Orchestrating Disaster

I should have known when I fell off the toilet this morning that it was going to be a day to stay home. However, as I lay there on the floor with a toilet seat stuck to my butt and my pants down around my ankles, the clues just seemed to pass me by.

My husband likes gadgets and things that qualify as "cool engineering." So when he replaced all the toilet seats in our house, he used these fancy ones with quick release snaps on the back.

"Look honey," he said with excitement as he showed off the new seats to me. "They just snap right off for easier cleaning."

"Great," I thought. "Anything to make scrubbing a toilet more accessible."

I never realized that a quick release toilet seat would come with a down side. Cool engineering isn't always safe engineering, needless to say. My easy-to-snap-off seat launched me off the pot and onto the floor when I leaned over to shut the door this morning. There I was just asking for a little privacy and attempting to shut the door that never latches on the first try, when in a flash I was recklessly tossed from one of the most vulnerable positions a person assumes. It gives new meaning to the concept of being "dethroned."

So after my traumatic ride in the bathroom, you would think that it would be enough to say maybe today is not a day to attempt great things. But I just didn't see it. Today we were going to have another family outing and it was going to be as successful as the last one. To celebrate our first wedding anniversary, Chris and I had decided to spend it as a family by going down to Dayton with Mariella for the day. I had done a little research and discovered that the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra had joined that weekend with a puppet troupe from Cincinnati for a kid friendly performance at the Schuster Center. It was a Sunday afternoon show on a beautiful day and we were excited to take her to her first live performance.

When we got there, I realized it was going to be bigger than I had expected. I had envisioned something small, more intimate with maybe a few hundred people tops. No. This was in the main hall which includes several levels of balcony seating, and almost every seat was filled. I figured we could just buy tickets at the door. In reality, there were about ten seats left and we were lucky to get a spot that didn't require binoculars and oxygen masks. As we approached the ticket window Chris looked down and said, "Oh, money. Get it." He was carrying Mariella so I bent down and grabbed it. Two dollars.

"Did you drop it?" I asked him.
"No, I just saw it lying there."
"Oh, well, should we just leave it?"
"No, just take it," he said, so I pocketed the change and we moved on.

We went to the counter and bought two seats. Thirty-two dollars. For a puppet show on a Sunday. It's ironic how you pay through the nose for seats for the people who are really just the chauffeur and concierge for the person who has really come to see the show. And thirty-two bucks? It better be a hell of a show, I thought but from the level just below the ozone, who'd know the difference?

We took an elevator to our seats and had to climb over an entire family to get to them. As soon as we sat down, Chris said, "Do you smell something? I think I smell poopy."

"Seriously?" I said, out of breath and low on oxygen. "I just changed her. Damn it. Ok. I'll take her to the bathroom. We'll be right back."

And we climbed back over the family, who was getting increasingly annoyed and making snide comments under their breath. Off to the bathroom we went, only to find out that I was foiled again by the Poop Phantom. Nothing. Just a little pee pee. Ugh. So I changed her anyway and we went back to our seats. By this time the show had started so the annoyed family was really fuming now.

It had gotten darker and the music and actors were quite loud. Mariella looked around in amazement and then the crowd clapped at something happening on stage. Mariella's face changed suddenly. The actors said something and it got very quiet. Just then, Mariella screamed and began to cry. Her voice filled the entire hall and echoed all around us. The actors stopped dead in their tracks and looked up and the audience began to laugh. In an instant we managed to disrupt the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra to the point of stopping the show.

I was mortified. Chris started laughing and tried to shush our hysterical daughter. But she just got more and more upset. The actors attempted to go on with the show but it was clear that our presence was going to make that impossible. The annoyed family at the end of the row turned and shot us disgusted glares.

"Lets' just go," I said. "We have to get out of here. Now." I was panicking and every second that ticked by was filled with Mariella's extreme discontent. We had to get her out of there.

So, we grabbed up our stuff and headed out, clamoring over the really, really pissed-off family for one last time. We regrouped out in the hall and got her settled down. Then, I set about getting our money back. Thirty-two dollars for five minutes of a show we destroyed was not going to fly.

