Miasmatic Review

Contagion in Peril, day 2

Somewhere out there, my male ancestors are looking down upon me and, in family tradition, are laughing there arses off. Why are they laughing at me? BECAUSE I’M PLAYING SINGLE PARENT! Great googlie mooglie. I thought this was going to get easier. At this point, I think the spirits of my forefathers are actually interfering to make this more amusing to themselves!

When I last left you, I had gone to work with my cordless phone in my pocket on Monday. It is now Wednesday... It’s not exactly rocket surgery to figure out why I haven’t posted. (Yes, that was intentional). Monday I had to work late, when I finally was able to leave, I had to work on my father’s computer. My father, after a year of prodding, finally bought a new computer last month. The problem with my father and technology is that even though he is a plumbing and electrical engineer, he knows nothing about computers and doesn’t understand them. I get there and after being fed, I start working on his computer installing software and trying to figure out what he did so his computer won’t recognize his digital camera. The whole time Clone is being a handful. He wants to play with the mouse or the keyboard. Boopie is fine; he’s outside playing with the neighbor kids. Finally, I take clone outside and tell Boopie to play with him and get back to work.

This whole thing should have only taken me 30 minutes tops, however since I had to explain every little thing I was doing 5 times to my father; it took me almost an hour and a half. When I finally left, it was just after 8pm, Clone usually goes to bed around 7:30 during the week, he was somewhat cranky. All right, he was down right nasty. I had to stop at a pharmacy to drop off a prescription I needed to pick up the next day. By the time I got home even Boopie was saying, “Why the heck won’t Clone stop screaming?” Clone wanted Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Stacy and most importantly Momma. No matter what I did, he wanted NOTHING to do with me. I’m not kidding, when I picked him up to carry him to the house, he went rigid and fought me the whole way. I almost dropped him twice. When I put him down, he tried to run back to the van!

Finally, I was able to wrangle him into the house, it was after 8:30 PM and he needed sleep. Clone decided that he was NOT going to sleep and let the neighborhood know it. He again fought me tooth and nail to get out of his clothes and into his pajamas. I was finally able to get him down by a little before 9:00 PM. By this time the liquor in my kitchen was screaming, “Contagion, come drink us. We can make the pounding in your head go away.” Making myself a drink I sat down to do some light blogging, reading e-mails, talked to Bou, my wife… my ex-girlfriend. What? What was that last part...? OH YEAH! Unexpectedly, around 10 pm an ex-girlfriend of mine, I’ll just call her Amazon (Stop laughing LittleJoe) called. I don’t know why or how she got my phone number, but she did. That conversation lasted about 3.5 minutes. There were no pleasantries, as it was a short unpleasant relationship. She wanted to know if I still had something she had given me years ago, which I didn’t. Now this has to look good. My wife is out of town, I have women calling me at home. In addition, for the last 3 days I’ve been receiving strange text messages on my phone. The latest one was “Hey Sweetie, last night was great. I can’t wait to see you again. I love you much XOXO”. Boopie is giving me strange looks and asks, “Why are girls calling you?” (Thank god he hasn’t seen the text messages.) I, being in not such a good mood respond with, “Because all women want a piece of me.” I have a feeling that is going to come back to haunt me later on.

Right as I was getting ready to hit the sack, I remember my wife had asked me to do stuff for her. I couldn’t remember what it was though. Then it hit me, I was to water the cat and feed the plants. No, wait… Water the plants and feed the cat. Pulling the hose out of the cats mouth… I’m kidding, I’m not that inept. I’m running around putting food in the cat’s bowl and filled it to near over flowing just in case I forget. I then went and watered her plants. Now I have a black thumb, just the act of my tending for plants tends to kill them. When I was younger, my mother left me in charge of taking care of her plants when they went on vacation. I did exactly as she said. However when she get back they were all dead. Accusations were made that I did not water the plants as I was told to. I had, they just didn’t like my touch. Fortunately, one of the neighbors saw me watering the plants and vouched that I had indeed done it. My mother was so pissed at me she never asked me to care for her plants again. Ktreva has heard all of these stories and knows what is going to happen, yet she asks me to water them anyway. This morning when I left for work, most of the plants where dying. They received a watering exactly as she scheduled. All I can say is in my defense is, “she was warned.”

