EEeeeeeewwwwwwwww

Last January I had an opportunity to travel to Singapore for work. It was something that just kind of dropped in my lap and loving international travel and new experiences I jumped at the chance.

On the way there my route was something like Grand Rapids to Minneapolis, MN, then to Japan and on to Singapore. The Minneapolis to Japan flight was really really really long. I can't remember how long but it seemed interminable. I prefer to sit in an aisle seat but since the trip was booked kind of last minute I had to settle for a window seat. So I was stuck on the inside. After our flight had been in the air for a long time and I had been dozing off, I realized that I had to go to the bathroom but not wanting to inconvenience and awaken the other 2 passengers to get out of my seat (I'm sometimes too nice to a fault) I thought I could just hold it a little longer.

I dozed off and on and every time I woke up of course the urge to go to the bathroom was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, coming out of a deep sleep, I realized I couldn't wait any longer and so excused myself and squeezed out of my seat into the aisle.

I made a beeline for the bathroom, stumbling down the aisle, bleery eyed and trying to blink some moisture back into my dried out contacts lenses. The bathroom was vacant so I swung in and in one fell swoop locked the door, unzipped by britches and plopped onto the toilet. I had almost wet my pants. After peeing and peeing and peeing and peeing I finally felt relief. I wiped myself, stood up and turned slightly to flush the toilet.

Horror of all horrors. To my disbelief, the previous dumb f* (must have been male) user of the toilet had not put the seat down and I had just sat for two minutes on a rim of piss; everybody elses piss, piss and pubie drippings from how many other hundreds of passengers??!!!! Gross me out the door. I totally freaked. When I came to this realization I hadn't pulled up my pants yet so I instantly and instinctively grabbed a wad of paper towels, doused them with hot water, squirted some soap on them and started scrubbing my big piss laden butt cheeks. Scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing and more paper towels and more hot water and more soap and more scrubbing and two minutes later and who cares who is waiting in line to use the toilet . . I'm having a crisis in there and I'm not leaving until the scrubbing is done. After I was finished scrubbing my butt I washed and washed and rinsed and washed and rewashed my hands. Total grodiness.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. I just can't get over the fact that I sat in all of that yuckiness and the piss drippings of all of those other passengers. But I did. And I survived. And as far as I know I didn't catch any communicable diseases!!!!!

But I got over that little incident quickly, by about the time I stepped out of the lavatory and was on my way back to my seat.

BTW, I had a great time in Singapore. It's a way cool place!

What's he got?

K. was in the cart. She must have been about three years old at the time. We were in a large department store. I was in the hardware section searching for who knows what. I couldn't find whatever it was that I was looking for. I looked up and there coming toward me was a gangly teenage male store employee. He was the epitome of awkward; about seventeen years of age, slumped shoulders, no confidence in his hesitant shuffle, greasy longish dark hair, eyes looking downward .. . . "Excuse me sir, do you know where I can find the xxx?" Before he could even answer, K. sees something she is unfamiliar with . . . . . Out of curiosity she began her inquisition in an innocent, loud, three year oldish voice. "Mom, what's he got all over his face?" No reply from me. I was flabbergasted and embarrassed; for me and for the kid. Since she didn't get an answer her question became more insistent . . . "Mom, what's he got all over his face?" She wouldn't let up. "What's he got all over his face?" "Thank you for your help sir." I turned the cart and began to explain in a normal tone of voice, "Oh, that's a thing called acne . . . .some kids get it when they get to be teenagers . . . . . ."

Does anyone know how I could have / should have responded?? Sometimes that scene replays itself in my head and I still don't know the answer. None of the parenting books I had ever read prepared me for how to handle a situation like that. I felt so darn bad for that kid. I wished I knew how I could have handled it more gracefully.

Trains, Planes & Automobiles

O.K., well really this post has nothing to do with trains but the story does involve a plane, an automobile, a well meaning stewardess, two hyper kids, a frazzled mom, 4 gas stations and at least six restrooms.

Now you are really curious aren't you? Here's what happened. K & K were probably around 12 and 10 years old, old enough to be let on an airplane unaccompanied by an adult. After the divorce their dad moved to Florida so when they got old enough once in a while we would arrange a trip where they could take a direct flight, in this case one from Detroit to Tampa and back so they could visit their dad.

On this particular occasion, they had spent a week in Florida. I can't remember the exact circumstances leading to this event (it may have involved malfunctioning alarm clocks or such) but for some reason, they missed their scheduled flight from Tampa back to Detroit.

