Our poor waitress...

After posting about my calendar misunderstanding, Bryan reminded me of something I'd done in undergrad, years before I'd met him. This story was shared with him a couple of days before our wedding. And he still went through with it. That's commitment. Now he is committed.

In Kalamazoo during the time I was in undergrad, there were few eating establishments that were open late enough to work with both our theatre schedules and our underage status. You had your choice of Sweetwater Donuts, Steak and Shake (oh my word do I love me a Frisco Melt Platter with fries and beans), a truck stop, and Big Boy. Big Boy was only minutes from campus and served actual food. This is the place we normally headed to for late night dinners. If you've never experienced a Big Boy, think Denny's with a much smaller menu , fewer high school students and more senior citizens. Their Big Boy Burger is a burger with thousand island dressing. This is their menu's highlighted item. Oh, and the double-decker grilled cheese. Not the best place in town for foodies, but a nice place to catch up after rehearsal.

One night when several friends and I had gathered to rehash our day, my roommate decided he wanted a milkshake. OOOOOO! Like a herd of sheep who knew how to read and had opposable (ha! spell checker thinks this should be imposable) thumbs, we all whipped our menus back open to actively contemplate our milkshake options. Yes, the choice between chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla was the most important decision at that moment.

Our waitress, most likely a college student herself, stopped by to take our order. We all told her our what'll you haves and then my roommate, such a trend setter, changed his mind. He didn't think he'd have a shake. He thought he'd enjoy a malt. Please.

Up until this point in my life, I'd never encountered anyone who had ordered a malt in my presence. I did not understand what this delicacy was. How was this different than the lowly milkshake? And so, I asked.

J replied, "It's like a shake, but it tastes like a Whopper."

I stared at him, squinting my eyes and hoping this would make his answer clear to me.

Then I replied, "Why the hell would anyone want a milkshake that tastes like a hamburger from Burger King?"

Professionalism

I worked at a bookstore for a few years on a part-time basis. For the most part, it was a great place to work. I worked with some great people, had fun while I worked, and got to interact with some very nice customers. One of the skills we were encouraged to develop was non-reaction. Our job was to help the customers, not judge them.

In early January 2008, a male customer, probably in his late 40's/early 50's approached my register with a specific calendar question. "Miss," (he called me Miss which was kinda nice because the Ma'ams had started coming more frequently since the birth of my daughter), "do you have any penis calendars?" Without blinking an eye or a change in facial expression I replied, "Well sir, I'm not quite sure if I've seen any of those on the shelves, but let's head over to the calendars and see what we can find." I was pretty sure we didn't carry penis calendars but was thinking we might find something in the "One-A-Day" calendars that might work. Maybe a cartoon or something.

We searched throughout the section without any luck. As most of the calendar stock was sold prior to the holidays, the available styles had dwindled down to the more unpopular subjects - golf jokes, country cottages, the highly confusing "Busy Mom's Home Organizer", pigs in tutus, etc. I apologized to the customer and told him if he'd like to order one to please let me know and I'd be happy to help. He thanked me for my assistance and went to another part of the store to shop and I went back to my register.

About a half hour later, the man approached my register and asked if we could try to order the calendar. I pulled up the appropriate screen on my computer and asked, "Now, you were looking for a penis calendar, right?" There was no response. I looked up to a very red-faced man who began to stutter, "No, no, no, no. No. I said Peanuts calendar. Like, Snoopy." And without blinking an eye or a change in facial expression I replied, "Well, that's a very different calendar. Peanuts, let's see what we have. I think we may have a few of those left on the shelves."

I do what they do!

Superbowl Sunday, 2010. Buffalo Chicken dip is baking away for the party we will be attending, good friends have stopped by to say hello, and Hannah is upstairs in her room for "quiet time" which so far, has been less than quiet. The pitter patter of little feet coming down the stairs are heard. Hannah is calling for V & S. As she rounds the corner on the landing, we see she is completely, 100% nekkid. After hugs hello, I take her upstairs to get re-dressed.

We enter her room, clean before quiet time, but now a jumble of blankets, babies, books, and puzzle pieces. Hannah's pajamas and pull-up are nowhere to be found. I ask my child, "Hannah, where are your clothes? Will you please get them for mommy?" Hannah scampers out of her room and into the hallway, seemingly on her way to the bathroom. However, she does not hang a left into our smallish, unheated bathroom. Instead, she drops down onto her (nekkid) belly and crawls under the baby gate we keep about a foot off the floor in the door jam of our guest room. This room, when not inhabited by guests, is the cats' room. Their litter boxes and food are kept in this Angus-proofed space. The baby gate is up off the floor to accommodate our older, slightly less than limber cat, Buddy, who prefers to go under things instead of jumping over them.

