Boobie Tassels For Buddha

I drove home from work. The Pens were playing, and the traffic queued through the tunnel and slithered up Greentree Hill. All the snow that had slowly melted over the past week flooded the downtown area so all the traffic that usually emptied off the Parkway clogged it instead, looking for new exits that didn't utilize submerged ramps. I called home to give a heads-up to my family. Don't expect me "on time and under budget". My wife answered the phone. Her voice was like cold soup, thin and watery. She was teetering on the edge of tears. Sick. Very sick.

She had both kids. I told her to hold on. I called my parents and told them I was twenty minutes away. I told them to go relieve my wife so she could lie down. They did. They're champs.

I got home to relieve my parents, but ended up telling them to stay instead, as I shuttled food. . . half a pancake and a freeze-pop up the stairs while heating up the grill so I could cook dinner for the kids. I took my wife a zofran and some chipped ice and she lay in bed under blankets, watery eyed and pallid.

Back downstairs the grill was warming up. I didn't have time to shovel the back patio, and a couple inches of fresh powder from the morning's snowfall lay on it. I trudged through on slick soled dress shoes, scraping the grill and putting hamburger patties on it. Back inside I kicked the snow from my shoes and started the deep-fryer, and made a salad before running up to check on my wife. Sleep, I told her. Go to sleep.

Back downstairs I set the table and trudged outside, careless of old tracks, stamping new ones, and flipped the burgers. I blew warm air through cold hands and pushed the door back open. I stamped off the snow again. It had started to build up on the mat inside the house. I shook frozen "Fast-Food Fries" into the fryer and set the timer to 4 minutes.

I put my youngest daughter in her chair and tried to get her to eat.

"You want some yogurt, honey?" I asked.

"Okay!" she said, happily, "Yogurt!"

I picked her up and strapped her into her chair, positioning it so she could see the television. I got a container of Trix Yogurt from the refridgerator and peeled back the foil top. "Try Again" read the underside of the foil. I lost, apparently. I sat down and dipped the spoon into the yogurt.

"No yogurt!" my daughter said. "No like yogurt."

I allowed myself a second to close my eyes and reopen them, focusing them again on my daughter. I'll spare you the dialog and summarize. . . You LIKE yogurt. . . Oh, look at the TV. . . one bite. . . no Wiggles until you take a bite. . . etc. Once a spoonful of yogurt was in her mouth she ate the rest, but a steady stream of banter, distraction and "redirection" had to be maintained. She might have eaten without it. . . but why fuck with success.

The timer dinged. I ignored it, finishing with my daughter. My mother asked if she could flip the burgers for me. I told her no and cleaned my daughters face before returning her "to the wild".

Back outside with cheese for the burgers, back inside, the snow beginning to mound in the shape of white footprints like clues in a comic book. Back upstairs to check on the wife. Back downstairs to pull the fries from the fryer, back outside to retrieve the burgers from the grill.

I called my older daughter from the computer room, prepared her plate and hurriedly ate with her. I checked the clock. It was almost time for my parent/teacher conference. I finished up, stowing dirty dishes in the sink until I could get to them later.

This blog is starting to bore me.

The teacher was running later. My seven o'clock appointment tricked over to 7:30 as I listened to another parent say, "I hit her. I slapped her across the face. I've never had to hit any of my other kids. She told me she said she ran into a doorknob. I said, you tell them I hit you! A doorknob! Like it's even the right height!" She was explaining this to two teachers. I think she thought she was setting them at ease. I know her son. Good kid. She's a piece of trash though.

I met with the teacher and got home around 8. My parents had put my youngest to bed. I thaned them and sent them home. They hadn't eaten yet. I checked on my wife again. She was almost asleep. I told her briefly about my conference. . . what should have been OUR conference. She asked for another freeze-pop. I got her one and told her I was going to play with my oldest before putting her to bed.

Garbage night. Fuck. I forgot it was garbage night. I'd put that off until after my other daughter was asleep. We went to the basement. She wanted to watch me play "Ratchet and Clank". My younger daughter started to cry over the monitor. I went to check on her.

The room was pitch black, no nightlight. Have to excuse the folks, they don't know the routine. I switched on the light to find that she'd tried to get out of bed and was stuck between the bed guard and the bed. She was so tired she didn't know how to get out. She was crying full out. Trouble ahead.

She started gagging then throwing up. I caught most of it, exchanging dirty hand towels for clean ones, peeling off my shirt, now covered. Peeling off her jammies, running water for a bath. I told my oldest to start getting ready for bed while I cleaned up the bathroom floor and plunked my youngest into the bath. What the hell, it WAS supposed to be her bath night anyway.

I asked my older daughter to brush her teeth and I dried my younger daughter's hair in her room. She was whining tiredly. I heard her trying to throw up again, thought, "jesus, not again" and ran her back tot he bathroom. She threw up, but just in the toilet. I cleaned her up and gave her water and put her to bed. She slept the rest of the night.

I crawled into bed with my oldest and read her a chapter of "King of the Wind". She said her prayers and I scratched her back before kissing her on the cheek and stealing silently from the room, switching off her fish tank light as I closed the door. Night little fish.

My wife was awake in our room, face lit by the glow of "The Mentalist" from the television.

"The nurse called," she said, "and told me to take another dose of Zofran at 10:30 if I'm awake, but not to STAY awake for it."

She was feeling a little better for having crashed. I told her I'd bring her up a pill after I took the garbage out. I changed into flannel pajama pants, collected the "upstairs garbage" before depositing it all with the "downstairs garbage" and taking it outside. Cold. . . soooooo cold. 12 degrees and dropping. I slid snow boots over bare feet and drug garbage cans down the driveway to the curb.

Dirty dishes awaited me. I heard water running upstairs and hastily cleaned the dishes. I'd make lunches later. I shook a zofran out of the pill jar and filled a glass with ice, running tap water through it.

Downstairs the Pens were losing 3 - 1. Upstairs Thomas Jayne was solving 'the case' from behind bars. DAMN YOU AGENT BOSCO! She took the pill at 10:30. I stayed with her and held her hand. Jayne escaped from jail to 'close the case'. "He's gonna be in big trouble for that," she murmured. She was watching through slitted eyes, feigning sleep. "Go to SLEEP!" I commanded before kissing her goodnight and going back downstairs to turn off lights and power off the television. I took a momentary break on the couch and found myself nodding off.

Whenever I'm called upon to perform double duty I'm helpless to stop myself from imagining how different my life would be if I was performing it every day, instead of "as needed". That day sucked. I mean, it was manageable, but it sucked. Single parents pull that kind of double duty everday. It AMAZES me. I don't know that I have the strength to encompass that sort of scope chronically. I am stellar at filling in during a crisis, but if that crisis were to become my way of life, I suspect it would crush my psyche and leave me drooling idiot on the couch. I can't believe sometimes how any parent could handle that daily duty alone. *Raises glass* "To Single Parents, underpaid, underappreciated; you do it for the love of the game!"

*Author's Aside* See, phile, you're not the only one who can suck up to hot single moms.