SassTown

Of a multi-tasking stay at home mom. To many of you this will feel oddly familiar since you've been there or it's where you're headed. Let me warn you it's a tedious account of my day last friday:

12:15 a.m. I slip into bed early knowing I need to be up at an ungodly time.
4:55 a.m.  Get up, get ready, have coffee, get dressed, put on make up since I know I may not have time later.
5:35 a.m.  Gather computer bag and book. Join husband in car and drive to ambulatory surgery center.
6:00 a.m.  Tell him to go check in, settle in with my stuff for a wait, dig out the insurance card for him.

6:30 a.m.  I remind him why I like to be on time, or a little behind, but never early. Because now we wait.They call him back to pre-op. I get to stay waiting room for now, yippee, so I fire up I-Photo and start editing pictures. There was a time I would have had to oversee everything from which vein they were choosing for the IV to what brand of tape they were using but I’ve decided to wean my family off it’s over reliance on me. 

7:15 a.m. They call me back to sit with him as he waits. I nose around his curtain area, watch his vital beeping, inspect his Normal Saline IV. We begin patient watching, guessing who is having which procedure. Joke with the various staff members who come in.

7:40 a.m. They take him back for his procedure. Why do men look so helpless laying on that cart in the ridiculous hospital gown.
7:41 a.m. Crack open that lap top and get back to some serious editing. I never look up once because I am behind on this task.

8:25 a.m. They call me back to post op. Raymondo is looking goofy, eating Lorna Dune cookies and sipping pineapple juice.
8:35 a.m. The Doctor comes to chat. All results were great and he can wait 5 years to come back. He tells him there is no need for him to be anal anymore. HaHa.

 

8:45 a.m. The nurse instructs me to pull the car around back. I get sidelined on the way by an awesome display of Revo sunglasses. If the Stiletto Mom is a shoe whore, I am a sunglass whore. Bet you didn’t know that about me. They can wait right? I shop around the optometry department a few minutes, then remember my mission. I promise the ladies I’ll be back because the retail outlets haven’t been carrying much if any Revo’s.

8:56 a.m. Drive around to ramp, out they come with Raymondo. We are on our way home and I don’t fool around. Non of this poking around driving. He feels great, wants to stop for
breakfast. Sorry, I got stuff to do. Just because you are giddy now doesn’t mean your normal. They told you no driving or making decisions for 24 hours.

9:05 a.m. Home again home again jiggity jig. Order Raymondo upstairs. No conference call until 4 pm or you’ll make a fool out of your self.
9:20 a.m. Take up a bagel, chicken noodle soup and lemonade to Raymondo who is upstairs in bed giggling.
9:30 a.m. Get girls stuff ready for the day. Make them a chore list. Throw a load of laundry in.
9:33 a.m. On computer, finish documents needed for a sweet young couple brave enough to buy a house in Michigan.
10:00 a.m. Freshen up make up, curl hair, brush teeth, pack bag with computer and papers I need, let Big Black Bastard out to go potty.
10:15 a.m Wake up girls, give instructions. Check on Raymondo, sleeping like a baby.
10:45 a.m. Leave house, stop and get gas for car which is on empty. Second tank this week after picking up #4 child from camp yesterday.Text kids in Chicago that their dad’s tests
went fine.
10:50 a.m. On my way to meeting at Starbucks. Talk to my dad in North Carolina.
11:10 a.m. Get settled in Starbucks, order a latte, grab a table and organize papers
11:15 a.m.  Conduct our business. Yes, they are still sure they want to take this plunge after being warned housing is still dropping in value. Everyone’s excited.
11:35 a.m. Drive, heading to office. Stop for car wash.
12:00 p.m. At office, organize and review all numbers, documents and data. Still waiting for last document. Call daughter at home, her dad is still sleeping like a baby.
1:30 p.m. Display my talents with my computer to co-workers, see, this is why you should buy a mac. Look at these graphics.
2:00 p.m. Phone call to listing agent. Fax all the pages to other agency. Head towards home. It’s a beautiful day out.
2:30 p.m. At grocery store. I’m starting to drag, I’m tired. Maybe I won’t have to go back out.

3:00 p.m. At home, salivating over the thought of a chilled glass of Pinot Grigio
3:35 p.m. In car against my will, taking daughter to friends house. She agrees not to call me to ask if she can spend the night, friends mother will drive her home.