Tuesday morning, Clone’s mood is much worse. While picking him up out of his bed he does a full leg swing kick right into my right testicle. People, I am not ashamed to admit that after I regained consciousness, I cried. Trying to get him dressed was a chore and a half. Fighting me over the last couple of days must have taught him a thing or two, because he was much better. Finally, I get him dressed; I have him in his clothes and shoes. Attempting to pack my breakfast and lunch he is under foot, screaming that I need to hold him or he wants yogurt, or he wants mommy, or he wants my sanity to slide away so I can spend the rest of my days drooling into a cup attached to my chin. Boopie comes and tries to distract Clone for me. Unfortunately, Clone’s mood was impervious to Boopie’s attempt to play with him. Finally, my cooler is loaded and we head out the door, with the boys this time.

Clone does not want to get into the van. He continues to fight me. He screams all the way to my parents’ house. When we arrive, I’m trying to get him out of the van and he’s fighting that. I ask if he wants to see Grandma and Grandpa. His little head hanging down, chin on his chest, he shakes it no. I ask, “What do you want then?” Head still hanging he says, “Play daddy” DAMN THAT BOY! DAMN HIM! My anger and irritation is replaced with guilt. I thought about calling off of work, but I couldn’t do that. I have too much going on. Talking to my mother, (She runs a daycare out of her home, so she is our daycare provider. It makes her and my father happy) I find out that Clone didn’t take a good nap on Monday, couple that with late bedtime and we have a really tired boy. When I picked him up on Tuesday night, my mother tells me that he took a real long nap. He seemed to be in a better mood. At least he wasn’t screaming for Mommy. He did however scream for Grandma the whole ride home.

Boopie tried to help with Clone once we got home, but Clone was into everything. Attempting to make dinner was fun. Looking at the menu, I see Tacos are scheduled. Son of a… Who the hell picked Tacos?!?! Wait… that was me. What was I thinking? While trying to cook my wife calls and wants to chat about her day. Meanwhile I have the boys fighting in the background and I’m trying to drop the phone into the ground beef. My wife, sensing that not only am I busy but that my phone tolerance is over stretched, lets me go. I proceed to get dinner made and served to the boys.

Clone is not the neatest eater, but he loves the tacos. Actually, what he loves is basically a bowl of taco fixings mixed together with a broken up shell. He likes to smear this anyplace he can reach. There was taco in his hair, all over his face, in his ear, on his ankles. It was everywhere. Contemplating turning the garden hose on him, I cleaned him up. Finally, he was happy. We actually sat down and played for a while. He would sit on my lap and I would read him a story or play cars with him. Then he tells me he’s hungry. It’s almost seven, so I figured why not. Following Bill Cosby’s advice, I give the boys Chocolate Cake. When Clone is finished, he has cake in all the same places he had taco earlier. You’d think I would have learned my lesson, but I didn’t. Cleaning the boy for the second time that night, I realize that he is happy and not crying. Apparently, the bribe of chocolate cake works… Bill Cosby is a genius! Clone is all loving and happy and wants to play by himself. Boopie, who was helpful, goes to play some much-deserved video games. Being 12, Boopie is really self-sufficient so he was no trouble all weekend.

Come 7:30 pm, Clone tells me he is ready to go to bed. This time when I change him, he cooperates and all is well with the world. The angels are singing, the sun is shining down, birds are chirping, I’m having a Norman Rockwell moment. This moment of normalcy is going to come back to haunt me the next morning. Why? Well apparently, I’m really good at getting a diaper on properly when the child is fighting me. When they are relaxed and cooperative there seems to be an issue. This morning when I go into his bedroom to wake him up, he is soaked in urine. Either he had to pee his weight in urine or the diaper leaked seriously. From the warmth of the fluid I could tell it hadn’t happened too long before I went into the room. Waking Clone up I go to pick him up out of bed, apparently he thought yesterday’s wake up game was great fun, because he kicked me in my left testicle this morning.

Did I mention I am not cut out to be a single parent?