My Morning

Good Grief! Monday morning!  Up at 7 to start the day.  Let the dog out and get the 3 year old up for day care.  This is a kid that hates to get up in the morning.  I steel myself for the morning tantrum and wake the sleeping monster.  This first thing he says to me is: "I don't want to go to school".  Of course not, why should today be any different than any other day? He usually doesn't want to go to school. Some days I let him stay home with me but I had a lot to do so he needed to go.  I explained that he needed to go to school and went to get clothes to get him dressed. When I returned he was no where to be found.  A thorough search found him hiding under the bed and I had to beg and threaten until he came out and got dressed.

Great! Got that accomplished.  I gathered up some bags of trash that needed to go out (remember this is a farm and the trash is not right outside the house--the can is up by the street).  I tossed the bags in the bed of the pickup and proceeded to get in to start the engine to warm up the truck.  When I opened the door to get in, the large black lab decided he wanted to go along and jumped into the truck.  I yelled "NO" at him but that didn't faze him. I grabbed his collar to try pulling him out but it only resulted in him slipping his head out of it and jumping into the back seat.  Now this is a 100+ lb. dog and when he decides something there is no moving him.  I pulled on his legs and tried pushing him but couldn't get him to budge.  It took going into the house and getting a treat to entice him with to get him out of the truck.

It had snowed the day before and since I stayed home all day there was snow and ice on the windshield.  I looked for the ice scraper but couldn't find it in the car.  Oh heck! I went into the house and grabbed the pancake turner and proceed to use it to scrape the window. It only produced moderate results, but better than nothing.

Back in the house the 3 year old had climbed onto the sofa and fallen back asleep.  Darn! I had to wake him up again, get his coat on and trudge out into the snow to get him in his car seat.  I managed to do this without too much hassle and we took off in the direction of school, stopping so I could put the bags of trash in the can.  Unfortunately, the lid was frozen to the can and was stuck tight.  I tried to wrestle with it, setting down the bag of trash to free up both hands, and but could not get the top off.  By now it was almost nine and we were already late for school.  I decided to worry about the trash later and jumped in the truck to try to make it to school so we were not too late.

Part way to school my grandson informed me he felt sick.  Sometimes on the way to school he seems to get car sick.  Not being sure whether he was really feeling sick or just trying to scam me into letting him go back home, I pulled the truck over and turned around to try to estimate if he was going to be OK or not.  We had a short conversation and he advised me that would be OK.  I turned back around, headed out onto the roadway and then heard the unmistakable sound of vomiting in the back seat.  I stopped the car again and saw that he had managed to throw up all over himself.  I did feel bad for him but this was not a good start to the day. He looked at me with his watery eyes and I felt awful. He had vomit all over him, the car seat and the truck seat.  I checked the glove box for napkins, found two, and tried to wipe him down which didn't really work and, got vomit on my hands. Ugh. He then informed me he WANTED to go to school.  GREAT! He was a mess. Quick thinking on my part lead to a trip to Walmart to purchase clean clothes because Walmart was closer than home.  I paraded a vomit covered kid into the store to the horror of other shoppers and staff. My goal was to get new clothes, get him changed and leave the store as fast as possible.  This turned out to be a real challenge. I decided that this could be a game for xbox or Nintendo--where you have to take a disgusting child into a store, weave around shoppers and aisles, keep him away from toys and candy and still manage to purchase the clothes, get them on the kid and successfully leave the store.Ha! Good luck with that one!

With new clothes in hand I dragged him into the ladies room and proceeded to strip him down and clean him up. If you have never had to remove a pull over shirt covered with vomit off a kid you are lucky. Once I had him down to socks and underwear I tried to wipe him off with wet paper towels. You can say all you want about Walmart ruining the American worker and closing mom and pop stores, but I will always be thankful that they actually have paper towels in the restrooms instead of just those crappy hand drying machines.

Of course on Monday morning at Walmart there are plenty of senior citizen ladies coming in and out of the rest room and eyeing me and this kid.  I am sure they were remembering days that they had to do this with their own children and they smiled at me as they passed.  I suppose they thought they were being nice but know that somewhere inside they were really snickering at me having to go through this.  It is a mom thing.  Once you have done these things yourself you tend to snicker at others who are stuck doing it.  It is a self satisfying snicker as you are thankful your days of cleaning up kids covered in vomit are over. One lady stopped to talk to me to inquire how old my grandson is, comment on big he is for his age and generally have that kind of chat that ladies have in restrooms while one of them is cleaning up a half naked kid. My grandson took this opportunity with my attention being elsewhere to take off running out of the ladies room into Walmart. He will make a great baseball player some day as this kid could steal second base in a heartbeat.  I take off after him leaving the grandmotherly lady hanging in mid sentence in the ladies room and manage to tackle him near the self check out line.

I wrangled him back into the restroom and got the new clothes on, bagged the cruddy ones in the Walmart bag and left the store. Of course the three year old had no coat as at this point I couldn't see buying another one.  The car was fortunately warm and I popped him in it and proceeded with all due haste and got him to school at the crack of 10 am.  Whew.

Thinking that now I could salvage the rest of the day and get things done I drove home only to be confronted with trash strewn all over the front of the driveway where I had left the bag on the ground earlier.  Thanks dogs!  Sheesh!  I decided I would come back and clean it up later and pulled into the driveway at the house to find a deer head, horns and all, staring at me from the middle of the drive.  REALLY! This caps off my morning. Thanks dogs! AGAIN there is something dead in the yard.

I wonder if it is too early to start drinking.