3:50 p.m. In kitchen, tidying up. Get email from listing agency, missing documents for offer. Sh**!
4:15 p.m. Recreate documents again, send another email, spend 30 minutes syncing scan option back up on computer.

4:45 p.m. Glass of white wine is feeling fine. Start cooking dinner. Why am I having such a hard time focusing?

4:49 p.m. Meet mother of girl spending the night with child #6, she looks familiar. Repeat her name to myself 3 times so I can remember it. Text son back in Chicago. At least we have
a witty exchange, some anal humor at Raymondo’s expense.

5:15 p.m. Another email, phone call, I am tired. Tell girls to keep the noise down while Raymondo is on a conference call, he’s back in the saddle.

5:35 p.m. Back to finishing dinner. Call girls in to get washed up and set the table. They seem like nice girls, no picky eaters or special requests. Push touch up on clothes dryer.
6:05 p.m. Almost ready to eat. Get the laundry out of dryer before it is wrinkled beyond recognition.

6:40 p.m. Done eating, girls split outside after rinsing off their plates, cleaning up kitchen. Trash out, sweep up of all the minutia Big Black Bastard (120 pound dog with paws that
double as swiffers) has drug in from outside. I can’t stand the feeling of grit beneath my bare feet.

7:40 p.m. Phone call with couple buying house. Admire kitten the girls bring in a crate but convince them it can’t live here. I’s cute, but I hate cats.
8:00 p.m. Working on computer. Phone call with daughter in Chicago. She had a great day at work today. We make plans for vacation in 10 days.

8:40 p.m. Listen to Raymondo effusively enjoy watching “So You Think You Can Dance” finals. He says the same thing every time he sees this show.Make sure he’s rehydrating
himself with water. No you can’t have wine until these drugs are out of your system.
8:50 p.m. Get Raymondo ice cream with hot fudge on top. Announce that I am officially done catering to Raymondo for the day, he’s milked this thing for all it was worth.
9:30 p.m. Fold another load of laundry while looking for something on tv. Spray girls down with bug spray so they can go back out on the trampoline.
10:00 p.m. Read email and catch up on my blog reading. Raymondo announces he is worn out and going to bed.
10:20 p.m. 17 year old comes home from loafering around all day since it’s her only day off work after coming home from journalism camp. I non-chalantly sniff her, observe her
pupils and demeanor. Results inconclusive since she came home from a bonfire.

11:00 p.m. Supervise sleepover girls making milkshakes and God Bless them they actually clean up the mess before they go back out on the trampoline. I remind them it’s getting getting late and they convince me they can stay out longer since school is closing in on us. I relent.
11:40 p.m. Still reading on computer. 24 year old daughter comes home and fills me in on her Pastry Chef interview in Chicago that she thinks went really well. She staged at the  restaurant on Wednesday. She was really impressed with the place and the head chef, praying for a good job offer.
 

11:50 p.m. Laughing my self silly at some of her peers chatting on facebook. Why are your friends so funny I say. Come on share it with me so she does. Her friend is horrified that she to find out she has shared what they were chatting about with me. Now we invite him over for dinner Sunday to brainstorm a stage name for his fall back career as a male stripper in Windsor. He’s worried he may have failed his written exam for EMT. Everyone knows the Mayor is big on having a plan B.
12:10 a.m. Call the girls in from outside. You must come in, really. I am going to bed! Help them settle their sleeping arrangements. Admonish them to keep it quiet, no more soda, no running up and down the stairs, absolutely NO sneaking outside. I take my Ambien. Continue reading and responding to the blogosphere.

12:30 a.m. I review in my mind what kind of a day I have had. And how it’s not really atypical by all that much. When you don’t have a regular 9-5 job and the time boundaries that are normally erected seem not to exist. There is no end to the expectations I have of myself or that others have of me. I think I better jot this down while I’m in the mood.
12:45 a.m. Open up my writing application and start listing my day. #3 child is back downstairs making a snack. She says why are you still up crazy lady?

1:00 a.m. I’ll finish this tomorrow, I have been up 20 hours now and I’m sure this qualifies as foolishly blogging after Ambien. Go upstairs, beg girls to think about going to sleep. They are at least being quiet. Quickly get ready for bed.

1:10 a.m. Pull the covers up, get my pillow right, close my eyes and silently murmur my bedtime prayer. I can feel sleep clouding over me, turning off my thoughts.

