Squeak’s Squeals

I stopped by WalMart’s handy-dandy Tire and Lube Express department this morning to have a headlight replaced (I’ve been a padiddle for the last two weeks…  And calling a three hour wait for a bulb change “Express” is blatant false advertising, but that’s a rant for another day).

Today’s rant involves musical talent - or the lack there of.  You see, while I was patiently waiting for the line up of work release convicts to finish with my car (one guy had “FTW” tatooed on his forearm… while I am fully aware of what this means INSIDE the prison system, I prefer to believe he’s just a REALLY hardcore gamer), I stopped by the handy-dandy McDonald’s-in-WalMart… because nothing says ‘white trash’ like eating at a restaurant INSIDE a WalMart.  “Hoowee, Charlene!  I is gonna take you someplace REAL special fer our first date… an affer dinner, we can splits us a apple pie!”

Ok, back on topic - I ventured into the white trash Hell within the white trash Hell and orded up a fish combo (cuz nothing says ‘fine seafood‘ like a deep fried slab of fish on a bun).  I picked a little two-seater table and proceeded to dip my first mushy-assed fry in ketchup (no complaints here, I LOVE mushy-assed fries).  It was then that I saw it - across the distance of the entryway, on the opposite side of the 900-year-old people greeter, under the uber vents that blast you with the only shot of hot and/or cold air you’ll get while you’re in the store, on a poster inside the little You’re-Stealing-Our-Shit sensor panel.  Dost mine eyes deceive me?  I blinked hard and looked again.  Nay, nay, mine eyes dost not seem to beist deceptive.  Nevertheless, I looked down at my fries, trying to rend from my mind the image now burned to my cornea.  No!  It cannot be!  Fate would not be so cruel!  This is not proof of a just and loving God!  I looked up again, just to be certain.  And, alas, it would seem as though my childhood has come back to haunt me.  For there, before my very eyes, was a sight I had last beheld in 1994.

It was a piece of my life, my youth, my childhood that I had hoped would remain packed away in my mother’s attic right next to the shoe strings, pillow cases, nightgowns, framed posters and t-shirts bearing their name.  But Noo-ooo-oooo!  They have to come back FOURTEEN years later for a “reunion tour” and remind me just how lame I used to be (which is considerably lamer than I am now, which is truly saying something).  Regardless, the rumors are true, the nightmare is real: The New Kids on the Block have reunited.

And calling themselves “Kids” at this point in their lives is really very, very sad.  For everyone.  I realize “New Men on the Block” makes them sound like a bunch of dirty perverts, but New Kids!?  Seriously?  Maybe they could rename the ‘band’ “Midlife Crisis on the Block”….  I’d be much more down with MCOTB.

As I munched my greasy sammich and sipped my fountain lemonade, I tried desperately to avoid looking back at the poster, but to no avail - it was like a train wreck.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pull my gaze from it.  Even now, as I hide in the secluded safety of my own office, I still see them… old and married, but none donning wedding bands…. some pudgy, some balding, some obviously, flamingly gay… why, God, why!?!  Of all the skeletons to bring forth, why THIS one!?  Does anyone else have a mental image of Jesus waving his arms to “The Right Stuff” “Hangin’ Tough”*?  Or is it just me?

You’ve noticed, I’m sure, that I’ve added an image of the wonderkins as they are today.  This is the exact poster that caught my eye across the Wally World lobby.  Just one question: Is that really a V-neck wife beater?  Pimpin’.

Some things are better left in pieces.  Boy bands would be at the top of that list.  And to the New Old Geezers… so long and thanks for ruining my square fish.

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My children. Oh, my children. I love them. I do. Very much. More than life itself, even. But the bottom line: I really don’t like them much at all. Except when they’re sleeping. Then they’re angels.

For those of you who have not yet experienced the joys of child rearing… well…. buyer beware. For those of you that have…. it’s nice to know I’m not alone. I believe Denis Leary said it best, “…immediately, when they hit age five, your life becomes about peace and quiet. You just want the fighting to stop.  Can’t we all just get along!?…” Can I get an ‘Amen!’ for Brother Leary?

I am pretty much convinced at this point that my children are indeed trying to see just how far they can take things before someone dies - them, me, the neighbor, a random groundhog - doesn’t matter who or what… so long as someone or something is dead when it’s over.

It’s as if I tucked them in one night - all cute and sweet and innocent and wonderful - and I awoke the following morning to find my house in the midst of a hostile takeover by a race of bipolar, mutant midgets.

