honey, they don't call it a job for nothin'

Hey gang! Let's play a game I call "Who's Day Sucked More!?!" It's a spin-off of the wildly successful party game "Oh, Trust Me, I Am SO Much Sicker Than You!!!" of which I'm the reigning world champion.

(My husband spent the entirety of last winter suffering from pneumonia, became anemic, AND THEN developed pneumonia-induced asthma that he still suffers from today, which is his excuse for not mowing the yard, but oh, I'm on to him there, friends! However, my non-drugged, rapid-fire deliveries of his two heirs and the weakened bladder muscles I'm forever reminded of as a result thanks to a wee bit of, well, wee brought on by every sneeze, jump, or casual run I take means I win. I WIN INFINITY!)(Also? Hahahaha...me? Running? Hahahahaha! Priceless!)

The rules of this game are simple. We all sit back, sigh with as much resignation as we can muster, and then toss the day's horrible experiences back and forth until a winner's declared. I say declared, but bear in mind, there's no way you're going to beat me at this game.

Ready?

OK. We all begin with 120 'This Sucks!' points because it's Monday. These points are a given. Next, I'm going to subtract 100 million points from my score, leaving me with a deficit, because, as I do every day, I went through this one without coffee. Some of you need it to survive, but I don't. Does that make me stronger than you? Debatable. However, you now all have 120 million points.

(Is that right? No, that's not right. Is it? Jeepers, math is hard!)

I know you're probably feeling confidant. You think the massive points spread that separates all of you from me is so vast there's no way I can beat you.

Think again, losers!

(sidebar - I do not now nor have I ever considered any of you to be actual losers)

(You're all going down, though!)

OK, now, go ahead and tell me a few of the horrible things that happened to you today.

• You got stuck in a bear trap and had to chew your own leg off below the knee to escape? Yowza! Thirty points!

• Your boss yelled at you and made you cry? Ouch! That probably seemed like it sucked! Fifteen points!

• Your name's Tommy and you used to work on the docks, but the union's been on strike so you're down on your luck? That's tough. Fifty points.
  

• You forgot to hit 'save' the entire time you were writing what was to be the next great novel (or Twilight saga)(bazinga!) and your kid ran through the room, tripped, and yanked the computer chord from the wall, causing your hard work to disappear? Bummer, dude. Eight points (mostly because I can't believe you never once did a 'save as').
  

Now it's my turn!!

• Ten minutes after arriving at work in the children's department (automatic 100 points) at the bookstore, a mother changed her toddler's diaper right there in the department. What's the big deal? Hasn't that happened before? Yes. But just let me tell you! She spread that kid out ON the Thomas the Tank Engine train table and yanked what was, without a doubt, the rankest, most excrement-laden diaper I've ever been witness to off her child atop a play set revered my millions of children daily at my store. No amount of Lysol I could (did) spray on it after she (tossed the diaper in the waste basket right next to my customer service counter, of course, awesome, thank you) left could kill the issues that presented. Listen, I know the train table is awful. Personally, I never touch it. EVER. If I find a toy train somewhere other than on the table, I use a tissue to pick it up, then go scrub my arms down, Silkwood-style. Every child who plays there sticks a train either in their mouth or nose. Many have eaten off it. Kids have peed on the floor around it. Hair has been pulled and punches thrown. I've witnessed gangland murders go down around it. It may seem like a bathroom, but it ain't no bathroom! Gah! Two million points (Plus previously mentioned 100 points)(You do the math)(I'm serious)(Please?).
  

• As if poop couldn't dampen my day, what say you to puke? "Oh, now you're just pulling our leg, Fadkog! First you have what's possibly a dead, poop-entombed animal festering in your wastebasket, and now you're going to tell us there was puke involved in your day, too?" YES! Just before I was going to take my (much needed) break, a child yakked her lunch up right in the center of the department. Delightful! It appears she'd enjoyed some Chik-fil-A about 45 minutes prior. Who cleans that up? Ahem...ME! As a result, I'm now totally off the bird. And probably waffle fries, too. Ten million points!!