Their dad had to get to work and so after speaking with the airlines customer service rep he was able to put them on stand-by for the next flight out. I usually try to stay neutral on these subjects but in this case I have to say, I question the judgement to leave a 12 and 10 year in an airport on stand-by. That said, I'll get back to the story. I think that my ex called me to inform me of what was going on since I guess I needed to know that I didn't need to be in Detroit at the original estimated time of arrival.

This was in the day before cell phones. Well, I'm sure they existed but hardly anyone had them in that era. Needless to say, my kids didn't have one so I was scrambling to find a way to communicate with them to make sure they were O.K. and to try and find out if/when and what flight they would be on.

I thought to call my parents who live about an hour away from the Tampa airport. I miraculously happened to catch my dad who even more miraculously coincidentally was on his way to the airport because he had to pick up my mom from some trip she had been on. Anyway somehow or another I was able to link my dad up with K & K and I felt some relief that an adult would be with them while they were waiting. I mean, what were they supposed to do if there had been no room on that stand-by flight??

But luck was on their side and they made the flight. I rescheduled my trip to meet their arrival at the Detroit airport. We lived in Grand Rapids so to get to the Detroit airport is about a 2.5 hour drive in good weather.

I was very relieved when the plane landed on time and K & K appeared rushing out into the concourse. They spotted me and ran towards me at top speed. "Wow," I thought. "They must be really happy/excited to see me." But they ran right past me waving and shouting "Hi, mom" as they made a bee line to the nearest restrooms. After what seemed like eternity they each emerged from the respective restroom.

While we were waiting for their luggage they once again took off for a restroom pit stop. No sooner than we were on the highway heading home when they began to complain that they needed to go to the bathroom again.

About that time I also realized that they were bouncing off the car walls, they were super hyper, talking loud, picking at each other and behaving as obnoxious as ever in the general sense of the word.

Then the story spilled out. Because of being on stand-by they had gotten to sit in first class on the 2.5 hr flight. The well intentioned stewardess brought them snacks and then whatever they wanted to drink the entire flight. It sounded like they just had her keep bringing them refill after refill of coke the entire flight!!

Needless to say, the 2.5 hour drive back to Grand Rapids turned into about a 3 hours trip as I had to stop at a gas station about every half hour so that they could use the restroom. And each time we stopped I made them run around the gas station building 3 or 4 times to try to get them to expend all of that pent up chemically induced energy!!

But it didn't work. This story basically ends where it began with a still very frazzled mother and two still very hyper children!

Apples and firecrackers don't mix

One early spring Sunday morning (I mean it was early in spring, not that early on Sunday) I was coming home from a walk. As I got closer to my house I noticed some smoke rising behind it. I thought, wow, that's nice. My husband has picked up the trash that has collected over the winter and is burning it in the fire pit behind our house. We have a woods directly behind our house which was one of the whole reasons I wanted to buy it in the first place. I love having that little bit of wilderness in the middle of the city. So, upon arriving home I thought I would go check out his progress.

I jogged around back to give him a pat on the back for his efforts. What to my amazement . . . he wasn't back there at all. There was no fire in the fire pit. Just a huge blazing brush fire burning in our back yard. I glanced to the outside faucet but our hose had been put away in the garage for the season. Next I tore into the house to alert my husband about the ordeal. He happened to be in the shower. While he was frantically getting dressed, I got the hose out of the garage and ran to the back with it. With shaking hands and after what seemed to be an eternity I some how managed to get it hooked up to the faucet in the back. T. took over and started spraying the hose. By arcing it as much as he could he was barely able to reach the farthest part of the fire. In his haste, he hadn't bothered to put his shoes on and as he was fighting the fire he would come upon hot coals and start doing a really cool dance!

Thank goodness he was able to contain the fire and we did not have to call 911. Also, thank goodness that most of the neighbors were at church when all of this was going on and upon their return to the neighborhood hopefully they just thought someone was having a huge barbeque!

So, what do you supposed caused all of this excitement? Oh, did I forget to mention, that my son K. had been out on our deck the day before experimenting with firecrackers and apples? And throwing them into the woods and blowing them up? Yeah, just take that has a friendly child rearing hint. Apples and firecrackers don't mix.

Meet the neighbors

When I was fairly newly single, I bought a house. I remember that week distinctly. I had a final exam in a class I was taking, it was end-of-the-month in the business I was working at which was the busiest time of the month, I had some kind of a court hearing to finalize the divorce and I was scheduled to close on the new house. Somehow I made it thru all that. I closed on the house on the last day of the month of April and the day was a Wednesday.