1:12 a.m. Feel a hand caressing my back. Someone whispers, “I feel so much better now, like a new man.” My eyes pop open and I think, are you kidding me??? I murmur and scoot closer to the edge of our king sized bed. He keeps talking, asking questions and I don’t answer. Finally I say Shhhhhhhh! I whisper, very very softly, “if you get me awake now I will most certainly kill you.”

 

 

 We arrived in Chicago along with the remnants of Hurricane Ike bringing along that weirdly vaporous blanket of ick that hung all over the tall buildings in the city. Added to that was the obscenely warm drizzle that fell and left me feeling like a Golden Retriever whose fur never quite gets dry all summer because it won’t stay out of the lake.I was not about to let wet weather spoil my weekend in the city. It’s not often I get to pretend I am a sophisticated urban business woman except when I am visiting my overachieving firstborn. I pulled up in the loading zone in front of the sleek high rise building and follow my obsessive impulse to unload all of our stuff right away.

I  circled the block and found a metered spot.With nerves of steel I back up and drop it like it’s hot right into the slot on the first try. “It” being my silver Ford Edge with chrome hubcaps, gigantic sunroof, black leather interior and  Sirius radio. Dutifully, I deposited 2 hours worth of quarters into the meter and noted the time. You see I am too cheap to pay $35 a day to park my car especially when there is all this lovely street parking available. My August trip netted me a $60 ticket (which I’m contesting) for parking on the street  during “rush hour”. There was absolutely no sign acknowledging that on this particular block.  May I just tell you the parking signage in Chicago SUCKS big time. So here I am on my September trip and as far as I am concerned GAME ON  for this parking challenge.

A few hours later we decided to go out for a stroll along the river walk. I smiled as we walked up the street where my car was parked thinking I will move it later to one of the “free” spots since the weekend has arrived. The only problem is my car is not where I left it, even though I still have 3 minutes left on the meter! HOLY SHIT BATMAN SOMEONE STOLE MY CAR. My daughter rolls her eyes, accusing me of not remembering exactly where I parked. I retrace my steps in my mind, nope this is exactly where I parked, I even noted the address of the building when I got out of my car earlier. Then my tall friend from Sweden notices the sign partially hidden behind a tree branch about 5 spaces behind my (now vacant) spot. It says, “TOW ZONE BETWEEN 4-6 p.m.” Blast it all, don’t you hate getting screwed up on a technicality when you think you are being so smart?

Well, I pitched a small fit right there on the sidewalk. But I got over it in the next instant because I am practical like that. I resolved to deal with those sneaky car towing devils in the morning and proceeded to have a great night out at Carnival, which we could walk to by the way. I enjoyed the food, except we over ordered on the plantains (didn't know you could cook those little dudes so many ways.) It's amazing I could look this serene (could it have been several mojitos?) after the tumultuous day that I had:

Tucked back into the cozy apartment I do a phone search for my car. I get a recorded message asking me to enter my vehicle ID number or my license plate number. Thwarted again! All those numbers are IN THE CAR. I call back home to and ask the prince to look in the insurance file and get  my VIN number. I punch that in the system but it’s a no go. Then my 13 year old suggests, “ let's look through our vacation photos from North Carolina” remembering the pictures of my car we took at all the look out spots on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We found the perfect shot of the rear of the car and crop the picture to zoom in on the license plate and hit the jack pot. Thank you CSI.

The next morning we head over to the car impound. The pitted road is lined with vulture like tow trucks salivating over the thought of being dispatched upon the unsuspecting public. It’s about 5 miles west of the city, in a very sketchy industrial looking area. The rain continues and it is wet and muddy in the yard. The floor inside is a disgusting mess. While waiting I observe just about every kind of person you can imagine engaging in various activities related to getting their cars back. There were warnings all over the walls (no photos, no recording devices, instructions for the line, etc). Warnings that we were being recorded and under surveillance. There were also some peculiar looking couples in line.

 Now I always carry my small camera in my purse and I smelled a good story here. I slipped my tiny camera into Raymondo’s pocket and softly suggested he go stand back by the door and snap a few pictures of the place. I stayed in line (see window #3) trying to determine how to get my car out of there. I quickly learn that if you don’t have the means to find your license plate number they are not finding your car, so all that CSI watching was paying off. Ray  goes to the door and tries to take some inconspicuous pictures, but the Juicy Girl’s pimp boyfriend started screaming, “ NO CAMERAS IN HERE.” “THIS IS BEING RECORDED, THE POLICE WILL BE ALL OVER Y’ALL IN A MINUTE.” I pretended that I didn’t know who my husband was, I was just praying they wouldn’t get my camera away from him. I could of understood if it were the employees who were yelling at him, but it was another customer who pitched such a fit!