• After poop and puke, I needed one more thing to make this day a triple crown winner. Luckily, I got it. Ready? PENIS! Dear heaven, yes! Penis capped my work day off in fine fashion when I was shelving young reader picture books and rounded a shelf to find an elderly gentlemen tucked in a chair in the corner, thumbing through a book on the Third Reich. No big whoop, I thought. It happens. Then I noticed his shorts were uncomfortably short. So short, in fact, they appeared to be riding way, way, WAY up his leg. So far up his leg, in fact, I was left dumbstruck when I realized his penis had ventured out and was reading along with him. Awesome (in a completely, absolutely not awesome way). Thankfully, no children were around, and I alerted a manager to handle the matter. Then I awarded myself 90 trillion points.

Of course, this clearly makes me a winner in today's game (and I'll willingly submit to a drug test if you pansy out and make claims I'm 'roided up), but because my easy win had my adrenaline pumping, when I left work, I figured why not go for the bonus round! As soon as I punched out, I headed to Kohl's to burn a $10 voucher. I need some new black shoes for work, so I made a beeline for that department to hunt for a comfortable pair. As I approached a young man working in the department to see if he could help me, I realized he was on the phone with a customer, so I stepped back to wait. As he spoke, he was waving a black tennis shoe around in the air, and then he described the shoe to the customer.

"To be honest, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't like this particular tennis shoe. They look exactly like something a really old lady would wear," he said.

I glanced down at my black tennis shoe-clad feet, then back to the one he had in his hand. It was, of course, the same shoe.

Of course.

So when he finally got off the phone, I offered him a Werther's Original, yanked a tissue from the sleeve of my shirt, dabbed at something on his cheek, then shuffled off as fast as my tennis ball-tipped walker and my old lady tennis shoes would carry me.

945 kabillion trillion million points to me! SQUARED!!!

and how was your day, luv?

Mine? Thanks for asking!

My day was shitty.

Actually shitty. Want to hear?

(Your head shaking says "no," but your eyes? Your gorgeous eyes say "yes!")

Number 1 - Within moments of arriving at the bookstore Thursday morning for yet another glorious and enviable shift in the children's department, I'm grabbed by a mother wanting a book to entice her toddler into potty training. "Isn't there some book about pooping? Like Where's The Poop? or Everyone Poops?" she inquired, actually giggling about using the word "poop" with another grownup. I suggested my personal favorite, Zoo Poo (interesting protagonist, compelling story, an unexpected twist in the second half, and "monkeys doo doo-ing right in front of you."). A variety of books at her disposal, the woman thanked me for my knowledge (I'm a regular Poo PhD., ladies and gentlemen!), and was on her way.

Number 2 (heh..."number 2"...snicker, snicker) - Shelving toddler board books, I'm having a delightful time, toiling through my day, when I round the shelves at the intersection of "Favorite Characters" and "Sound Stories" and am hit by a funk of such magnitude, I have to briefly wonder if I've triggered some type of sinister suburban warfare. Fearful the eight copies of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?" ("I see a monkey doo doo-ing right in front of me!") won't be enough to protect me from the evil that awaits, I steel my resolve and peek around the shelves. And the evil? Crouched on the floor was a woman bent over her toddler charge, changing the most vile diaper I'd seen in my life. On the floor. In the children's department. Nice. In fact, I said that. "Niiiice." As in "It's nice you couldn't take that little jaunt to the ladies room and take care of that business there. Where there is a changing station. And trash cans meant for bathroom type items. But since you didn't, sure! Yes! I welcome you to throw that bundle of disgusting in the trash can right over there. There. Next to my computer. Where I can enjoy it all day. See you soon! The memory of your visit will linger! Before you go, can I interest you in a copy of "Everyone Poops"?"