I couldn't afford to pay one extra day of rent so I had cleaned up the apartment, loaded all of our stuff into a Uhaul with the help of a friend and moved into the "new" house . It was very late by the time we got settled in but the next stay I shooed the kids out the door to their new bus stop and I went to work as usual.

By that Friday eve I was happy to be "home" and excited to really start getting settled in. It was about 5:45pm and I was talking on the phone to a girl that I worked with, trying to make some social plans for the following weekend.

When all of a sudden, my daughter K. blew into the house all out of breath trying desparately to get my attention. (yeah, yeah, hold on a minute . . . . let me just finish talking to my freind.) But really I could see panick in her face so I told my friend I had to go and hung up the phone. "Mom, mom, the back yard is on fire" yelled K.

OMG, I had not owned the house for more than 2 days and it was about to go up in smoke. I looked out into the back yard and all along the fence a fire was blazing. I commanded K. to go over to the neighbor's house to see if they had a hose. We had one, but where it was and how long it would take me to find it and hook it up is something I didn't have time to deal with. Then with hands shaking, I dialed 911 to tell them my back yard was on fire. I could barely remember my new address but somehow related it to the dispatcher.

My first thought was that the night before I had been mowing the grass and had spilled gasoline right outside the shed door. Although I had no idea if a day later the gasoline would still make that more dangerous, I was praying that the fire wouldn't reach that spot to find out.

I ran outside to see what was going on. K. had done her duty and the nice next door neighbor man who we hadn't even met yet, had his hose hooked up and was arcing the water stream from his back yard into the edge of ours. With the very highest arc ever, it was just barely hitting the fire. Then, within minutes I could hear fire engines roaring up the street and the fire-fighters came to save the day and they successfully put the fire out in a matter of minutes.

By this time a huge crowd had gathered to watch all the drama unfolding. As the fire was being contained by those brave fire-men, I looked at all of the strangers and started waving to them. "Hello, we're your new neighbors. This is K. and this is K." "Hello, hello, so nice to meet you."

Ha, what an introduction. And that is the infamous way we made our presence known in our new neighborhood.

P.S. - We did find out what had happened to cause the fire. Some boys were bike riding by our fence. Our yard was located right next to an access sidewalk to a park. The boys innocently threw a firecracker over the fence and the sparks caught the dried leaves on fire.

Spice it up

One day I came home from work and noticed that my son's hair looked a little strange. I zoomed in on it and looked closely. What to my amazement . . . it looked singed!

I asked him, "K. what the heck happened to your hair? It looks like you burnt it." Sheepishly he admited that while I was at work, he was bored and so he turned on the gas burner and was experimenting by sprinkling different spices into the flame. Apparently one had sparked a little more than he had anticipated and caught his hair on fire.

My gosh, fire is so dangerous. Can you imagine if he hadn't been able to put it out? This is a mother's worse nightmare. I'm guessing he was about 11 yrs. old at the time . . definitely old enough to know better. I tell you, it was hard. I mean he was really too old to have a babysitter, yet based on this incident too young to be left alone.

Easter in November

One cold Friday night in the month of November K. and K. had gone over to their dad's for the night. It had been a long week at work and I was looking forward to the weekend and some relaxation but at the same time I really needed to get into my son's room and clean it while he wasn't around. That way I could bring a garbage bag in and do some serious purging without him witnessing the act when things he hadn't noticed or touched in six months would suddenly become his favorites.

So I compromised with myself, poured myself a glass of Zinfandel, put some music on and went at the task. I had been dreading it so much because it was so long over due, but the wine and the music kicked in and curiously enough I was having a grand old time tackling that shambles of a room.

I was a good 3/4ths of a trash bag into the room when I came across a blue and yellow plastic Easter egg. My kids loooovvved hunting Easter eggs and candy on Easter morning and I always made a practice of counting the Easter eggs and items that I hid so I wouldn't come across any unwanted surprises later on. So, without even thinking, just sort of instintively, I just popped the blue and yellow Easter egg open, expecting to find some eight month old Easter candy in it.

Gaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggg me with a spoon. Baaarfff. Pungent rotten egg sulfur smell permeated the air. I bolted out of the room like there was no tomorrow. For the last eight months an actual hard boiled egg had been decomposing within that innocent looking air tight plastic egg.

And that my friends, is hopefully the last time I will celebrate Easter in November.