After wrestling with the ticket lady to get a full refund, we headed back to the parking garage where we had pre-paid seven dollars for event parking. Instead of doing the smart thing and calling it a wash, I stubbornly thought, "Well we paid for the parking, we may as well make the most of it." So we got the stroller and headed to the park on the riverfront. It was hot enough to melt lead, though, and Mariella fussed the whole way. We sweat, squinted and suffered five blocks there and five blocks back. Not really worth seven dollars if you ask me but by the time we got back to the garage I had finally been beaten into submission. So we packed everything up and headed home.

After a few cool and quiet minutes in the car, Chris said, "Well look at the bright side, honey. After all that, we actually made two dollars today."

He was right. The money we found on the floor! So, not many people can say that they crapped out all day long and still found themselves up a few bucks by the end of the day. But we did. I guess if getting thrown across the room by your toilet and ruining a professional orchestral show for thousands of people is worth two bucks, then all in all we had a good day. I'll just count it a win and put the money towards a new toilet seat.

Great Expectations

Recently, my husband decided he wanted to take our 8 month old daughter to the zoo for her first time. We chose the Columbus Zoo because it is the closest to where we live. We picked a day between Mother’s Day and his birthday so we could consider it a Mommy-Daddy-Family Day celebration. However, the day we picked happened to be the wettest day of the week. From the beginning I was unsure how an outdoor activity was going to go on a rainy day with a baby in tow. But my husband’s exuberance left me with no choice but to be hopeful.

So we headed off to Columbus to have our big day. It rained and drizzled the whole way and was still quite damp when we arrived. As we came up over the hill to the parking lot we noticed there were a few spots available.

“I feel like we’re at Wally World,” he said.

Well, it’s raining on a weekday. I think we’ll be able to park close to the entrance,” I replied. It was true. In front of us lay a sea of open spaces and it appeared as if even the staff didn’t bother to show up. So, we parked up front and set about doing our "New Parent" dance. This consists of scrambling around the car to gather up lost shoes, binkies, extra wipes, etc., wrestling apart the stroller, over-packing supplies in our travel bag and assessing what we will and will not need in order to survive the next two hours in the “jungles” of the zoo. We are not really trekking into the Amazon but we pack as if we are.

Fully stocked, we headed in. We grabbed our map and discussed our game plan. It seemed logical to my husband that we should start with a petting zoo. There, Mariella would be eye to eye with animals more her size and, with the exception of the goats, less likely to eat her. Once there, however, we realized that a baby who uses her hands more as chew toys rather than for means of production really should not be petting anyone who takes no offense when his friend poops in his food dish.

Instead, we looked at them from a comfortable distance and then moved on. We really wanted to see what was new at the park so we headed next to the polar bear exhibit. We found two very lazy polar bears, which could care less about us, and a slew of small children dizzying their over-caffeinated moms. Mariella was fascinated! This was the best exhibit ever! Children acting like monkeys and mothers acting like lions! It was fantastically animated. The kids were yelling and running, climbing and clobbering each other. The moms on the other hand stayed in a tight little pack, talking amongst themselves, sipping from thermos mugs and occasionally screaming at one of their kids to “Get back here!”

Chris tried desperately to get Mariella to look through the glass at the bears but she could care less. The real show was all around her.

“Ugh! She’s not looking! I want her to see the bears. She’s not excited about the bears,” he said frustrated.

“Honey, she’s eight months old. How excited is she supposed to get about a white furry blob on a rock?”

“Well, I just thought she’d have some reaction,” he said, clearly bummed by his daughter’s lack of enthusiasm about her first trip to the zoo.

“Well, she likes the kids. She can’t seem to get enough of them. Maybe we should have taken her to the mall. There are all kinds of interesting people on exhibit there,” I said.

It’s true. If you think about it the mall is like a human zoo: people standing around behind big glass windows, looking as if they vaguely remember fresh air and freedom. There’s even fake plants and waterscapes to give the impression they’re in their natural habitat. I’m assuming that would be the Garden of Eden, I guess.

