the road less traveled

My stomach and my butt are not co-operating and my brain is stuck being referee.

My stomach is doing it’s job of sending digested food southward. It’s my butt that’s having the real problem of keeping it together until we can reach a mutually acceptable location to deposit said chum. My brain has ordered my stomach to stop requesting food in the first place. A request which has been fully ignored. My stomach is grumbling. It would like food- pronto- but my brain knows better. None of us have eaten since Tuesday. (That would be me and my stomach. I’m still feeding my children. Don’t panic.) And we are really, really hungry. If only my butt would listen we could have pizza for lunch.

I’ve called in sick today. I didn’t think I should get paid to spend my day in the bank bathroom. I expect my co-workers to thank me for this kind gesture. Somehow, I have invoked the wrath of my manager instead. Whatever. She doesn’t know it but I have given her a great gift by not showing up today. A huge, non-stinky gift.

I intend to spend my day playing on the internet, commenting on random blogs. Possibly from the comfort of my bathroom. Talk about your multi-tasking! Maybe I’ll cave and join Twitter. Then I can give TMI in real time. Wowza!

This defines them so well.

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“Oh! When are you expecting, Honey?”

“…Huh?”

“You’re pregnant, right?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, Hon, that shirt doesn’t do you justice. You look thin everywhere else.”

“Okay.” Let me get this straight, Lady: not only do you think I look fat, but you don’t like my shirt either? Would you like to kick me too? I could totally bend over for you.

I could let this go. I could just assume that she was a batty old lady who needs to get her eyes checked. I could concede that this shirt does make me look pregnant or that I have a bit of the bloat going on today. Until I remember the incident that occurred two weeks ago. Different outfit. Different lady. Same scenario. WTF, world? Do you not realize I just lost 25 pounds? All of my body issues are beginning to make sense. So tell me, internet…

Do I look pregnant in this shirt?

Tell me the truth.

They say the third one just slips right out!

I guess I should dig my Pilate’s ball out of the hall closet. Or Perhaps I should find my Eight Minute Abs DVD? Or…

Wait! I know the perfect solution! The Official Drink of the Non-Pregnant:

Yep. That’s better.

*And if you are wondering when is a good time to ask a woman when she’s due? It’s about ten seconds after you see a head emerging from her vagina and not one second sooner.

Act I:

We open with a small girl-child sitting on the living room couch. She wiggles her front tooth. Suddenly her eyes fill with tears.

“Momma! Momma! My tooth hurts!”

“Stop playing with it.”

“But it hurts!”

“It wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t play with it.”

“BUT IT HURTS!”

“Clearly. If you would like, I can ask your Dad to pull it out for you. Then it won’t hurt anymore.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“…Uh… Okay. Let me get him.”

Our mother figure wanders out onto the porch to discuss proper tooth-pulling techniques with the father figure. Do people still pull out teeth? Does the doorknob trick actually work? Should the mother have kept her mouth shut?

ACT II:

We return to the living room. The smallish girl-child is crying again. Why-oh-why, girl-child?

“I DON’T WANT YOU TO PULL OUT MY TOOTH.”

“Okie-dokie.”

Father and Mother return to the porch. Screaming ensues inside.

“…indistinguishable gibberish…more gibberish…fhhskfhiofyuiodgfbhjg….BUT I WANT MY TOOTH OUT! Why won’t you help me?”

ACT III:

Our girl child has managed to calm herself. She enters the porch full of sunshine and rainbows.

“Father dearest. Won’t you pull out my tooth? I am ready. Please-oh-please, pull it out.”

The father gathers his supplies. Fishing line. Check. Slip knot. Check. Paper towels. Check. The girl child sits in her mother’s lap discussing otter pops and tooth fairies. The father slips the fishing line over the child’s tooth.

He pulls it tight. A popping sound fills the room. Without so much as a tug, the tooth breaks free of it’s last tie to her gums. No pulling. No doorknobs. The girl child wails a horrific scream. And then…

Quiet.

“That didn’t hurt. Can I have an Otter Pop?”

Ahhh… All is right in the world again.

