like an outhouse, which is to say I think it's the real deal and not the precursor toots.

We catch the whiff another time and now I'm just really curious as to where this is coming from. But no one else seems to care, and clearly my son is just taking the blame at the moment.

As I tell her counselor that I am picking up my daughter, I take a look around at the other campers. Besides the accuser of my son, there is at this point only one other kid left. And no other babies around that could take the fall, so I check that off my list of culprits.

This other boy looks pretty young to me, maybe around 4 or 5 years old, and he's sitting on his haunches on the bench of the picnic table.

By this I mean he is on his feet on the bench, and his butt is almost down by his ankles, only about an inch from the seat. His knees are in his face.

And from where I'm standing I have a clear view up his shorts and into his underwear.

Yup, you guessed it.

He has pooped his pants.

And it's right there airing itself out to the world because his tighty whities can't quite contain it all the way.

And it stinks.

Apparently I'm the only one that sees this. This boy has probably been sitting this way for a good 15 minutes, taking care of business, and then not knowing what the hell to do about it.

As I take all this in, I see that he is trying to look down at his deposit. But he can't really get a good look. So now he is reaching down there and poking at it with his fingers.

ACK!

As I watch him poke around down there for a second or two, he decides he's had enough of a feel and he brings his hand back up. And up and up. Right to his face.

Oh God, I think. He's going to taste it!

No, no he doesn't.

He just takes a sniff.

GACK!

I think that time I threw up a little in my mouth. Sorry about that.

He then takes a close inspection of his finger and takes another smell. The expression on his face doesn't change a bit. He just lowers his hand back down to his knee and then seems totally disinterested in the whole thing. But he's still not moving a bit.

What must be going through his head?

"Hmmmm, I wonder if I really did just poop. It kinda
smells around here. Maybe I did. Was it me? Is it in
there? I can't really see anything. Maybe I'll just reach down and
check. Hmmm. There's something in there. Wonder what it
is. Let's look. Well it looks like poop. Could just be dirt
through. Let's smell it. Yup, that's poop. I wonder when my
dad will be here. Hey look, a bird."

As I load up my kids into my car, which is right there in front, I keep staring at this kid because I am just so curious about it all that I can't tear away from it.

This is way better than the sight of the 8 or 9 year old girl the other day that literally peed her pants on the roller coaster as we were waiting in line. And she wasn't going to own up to it one bit. She just exited and proceeded to be in constant motion so her friend couldn't get a look at the evidence.

So back to poop boy. In a second his dad shows up to get him and he sllllooooooowwwly rises off the bench and takes a stand on the ground. He straddles his way over to his dad, stands for a second while his father checks him out with the counselor, and then waddles away.

He's walking like, well, like he has a load in his pants of course.

I happily have my poop-free gang buckled in and as we pull away I watch the soon-to-be-surprised dad (what will happen when he sits him in his carseat!!??) and the boy stroll off.

And I think to myself "Good luck with that."