Hannah walks over to the litter boxes, bends down and is slightly hidden by the bed. She comes back to the doorway with her pj's and pull-up, drops to the floor and crawls back to the hallway. I sternly ask, "Hannah, why were your clothes by the litter boxes? Were you playing in them again? I've told you that they are not toys, they are yucky. They are the cats' bathroom." Hannah shrugs and tells me, "I don't know."

Fast forward two hours when we are celebrating the Superbowl with food, drink, and more conversation than the die-hard football fans appreciate. Hannah runs to me and announces, "I have to potty!"

Being the good mom I am, I immediately set down my plate of goodness and carbs, take a quick drink of my Bells Coffee Stout, grab her hand and we race off to the bathroom. Hannah does her business and as I'm praising her for peeing in the pot, I am also helping her wipe. While I'm ensuring her tush dryness, I notice some strange looking dirt in her butt crack. I look a bit closer. Yes, it's kinda gross, but it's my job. My job, along with feeding, clothing, loving, supplying fruit snacks, and reading bedtime stories to her also includes hygiene of the nether regions. Until she can care for her own business, it's just part of my job description.

Anyways, I'm looking closer at the dirt in her crack and notice, it looks a lot like cat litter. And it all comes together. I begin to laugh. And laugh. And laugh. I can barely speak, but do manage to ask, "Hannah? Did you go potty in the cats' litter boxes?" And my sweet child replies, "Yes! Yes, Mommy! I did! I did! I do what they do!"

Adventures in Potty Training

There are many things I didn't think about very much while my oven was baking up a Hannah-shaped bun. Potty training was one of these things. In my mind, I sort of glossed over this section of training and went straight from diapers to pull-ups to panties. And voila! The child would be doing her business with little help from good ole' mom and dad.

Hahahahaha! I was dumb. I am dumb no longer. I did not realize the amount of emotional involvement potty training would entail. We go through the throws of anticipation, fear, terror, embarrassment, frustration, joy, and hope on a daily basis. I didn't take Hannah's opinions into account when planning our potty training action plan and crafting our "dry pants are happy pants" mission statement. I also misjudged my daughter's ability to manipulate her parents.

Do you know the fear that causes you to leap from your bed in the middle of the night? That heart leaping into your throat feeling? We experience this nightly. About 5am, we hear our cherub's lovely little girl voice float through the baby monitor and into our ears where it teases our sleep-induced brains with these words, "Mommy, I pee peed." "Daddy, I pooped." "Mommy, I peed." "Daddy, I poop." By the time our ears and brains are communicating and we've both stopped playing the, "If I pretend to be asleep maybe he/she will get up and take care of this one" game, both of us are in a slight panic. You see, we've heard the stories of relatives and children of friends who woke in the middle of the night and turned into miniature Picassos using their bedroom walls as canvas and their dirty diapers as paint. And no matter who winds up running to Hannah's room, the results are the same. She's fine. Her pull-up is intact. Her jammies are dry. She has been calling Wolf, or rather she has been calling Pee Pee. Hannah's ultimate goal in the mornings is to go downstairs and watch cartoons. She realizes we are easier to manipulate when we are tired. Our child is ruthless in her efforts and we fall right into her trap every time.

Another part of potty training I gave no consideration to was the matter of my husband, a man, participating in the process. I never thought he wouldn't participate but would in fact play a large part in her success. But I didn't think about the differences between men and women peeing in the toilet. Maybe it's because I've heard the manly rule of, "If you shake it more than three times, you're playing with yourself," enough times when my male friends and husband have educated me on Men's Room Etiquette that I just assumed Bryan was privy to the details of female urination and I wouldn't have to over-think this as I am prone to do on nearly every other subject. Wrong.

The other night, Hannah sat herself down on the potty seat, did her business and called, "Daddy, I pee peed! Daddy, I pee peed!" Bryan did what he normally does and headed back to the bathroom to help her empty the tray that catches what she lets go and to help her get dressed again. Sometimes the pants don't quite make it up over her butt when she pulls them back up. Funny, but it is winter and we have an old, drafty house.

I was in the kitchen finishing up dinner and heard their exchange. Bryan, "Okay, pull your pants back up." Hannah, "No Daddy, I need paper." Bryan, "Come on, pull your pants back up." Hannah, "Daddy, no!" And it dawned on me. When Bryan aided in her peeing process, there was no wiping involved. What!? What!? What!?

And then I stuck my head into the potty chair room and said, "Um, honey? You know she has to be wiped every single time she goes to the bathroom, no matter if it's pee or poop? That's what girls do. Have you been wiping her?" I never got an answer, but if diaper rash is seen less frequently around these parts, I won't be too surprised.

The most recent potty training episode involves a pull-up, Hannah's dirty clothes hamper, my clothes washer, and most likely, an exhausted parent (probably Bryan, but there is no proof at this time).