How I am spending my evening:

Removing fluorescent pink silly putty from curtains, a baby blanket, a wall, and the Baby’s hair.

Removing non-washable marker from the same objects.

Trying not to pull my hair out while doing it.

I’ve spent the last thirty six hours either in the bathroom, scrubbing the carpet or changing clothes.

She’s peed on the toilet twice.

One more day until the Husband returns. All of my hard work goes down the drain if she isn’t at least partially trained when I go back to work. The Husband does not potty train. The first time she pees on the couch, he’ll have her back in a diaper.

My plan for today is to load the Baby up on fluids until she resembles a Macy’s parade float and hover over her for the first signs of pee. I’ve armed myself with enough M&M’s to feed a smallish village. She is going to be in heaven over the amount of candy and juice she will be getting today. 

I will be in heaven if we can get to three successful potty trips. 

Send reinforcements.

The Husband is away on his annual fishing trip until Thursday. I made the incredibly stupid executive decision to take this time to potty train the Baby. I was smart enough to wait until I drove back home from my parents immaculate house to try this experiment. I didn’t think my mom would appreciate pee stains on her Pottery Barn rugs. In  my delusioned head I assumed I could get it done before the Husband gets back. Only three days? No problem. I potty trained the Kid in three days. I went with the cold turkey method for her. I told her she was a big girl who wears panties now. It worked. She was even night trained before the week was over. I must rock at the parenting stuff! I should write a book!

Heh.

The Baby is bringing me back down to earth. She hates going on the potty. She doesn’t care if her panties are wet. To her, a puddle on the floor is a fun place to splash with her new sandals.

I think she is purposely messing with me. She will gladly sit on the potty and then do absolutely nothing. She hops off the toilet with a gleeful, “All Done!” Then she waits until she is fully dressed and standing in the worst spot she can find before letting loose. Eventually she has to run out of new spots, right?

She went through every single pair of panties we have yesterday afternoon before I gave up and put her in a diaper for bed.  I’ve cleaned pee from the kitchen floor, two dining room chairs, the couch, the carpet, the trampoline, and two pairs of shoes. Right now she is pant-less, shoeless and sitting on a plastic bag covered with a blanket while she watches Little Einsteins.

Make sure those reinforcements bring ice cream. I need sustenance after all that scrubbing.

I’m sitting on my parent’s back balcony with a cup of coffee made by my dad. It’s 8am and I am in a tank top and shorts. It’s warm and breezy. I can smell the ocean air, even though we are miles from the beach. The water from the pool is sparkling against the porch ceiling, making wavy designs that the girls are going crazy watching. In a few moments, I’ll give in and we’ll walk over to the community pool to make our own waves.

There is something about this place that I can’t shake. I feel happier here. Prettier. Smarter. More capable. Why is that?

Maybe it’s just because someone else makes my coffee?

Our little town is lovely. It’s quaint and simple. People know our name. They know where we live and who lived there before us. They can tell you each of our neighbors and who had pasta for dinner last Friday. It’s cute. And annoying. I like a little anonymity. When I cross over the grapevine into the LA basin, I breath easier. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? Everything is so easy here. A switch to turn on the heat. Five minutes to the grocery store. My nephew just ten minutes away. A line up of people willing to watch my kids. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends.

The Husband and I have been discussing our life on the Ranch. I think I’ve finally figured out why I can’t accept it as home. Living on the Ranch is like being stuck in Limbo. It’s like those last few months of a relationship. The months where you know it is going to end but you don’t want anyone to get hurt. So you stay. For five years. You wait and hope that you can push through. Maybe it will work out. The whole time there is a voice in the back of your head screaming. You know it won’t work, no matter how perfect the guy. No matter how hard you try to fix it. We’ve been putting our life on hold, trying not to hurt anyone. This place isn’t the right fit.

We’re moving.

Not today. Not in the next couple of months. Maybe not even this year, but we are moving. We’ll finish the house. It will become our vacation home. We both agree that we will appreciate it more if we have a chance to get away. The Husband is going to finish school. He’ll get his degree here and then a good job in the city of our choice. It might be Orange County, or it might be someplace different.

Our time in Limbo is almost done.