Number 3 - At the little play area toiled a young boy and his mother. Mom was hyper perfect. The kind of mother I have a tendency to measure my own mothering skills against when I see how devoted and catering she is to her child. Then they start talking. "Mother, I believe it is time I go to the bathroom now," the boy, probably four years old, says. I'm momentarily jealous, thinking my kids would be all "Woo hoo! We're having fun. Check this out. We'll just go in our pants, like it's no big deal." Ideal Albeit Creepy Kid is very precise about his need to evacuate his system (I picked that "evacuate his system" thing from Ideal Albeit Creepy Mom). "Mother. I think now I have to poop. Before I did not need to poop. But now? Now I feel the need to poop." Vigilant Mom is all "Did I rush you before? Before, when you said you needed to just pee, and you peed, did you feel like you had to poop, but I only gave you the opportunity to pee?" (I swear to you, I am not making this conversation up! I was so taken by it, I grabbed a piece of paper and jotted it down as it went on). "You were in a bit of a hurry, Mother, but at that time, I did only feel like I had to pee. I did not then feel like I had to poop." "Oh, I knew I was rushing you! I shouldn't have rushed you! If I hadn't rushed you, you could have taken the time and pooped then." I could understand why he didn't feel he had to poop earlier. A mom this schedule focused likely caused him to clench up. Their scintillating conversation - which I quickly turned into the "How Many Times Can We Say Poop!" game - went on for 26 minutes, during which time I feared the child would poop on the floor of the play area, and the mother would scoop him up and scurry off, ninja style, and pretend he'd not just left us with a gift(this has happened, thank you very much, with a father and two toddlers sporting raging diapers of doom). The "say poop again" game ended at 28, btw. My money was on 34.

So that was my Thursday. It was, indeed, shitty. Four hours of work (phew, life's rough!) and that was the bulk (heh...'bulk'...) of my experience. Jealous?

And yep. I just wrote an entire post revolving around poop. Good job, me. Good job.

Seriously, though, how was your day?

necessity really IS the mother of invention

I've never been the most well prepared mom during my children's tenure. During play dates, while other mothers doled out Goldfish crackers and delicious cold juice boxes to their hungry offspring, I'd assure mine they just thought they were hungry, then encourage them to turn their Dickinsonian beggar faces away from the sight of that cheddar flavored cracker crack.

I've driven miles out if my way with a screaming baby in tow to find a Target, then rushed in to buy a pacifer(s) (definitely plural) because I couldn't locate the binky my wonderful, albeit temporarily possessed spawn had tossed ferociously aside within the confines of our tiny Chevy Cavalier (even our old car wasn't good preparation for my role as a mother!).

Over the years, I have wracked up exorbitant overdrafts on school lunch accounts, been stranded sans baby wipes following tsunami-like diaper blowouts, and forgotten to RSVP to much anticipated Chuck E. Cheese birthday parties (though in retrospect, that might have been on purpose...).

Long story short, this girl ain't no Boy Scout. I sort of suck at planning ahead where my kids are involved. Much respect to animals in the wild, who will forego eating for months just so their young might enjoy the fruits of the hunt, which, wow, even more respect, is sometimes digested then regurgitated into the open maws of said babes! If roles were reversed, well, clearly my kids might be forced to drink their own urine and, naturally, I shudder to think!

All this talk brings me to tonight. Imagine my horror when, on our way home from baseball practice, my youngest son informs me he has a bloody nose. "Gah!" I thought upon hearing this. "GAH!" I cried when I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the geyser that is his tiny nose. There was so much blood it was as if Dexter Morgan had set up his kill room in the backseat if the Hyundai (because we clearly learned nothing after the Cavalier...)

I panicked, of course, because I knew I had nothing to help rectify this matter. "Here's a newspaper!" I said, tossing the ad circulars I'd read while waiting out ball practice. "Hold these to your nose while I think if what to do!"

What I did involved rummaging fruitlessly through my giant, I'll-equipped purse in hopes of a first aid miracle. Chew some gum and have him shove it up his nostril? Maybe...but no. Wish my copy of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' was an actual book and not on my Nook? Good idea, but honestly, that book is so horrendously bad the pages would better serve as emergency toilet paper. I lacked tissues, stray fast food napkins or a cauterizing tool and it was beginning to look like a horror show back there.

And then deep in the abyss that is my purse, my fingers grazed across the ultimate solution...which is why, if you'd driven past us on the highway tonight and snuck a peek in the backseat of my car, you'd have seen my son with a tampon shoved up his left nostril, the string flapping in the breeze of his downed window. Somewhere in the wilds, I think Bear Grylls felt a chill rush through him. Such ingenuity! Such, well, we'll leave it at that. That's a merit badge right there, kids! Here, son, use this giant Q-tip to staunch the blood!

When we got home, I deposited boxes of tissue in both of our family cars. My oldest child might be three years away from heading to college, but I'll swear I'll get this prepared parent thing down sooner or later.