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

This week: Mobility and Vomit. Good times.

This week, these things happened:

Peanut got her first stomach virus.  I think she got it off ebay.  It was like the pie eating scene from Stand By Me up in this piece.  My favorite part was when she was laying on her side and I asked if she was feeling better and she answered in the affirmitave thusly:  Mm hmm . . . mm mmBLGHGHAAHRGHLLGL.

She's feeling much better today.  To whit:

The Peanut, moving in circles, Real time:  "These are the keys to open the gate.  Can you open the gate.  Ok Look.  Ok.  This is baby Jaguar(hands me Jaguar)!  She's a cat.  Daaddy!!!  There's keys to open the gate!  Looook!!"  There are so many exclamation points in her world.  I can spare two or three a week, tops.  Then I'm all out.  The gate, by the way, is a plastic janitor's cart we got her last christmas.  Why a janitor's cart?  Because we want her to reach for the stars, baby.  Aim high, my little one.  Aim high.

The Pumpkin man is finally walking more than crawling.  The douche.  Kid's been able to scale a 5 foot cat tree for a month and a half and crawls faster than a Segway, but he's just now pulling the walking thing together.

I was so proud when he was doing it at play group.  I couldn't understand why all the other parents weren't giving him a riotous round of applause and carrying him around on their shoulders and ticker tape and a key to the city and an endorsement deal with Nike.  A commercial like the recent one with Tiger Woods and his dad except it would be the P-man, shot in black and white, staring into the camera and my voice in the background just going "No.  No!  Get down!  Get Down now! No  Give me that.  Ple--would you--Jesu--ok. Thank you . . . No!"  He often exhausts my weekly supply of exclamation points.

In closing, this morning's conversation with my wife:

Her (peering in the fish tank)  Whoa.  Look at the snail.  Is something wrong?  It looks weird.

Me:  (Looking) Oh, whoa.

Her:  It looks weird right?

Me:  Mm.  I've seen this before.  It's not good

Her:  What is it?

Me:  I think it has Snaids.

Her:  HAW.  You jerk.

Me:  Or maybe it's Snancer.  Or Snupus.

Her: So you're saying you think it's fine?

Me:  Maybe it's Snou Gehrig's disease?

Her: Alright.

Me:  It's probably just a bad case of the Snu.  Ooh, wait.   I think it's Snerpes.


This was at 6:20 in the morning.  And this woman continues to stay married to me.  Go figure.

In closing even more, I got to feel what it's like to be considered a super hero today.  Maybe even a god.  From the backseat of the car, the Peanut said, "Daddy, the sun's in my eyes. The sun is in my eyes daddy."

Me:  "Ok honey, I know.  Hold on".

Her:  "Daddy, turn it off.  Turn off the sun."

Me:  (as we approached a tunnel)  "No problem, honey."

Sweet.

That's the weekly update, stream of consciousness edition:

Your pal,

Homemaker Man

This post brought to you be Fatherhood Friday at dad-blogs.com.