Anyway, we gave up on the polar bears and were walking out when we passed an exhibit where two gigantic grizzly bears were rough playing in the water. We drove Mariella up to the glass, assured she would find this astounding. She did not. We’re not even sure she knew they were there. Instead, she found her reflection in the glass and excitedly interacted with herself. Chris and I were in awe of the bears. These seven foot monsters with heads the size of my car tires came right up to the glass as they wrestled and bit. They snarled and bared teeth and claws. And Mariella smiled and waved at herself in the glass.

On the way out we passed some elephants doing some cool things like snorting mud and spewing it onto their backs but by this time Mariella was hungry so we stopped to give her a bottle. My husband was becoming increasingly disgruntled that she was not reacting as he had expected. She was being very self-involved.

We passed through the Asia exhibit and saw all kinds of wonderful things: tigers, giant bats, red pandas, langurs. They were all beautiful, incredible creatures. Mariella liked the waterfall. She stared, captivated by a man-made waterfall so we drove her up to it and stood there, staring at the water rushing down. She threw her hands up in the air and cooed with excitement over this.

“Well, you wanted her to get excited about the zoo. You didn’t specify which part,” I said.

By the end of our afternoon, we were all getting a little tired. The weather had cleared up and the sun had come out but we were ready to go home. We made one last stop at the gift shop to look around and walked out with a $20 souvenir stuffed elephant.

“I want her to have something special to remember her first trip to the zoo,” I said. “It’s important that she has something to commemorate this day.”

By the time we had gotten to the car, the elephant had been thrown on the ground, turned into a chew toy and was already losing fur. As we drove home, I thought about expectations. As parents, we expect so much of our children and we don’t even realize it. Even with the little things, we expect that they will do or experience them in a particular way. We want so badly for our kids to have the same good memories we had, or we want them to experience things we never had the chance to experience. But I think Mariella had a good day. She didn’t enjoy it the way we thought she should but she was happy. She was entertained by feral children, made friends with her reflection in the glass and ate a very expensive elephant. But most importantly, she did it all with mommy and daddy. So, the most important part of the day was that we did it as a family. That’s really the only expectation we should have when it comes right down to it: We do things as a family. As a side note, though, the next time I'll save us some money and entertain her with the bathroom faucet and vanity.

Sleepless Beauty

I've decided I'm going to write a children's book entitled "It's Bedtime, Damn It!" Lately it seems I am worn to threads manhandling my child as she romps around, all cracked up like she did sugar lines off the coffee table. This always takes place around 8pm when it is technically bedtime. It sometimes goes on until around 11pm. I feel like we rescued her from the wild the way she scratches and kicks and yells. Trying to get her into the crib is like trying to stuff a cat down a toilet.

Once she gets to bed it's hard to keep her there. She has developed a tendency to wake up periodically throughout the night and holler as if she's being treated like an inmate at Gitmo. What happened to my quiet, peaceful little baby? The one I had in the hospital those two blissful days? I think we got a lemon. She worked perfectly on the lot but the minute we drove her off she started breaking down all the time. Are there Lemon Laws for babies? There should be.

I'm really getting too old for this, too. I've noticed how my body weakens under the stress of trying to get her back to bed. These are the real labor pains. As I rock her, standing by the crib each night, I feel my lower back giving way under this 20 pound limp, dead weight. Then once I get her back to sleep, I try to quietly sneak out. What happens is more like I "crackle" my way out. With every step, literally each joint from toe to hip cracks and pops. There is no quiet exit for me, unfortunately. I may as well line the nursery with bubble wrap and Riverdance my way to the door.

The other night was just such a scenario. After two or three trips back to her room to settle her, I thought I had finally made it through. Not long after I fell back to sleep however, I was awakened to the sound of Maggie barking lightly and scratching on a door. I leaped out of bed ready to attack. No way was she going to wake that kid. I was going to have to kill her. I came to find that the door she was behind was in fact the baby's bedroom door. She had gone into her room and gotten stuck. Little did she know she was moments from the end of her life.