As we get closer and closer to the time when we'll say good bye to pull-ups forever (at least during the day), we tend to get a tad sloppy with anything other than underwears. This was the root cause of the mess I just tended to. Just to interject, I wanted to call her underwear 'panties'. I thought it was cute, girlie, and perfect for Hannah. Hannah decided she wanted to call them 'underwears'. The 'S' is NOT silent. And if you skip the 'S', she will let you know. Loudly.

Anyways, being unemployed stinks. But there are benefits, too. One of them is I can get all of our laundry done during the day so I'm not tied to the washing machine on Saturday or Sunday when I'd rather be hanging out with the family and friends. And, as we have a child who is potty training, I am never without dirty laundry. Oh, and here's a laundry tip for you: If washing urine soaked clothing, slippers, sheets, rugs, couch covers, etc. in cold water in an effort to A) save energy or B) save the clothing, splurge and buy Tide Coldwater detergent. In a 2 product test that was performed in my basement by the Pee Pee Washers Association, Tide Coldwater eliminated that pesky urine smell much better than Arm & Hammer Fresh Waterfall by the Beach on a Beautiful Summer's Day Scent was able to.

Anyways, take II. Today, on the coldest day I have experienced outside of Kalamazoo, MI, I decided to tackle the dirty clothes in order to keep our long underwear, sweats, footie jammies, and other warm items in rotation. Armed with my latest full basket of dirty clothes, I braved our very cold basement. Now, I knew I had washed a load the other day and had yet to transfer the items to the dryer. I jauntily swung the lid open and stuck my hand into the washer full of cold, wet, clean clothes to transfer them for their tumble dry. Without looking I tossed handfulls of clothes into the dryer. And then I felt something. Something strange. Something wet, squishy, cold, and silicone-y.

A pull-up had been washed. A pull-up that uses a moisture absorbing gel to trap and keep moisture away from baby's delicate skin. A pull-up that had absorbed as much water as was possible before exploding onto a load of washing laundry. A load of mostly dark and black clothes. Our vigilance in making sure dirty pull-ups make it into the diaper pail and not into the dirty clothes hamper had failed. And I am now dealing with the consequences of our laissez-faire approach to diaper disposal.

The clean up is on-ongoing and extensive. It involved vigorous shaking of each item that was in the washer, two separate sweeping-up episodes, a hot wash of an empty machine to clear the remaining gel stuff, and will, hopefully, conclude with a third washing of the clothing.

I tell you all of this not just to make you laugh at my foibles and follies in the land of potty training, but to give you pause to think. What items in life have you glossed over only to be kicked in the tushie when faced with reality? What advice can you provide for those forgotten or ignored life tests that others may soon encounter?

Please, leave comments. It's too cold to leave the house, most of my rooms are cleaned and organized and I need human interaction. Help keep me sane. No work and no play makes Stacy a crazy lady.

Dear Mr. Springsteen

Dear Mr. Springsteen,

Tonight I watched you being honored at the Kennedy Center. I listened to Jon Stewart recount his experience to your music. I laughed at his love child theory. I watched you watch John Mellencamp perform your music. Then I heard “I’m On Fire”. And I thought about my story.

When I was 7 years old, I received a boom box for my birthday. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and when they bought the stereo they didn’t have money for any new albums. Luckily, my friends’ parents were wise to my parents’ gift and purchased a couple tapes for me. I was so excited to receive Billy Joel’s Innocent Man and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. But my dad, trying his hardest to keep me up to date with the music the kids were listening to, borrowed Born in the USA from one of his friend’s sons.

He dubbed a copy on a high quality, blank cassette, popped out the tabs, photocopied the liner notes, and cut them down so they would fit into the cassette case. He was so proud of that. My dad couldn’t afford to get me a new cassette, but made the best copy he could possibly make.

Mr. Springsteen, I’m sure this was a fine album. In fact, I know it was and is a fine album. I listened to the entire album, sides 1 and 2 during my slumber party. And then I listened to it again, alone, and got to “I’m on Fire” and never listened to it again.

You scared the crap out of me. The movie that played in my head as I listened to this song showed a man, literally on fire, showing up to a house of a little girl, perhaps a girl the age of 7, and asking her, “Hey little girl is your daddy home? Did he go and leave you all alone? I got a bad desire. Oooooo, I’m on fire.” I didn’t understand the desire line, but I did think that some girl who was clearly not old enough to be left home alone encountered a man who had been set ablaze. Imagine opening your front door, which you shouldn't be doing in the first place as you were prematurely left home alone, and there's a man on fire! I mean, holy crap!

I never got rid of this cassette. Even as a little girl I recognized my father’s efforts to enhance my birthday gift. So, Mr. Springsteen, even though you provided night after night of nightmare fodder, I have to smile when I think of your work. Thank you for creating an album that would encourage a father to recreate something he was unable to purchase for his daughter, and then for unknowingly frightening her tender, little mind. I salute you.