Keeping Busy

My wife dropped a 3 foot cement bird bath on her foot yesterday. I don't know why. Maybe she thought her foot was a thirsty bird. Maybe she was going for a gardening disability pension. Either way, it was ineffective and for me, painful. The Pnut came to the kitchen door to tell me "mommy hurt herself," and I think I strained a muscle sprinting out to where she was sitting.  Then, after she spit on it, rubbed some dirt on it, shook it off, walked it off, dug deep, employed mind over matter, gritted it out, and put some frozen peas on it, we had to get ready to go out. We had a lunch of tuna--on pita chips for the kids, like little trashy hor d'oeuvres--and then we all piled in to the car to take the Pnut to an eye doctor appointment.

We had to drive into Boston to get there. All the way to the other side of the city. We know a lot of shortcuts through the city. Most of them go through the lousy parts. We took one such short cut. The Pumpkin man started complaining that his "stomache hurt. Can you rub it?" We told him to hold on and we'd rub it when we got to the Doctor's office. He replied by vomiting all over himself, his shoes, his car seat, the car, a passing bicyclist, and four unsuspecting pigeons.

We pulled over to clean him up.  On a busy city street. We had no choice. The car was filled with puke. Tuna puke. I offered to do the cleaning, but my wife has such a strong phobia of telephonic bureaucracy that she let me call the doctor's office while she took a screaming, vomit coated Pman on to the sidewalk. So score there.

As she undressed and cleaned him on a busy urban sidewalk, she kept telling him. "It's ok buddy, it's no big deal, it's alright," while people passed by giving them a wide berth and holding their hands palms out and close to their bodies as if to say, "Ah no lady, that smells like a pretty big fucking deal."

We ended up rescheduling the appointment and coming home. With a mostly naked boy in the backseat. Like we took a pukey little joy ride.  Like we planned it that way.

"What'd you do today? Oh, yeah, that's nice. Us? We just dropped a 3 foot cement birdbath on my wife's foot and then drove into Boston so our kid could puk all over the place, You know, that's just what we do."

Or it was like   . . . the rough parts of Boston are predominantly black. They know how to segregate in Boston. So because of that, it was kind of like we were some kind of weird sect of crazy, passive aggressive racists who decided, "Hey, I know. Let's drive our white baby into the ghetto, have it puke all over the place, then get the fuck back in the car and go! Real white people puke too, like tuna and mayo."

All in all, we laughed about it on the way home.  When we got there, the Pman was starving. We gave him toast. Lots of toast.

We still don't know what caused the throwing up. Toddler throw-up is like that sometimes. Mysterious like the outer reachings of the Universe or the appeal of Ke$ha.

HM