As I opened the door, she shot out followed by the most horrific stench I have ever encountered and living in this household, that is truly saying something. I gagged and then stuck my head into the room to take another whiff. Oddly, I smelled nothing so I assumed the stench was staying with the dog. I followed her to my room sniffing her as she cowered away. Miraculously the baby slept on but Maggie was having serious digestive issues. She chose to relocate at the side of my bed and because there was a thunderstorm going on that night, I was not going to be able to pry her away. She clung to my bedside and hunkered down, leaking gas like a day-old balloon.

I had to cover my head with the sheets so I could breathe and get back to sleep. Probably about an hour later, I heard the baby cry. This time Chris made what resulted in the fateful trip to the baby's room. He opened the door and once again out flew Maggie. She had returned to the scene of the crime and this time she left evidence. Chris immediately experienced the shock and awe of the odor the dog left behind. Then, as I lay in bed, trying to ease back to Sleepytown, I heard "What the hell is going on in here?" Chris was yelling, the baby was screaming and Maggie was nowhere to be found. I jumped out of bed, again, and ran to her room. There I found Chris sitting on the twin bed wiping his foot with baby wipes, and a sloppy pile of dog poo on the floor next to the crib. Apparently, the stench woke her up. I'm surprised it didn't poison her.

I ran to the kitchen to grab paper towels and cleaning supplies and set about cleaning it up while Chris rubbed the first layer of skin off his toes. Then we cuddled Mariella and tried to get her settled down. Maggie, meanwhile, roamed the house with poo hanging off her behind, likely trying to escape her own smell. We all eventually recovered from this hellish night but in general sleepless nights go on and I suffer from long term sleep deprivation to be sure.

It is this kind of sleep deprivation that results in acts of forgetfulness and frequent flashes of insanity. Just the other day, as we rushed out of the house to go to swim lessons, we forgot to close the back door. Maggie of course took full advantage of this opportunity and spent the following hour and a half, roaming the streets like a juvenile delinquent. What actually happened that day, we'll never know. Maggie will take the secrets of her adventure to her grave. All we know is that when she returned, by the grace of God, she was physically intact, covered in grass, mud and mysterious substances and she smelled of week-old road kill. We're pretty sure it was the greatest day of her life.

And Maggie isn't the only one who sets out on adventures due to owner neglect. Mandie had a stroll of her own. We're pretty sure that her leash latch was faulty and she got loose but who knows. I'm lucky to remember to leash my boobs with a bra every day, let alone keep the dogs tethered to the yard. At any rate, after about an hour we realized she was gone and called for her. She came sauntering back, unscathed but we didn't get away with the indiscretion this time. Not too much later, our neighbor came over to be "neighborly."

"That heavy-set dog was walking down the alley a little while ago, you know," he said to my husband as he leaned against the back door. "Just thought you should know. Just being neighborly."

Our neighbor's definition of "neighborly" is different than ours, by the way. To us, it is a synonym for nosy. So far, he has come to tell us that our grass is a few centimeters past the city ordinance for grass height, our bushes are protruding onto the sidewalk (likely a city ordinance against fat shrubs), and the tags on our cars had expired. By the way, there is a city ordinance against expired tags. Imagine that. When he came over to report Mandie's illegal passage down the alley, he inadvertantly woke Mariella from her nap. Unaware of the serious nature of such a crime in our house, he lives to this day not knowing how lucky he is to be spared. Waking the baby, especially after what we go through to get her down, is an extremely dangerous act around here. It surpasses stealing someone's sandwich from their plate when they're not looking. It even surpasses taking a dump on the baby's bedroom floor.

Oh yes, if you wake the Sleepless Beauty you must be aware of the demise which could befall you. With two sleep deprived, unstable, raving mad lunatics with dementia running the house, your safety cannot be guaranteed. Even the dogs can't be sure. You might just find yourself on the wrong side of a door someday and what you do at that point could very well determine your fate. So, if you want to live, don't wake the baby. And if you want to sleep, get a hotel room.