June 26, 2009

Imagine with me, if you will, that you are on a cross country adventure. You have been assigned night time driving duties, so as you navigate your Winnebago across the flat plains of the midwest you suck down a Big Gulp of Coca Cola, purchased at your most recent stop at the Seven Eleven. As you sing quietly along to the single radio station you can find - a curious blend of Patsy Cline, Vanilla Ice, and Billy Ray Cyrus - your travel companions fall asleep one by one. Half an hour from the neon lights of the Seven Eleven you pass a sign "You are now entering no man's land."

And then it hits you.

The urge.

That's right. Your Coca Cola has made it's way through your body with blinding speed, and now, here you are, entering no man's land, and you need to pee.

At first you decide to ignore it. After all, you've gone DAYS without peeing before. At least, that's what you tell yourself. Surely you can make it to the next rest area. It can't be more then...

FOUR HUNDRED MILES!!!!??!!!

The "next rest area" sign passes in a flash of blue, and suddenly you realize that this is not going to be an urge you can ignore.

Still, you do your best. You think of other things for the duration of "Crazy," "Hey, Romeo," and "Achy Breaky Heart." You manage (despite driving a stick shift) to actually cross your legs suring the midnight airing of "Alice's restaraunt." The station manager has just come on to do a special acapella rendition of "Stand By Your Man" when you can't take it any more, and you start looking for a place to stop. Miles pass, and you see no where. There are no shoulders, no convenient exits, no place where you could leave the giant Winnebago for the two minutes it would take to empty your increasingly painful bladder. As you begin to cross a bridge over what is surely the largest river in the world you start to cry a bit - this must be what hell is like.

And then you see it - a small patch of grass just on the other side of the bridge. You screech to a halt, waking all your companions, but you don't hear their bitter complaints as you bolt out the driver's door and head for the ditch. You don't even have it in you to care that everyone is staring as you finally, blissfully, relieve yourself.

Now. That sensation. That one right there. The one you are remembering, the one you get when you finally get to go to the bathroom after holding it for what seems like years.

That sensation is the closest I can come to how it feels to nurse a baby when you are really, really full of milk.

Bet you didn't think that what where I was headed, did you?

Now, before I tell you this next story I need to share with you a piece of trivia about Elliot. In defiance of all odds and all known rules of baby-dom, Elliot hates to be messy. He hates to be wet, to be dirty, to be sticky, or to be any combination of the three. If you let him play in a bucket of water he will do so happily until he splashes water on himself, and then he will fuss until you take the wet clothes off him, and then he will happily play naked in the water. So, with that bit of back information...

This morning Elliot was feeding himself oatmeal. A bite of oatmeal would go like this. Grasp the Spoon. Scoop up as much oatmeal as humanly possibly in the teeny tiny spoon. Aim for mouth. Bite perhaps 1/3 of the mound of oatmeal off the top of the spoon. Smear some down the cheek. Put the spoon (still full of oatmeal) down on the table so that both hands are free to push the oatmeal from the cheek into the mouth. Notice that there is now oatmeal on the hands. Fuss about that. While fussing, notice that their is oatmeal (from the spoon) on the table. Express your displeasure with your messy hands by slamming them down into the pile of spoon-held oatmeal on the table. REALLY fuss. Wait for Mommy to clean up hands and table. Grasp the spoon. Shake any remaining oatmeal left in the spoon out on the floor. Repeat.

It was so funny, and so exasperating at the same time. The silliest part was when he would push the glob of oatmeal on his face into his mouth, and then stare at his hand and look at me as if to say "How did this oatmeal get on my hand? Did YOU put this here?" I finally just gave him a big towel, and showed him how to wipe his hands when they got dirty.

I know that his dislike of being dirty will make potty training easier, and I'm grateful, but in the meantime it makes things complicated. Yesterday he was having an ice cream cone outside, and that was going really well, until a little bit fell on the picnic table, and he just HAD to investigate its finger paint potential, and then OH THE MISERY!

Today is clean the house day. It's finally stopped raining (for a little while, we're supposed to get thunderstorms later, I think) and I'm going to open up all the windows and try to air some of the mugginess out. Fuzzy and Dante and Waxor and I now have offers in on two houses, but since they're both short sales, and we have no idea if the bank will approve them, I plan on continuing on here as though we aren't going to be moving. Which means the great furniture rearranging/getting useless crap out of our house extravaganzza continues. Cross your fingers for me. Sigh.

Alright, I'm going to go do something productive now. Everyone have a lovely day. :)