They found my car, but we were at the wrong pound. I try to summon my bodyguards - let’s go! I see my non-confrontational  husband still being harassed about the camera. Finally, we get the heck out of there. Our Swedish friend Nicholas is laughing like a hyena by now, so this is what crazy Americans do on the weekend. We punch the new pound address in the GPS and ride around back into the actual city. Back on Wacker Drive and in the middle of a bridge the GPS lady says “you have arrived at your destination.” Um, I don’t think so. It took quite a bit of sleuthing to figure we had to get out of the car and climb down into the underbelly of the beast. There in the bowels of a hotel was another impound lot, resembling a scene from the 1990’s movie The Babysitter . In it the young innocent looking Elizabeth Shue has to search for her family’s car which has been towed to the steaming, dripping underground lot where thugs are lurking, waiting to pounce on her.  After handing them $170 I quickly drove my car (with a $60 parking during rush hour ticket stuck to the windshield) out of that place feeling like I have been chewed up and spit out by this nasty monster of a bureaucracy.  Looks like I am going to have to find a new parking strategy before the next trip but believe me when I say this game is not over.

We were not flower children at the time but my daughter, who just turned 17, was born in a Caravan. Literally, a dark blue 1988 Dodge Caravan. The mother of minivans which helped bring Chrysler back to life as an auto company. The mode and method of her arrival should have clued us into the passionate, determined and dramatic nature that would eventually emerge. It was a gorgeous fall day when I awoke from my nap in labor. Back in the day I was a very calm person so I went about my duties while trying to notify all the necessary family and friends that today was the day.

 I had a group of women praying for me to have a quick labor as my experience with my third baby had been a prolonged drawn out event. I was definitely in labor after I finished putting lasagna in the oven and my husband and children arrived home. He was in host mode, setting up for a party like atmosphere. He was quite surprised at my cranky and atypical reaction to contractions. Things were indeed moving along quickly and with increasing intensity. My caregivers who were to help me in labor were unable to arrive in the time frame I was now wanting them to. I decided it was time to leave for the hospital NOW. So, off we went. My friend was going to bring the kids up to join us as soon as we called them from the hospital.

Into the back seat of the Caravan I went, along with my trusty pillow which I effectively used to muffle my moans. Between contractions I urged my husband (we’ve discussed his driving personality here in past posts) to DRIVE FASTER. Being the stellar OB nurse that I am, I recognized the signs of “transition” and it dawned on me that we were not making it to the hospital in time. “PULL OVER!!!!!” I screamed repeatedly, but Raymondo did not want to believe me. I persisted and he pulled off on the side of Dixboro Road near the rail road tracks and on a bridge over the Huron River. My irrational concern was “ I can’t get these blasted shorts off!” So around the minivan he comes, cautiously sliding open the door and out popped Hailey in the most furious manner. Caught by her horrified proud and capable daddy.

And I was completely clothed!

It was a miracle but I didn’t need to get those stretchy baggy maternity shorts off to birth that child. The staff at the hospital were amazed that this lunatic woman had given birth in her van and thought it important to get her shorts back on (so they assumed). Unfortunately I had arrived at the same hospital I used to work labor and delivery in so I had to endure much mocking and teasing about being unable to make it all the way there in time. The family at home was in total disbelief when Ray called to say we had a girl, they thought he was pulling their leg. We had just left home about 40 minutes before that and I had hid my discomfort before leaving.

And then there was Hailey, all scrawny 5 pounds of her. Despite being born on her due date she had experienced lack of placental nutrients the last month or so and had actually lost weight in my final month of pregnancy (technically intrauterine growth retardation- IUGR). She was born around 7 p.m. and we left the hospital in the morning. I never was much for staying in the hospital (an ironic quirk being a nurse). Back at home we didn’t know what to make of her. She was as sweet as babies come, but she looked like an Ethiopian refugee. Later that day I went out to the minivan to find someone’s lost homework. I slid open the side door to look in the pocket there behind the seat. I found the missing assignment. I also found a partially eaten plate of lasagna (now whose could that be?) and plenty of CSI evidence that a birth had taken place in that car. It seems that my precious husband had gagged trying to clean up the mess, so he procrastinated about getting back to that job.

Luckily, he married a woman with a pioneer spirit and an ability to push on through tasks that are often nauseating.