*Feel free to tell me why you love where you live. Maybe we’ll choose your city.

After returning home from the Kid’s parent-teacher conference this afternoon and congratulating her on a job well done with the whole schooling thing, I couldn’t resist clearing up an issue that confuses me.

Me: “Kid, why is it that you do everything Mrs. Kay asks you to do, follow all of the school rules, and never get in trouble there, but don’t do the same here?”

The Kid: “Because I love Mrs. Kay.” 

Right. Why didn’t I think of that? She loves Mrs. Kay.

Can you help me with this knife in my back? It twinges a little.

Of course there is more.

There is always more to a Redneck Tale like this.

Remember how I said that the Husband was taking more reasoned approach to yesterday’s situation? After a few beers with his buddies last night, he changed his mind.  A couple of beers seemed to convince him that shooting at people isn’t an appropriate response to our crimes. The Husband and his friends got on bikes and headed out to ride last night. (Let me warn you before you continue, I had no clue I was married to a backwoods hillbilly. This is very out of character for the Husband.) I missed the conversation where this was deemed a Good Plan. I was busy getting the girls into bed. I may have intervened if I had known they were heading out again. They rode around the property for a while (far away from the neighbors house) and then decided to head home.

You guessed it- through the four-wheeler track.

Nincompoops.

The neighbor was already calling the Sheriff when they came around the turn that leads to the track. By the time the Husband was on the track, the Sheriff and the Highway Patrol man were already at the neighbor’s house.

Less than two minutes later, the Husband was in handcuffs.

According to the Highway Patrol Man, DUI laws apply everywhere, even private property. (By the way- My MIL - you know the POLICE CHIEF- disagrees. But I digress.) It took the BIL twenty minutes to convince the Highway Patrol Man to let the Husband go. He only had to promise his next offspring and his soul. An even trade, I think.

When the Sheriff and the Highway Patrol Man passed by my house to head out they stopped to explain to me their reasoning behind their lack of a response to our complaints earlier in the day. They seemed to think that it was our fault for making noise. They tried to explain to me that the neighbor, Jarvis, (Holy moly- This is the Hatfields and the McCoys. I couldn’t make up a better Redneck name. I tried to think of something I could replace it with and couldn’t think of anything that fit the situation better than his actual name.)was a decent guy. That he isn’t crazy. He was just trying to get our attention. They know him, you see. They are buddies. For that matter, they couldn’t possibly prove that Jarvis was the one that shot at us since he wasn’t home when they knocked. Despite the track in the dirt from a bullet. Despite the trajectory coming straight from Jarvis’ porch. Despite the ten guys that were standing around to witness Jarvis screaming at them just seconds before the shots were fired.

Yeah.

They are doing us a huge favor by not prosecuting the Husband for a DUI. We should be grateful. And don’t we know about the local law that states that making excessive noise with a 1/2 mile of a residence is illegal?

(Do you suddenly feel like you’ve stumbled upon a long lost Dukes of Hazard script?)

 I realize that the Husband shouldn’t have driven through the track to get home. He shouldn’t have gone out riding. He should have stayed home and waited until they could talk like civilized people. I know this. But I am torn between my anger with the Husband for his bad decisions and the lack of justice for us. This guy wasn’t shooting in the air. He wasn’t just trying to get our attention. He shot into the center of a field full of people in broad daylight.

Shouldn’t that have repercussions?

I explained my concerns to the officers using some rather- ahem- colorful language. I had some trouble containing my anger over their lack of concern. They claimed that their goal was to not arrest anyone tonight. Not Jarvis. Not the Husband. I tried once more to explain my concern about the discrepancy between Jarvis’ crimes and our crimes. In response the officers gave me their cell phone numbers to call if any more shooting occurs. I can’t say that I feel confident that they will punish the right people.

Today the BIL went over to Jarvis’ house to have a manly talk. He found a twitchy little man who tried to run away when he approached. They came to the agreement that riding during the day is acceptable. Also, that shooting of any kind, at any time of the day or night, is not acceptable.

In better news, the Husband and the BIL are busy digging a new track exactly 1/2 mile from Jarvis’ house. Heh.