Honestly, how many times should I really have to repeat the line, “No, you can’t have scissors,” before it sinks in?? Two, you might say. Perhaps five. Or ten. Or twenty-five. Oh, nay nay, my friends. It is a line that must be spoken, like a broken record in an abandoned building, one hundred and seventy times - elevating vocal volume every five repeats until finally you start to feel your skull crack (for I firmly believe arguing with children causes your skull to crack, which in turn allows tiny amounts of brain matter to seep out under your skin where it congeals and forms the lumps and lines that society perceives as ‘wrinkles’ while simultaneously making one utterly, ridiculously stupid). At this point, you just scream it, “NO! YOU CAN’T HAVE SCISSORS!” Just a note to those non-parental types out there: If the neighbors couldn’t hear it, you didn’t yell it loud enough.

Oft have my dreams wandered to a magical place in my head where the walls are all covered in massive pads of Velcro… and all children’s clothing is covered in opposing pads… where anytime, anywhere… you can stop, bend down, pick them up, stick them to the wall… and walk away. And they have mute buttons - hidden where they can’t reach them. And when they are whining, crying, kicking, screaming… throwing tantrums enough to make a colicky newborn stop and go, “Damn! What the f*%k’s HER problem!?”….. you can push the magic button and silence prevails. Ah, yes…. to dream…. though fleeting it may be…. And so it goes… that we live in our little dorky, parental bubbles where life is happy and quiet… and children are well-mannered, well-behaved and always clean…..

But alas, the time has come for me to leave the safety and security of my personal kid-free bubble and start the screaming over again…. this time it’s, “No, you can’t use super glue!” Let the fun begin! Whee!

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It’s been a long, LONG week in the world of the Squeak.

It started on Wednesday when the girls’ daycare called to tell me JB was projectile vomiting all over the facility and I needed to come get her. They graciously gave her a bucket for the drive home and we arrived at the house without incident.

Upon entering the house, however, JB walked into the living room, held the bucket way out in front of her and puked on the floor. “It’s okay. It’s no problem,” I reassured her. “These things happen. I’ll just have to scrub the floor is all.”

The problem with this philosophy is that I am a sympathetic puker. If I see it, hear it or smell it, I’m gonna do it. So there I was, on hands and knees on the living room floor - scrubbing with one bucket and vomiting into another.

Not much work was accomplished on Wednesday for obvious reasons… the kids were whiny and clingy, I was cranky and my throat was sore from upchucking. So Wednesday was a bust.

By Thursday, all was well. The kids went off to daycare, I went off to work. And I had been given permission to work from home Friday as a weird sort of perk for getting things accomplished in the office.

As luck would have it, however, at just after 2am Friday morning, my bedroom door crept open and there stood Roo, tears streaking her face, “Mommy, I puked….”

Shit. I pulled myself out of bed and went to assess the damages.

Pile #1: The hallway. ALL over the hallway.

Pile #2: Roo’s bedroom floor.

Pile #3: Roo’s bed - the sheets, the pillow, the jammies, the Webkinz…. coated in an orange, acidic slime.

I went to grab the buckets and spent the next two and a half hours scrubbing and puking…. and scrubbing and puking…. and scrubbing and……… well, you get the idea.

So Friday was also a bust. No work was accomplished (except for scrubbing floors - repeatedly). Not a problem, right? I can make up the time on Saturday while the kids are with their Doofhead, right? WRONG!

By noon on Saturday, I had a temp of 102(F) and was convinced my spleen was the only possible organ which had not yet shot itself out of my nose. I heaved and puked and heaved and puked… and when there was nothing left to puke, I continued to heave - for HOURS I continued the heaving - at one point, I heaved hard enough to re-injure my jaw (for those of you who read the Brawler post)… I felt it pop again and it sent a shooting pain into my right ear. And I kept heaving. Tears were streaming down my face as I sat in my bathroom all alone, convinced I had reached the end of my days… that I would be living out the last fleeting moments of my life cold, alone, heaving and perched on the porcelain throne.

The good news: I feel infinitely better this morning. The bad news: all the heaving caused the blood vessels to burst all around my right eye (that there picture to the right…. that is really, truly my eyeball, taken this morning… granted, it’s not the best picture as it was taken with my cell phone, but it’s enough to get the point across).

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Hello, hello! And welcome to this week’s edition of the Sunday Confessional!

This week, I would like to take a moment and confess to my paralyzing fear of spiders. That’s right, kids, arachnophobia. In fact, I am so afraid of the little buggers, I couldn’t bring myself to look up a spider pic for the post - so I opted for a Care Bear, as they are cute and cuddly and completely NOT arachnids.

About 20 minutes ago, I was driving back from the grocery store and decided to stop by the mailbox on the way to grab yesterday’s mail. As I pulled out a newspaper, a big assed spider - it had to be two inches in diameter, counting its legs - plopped off the edge of it and onto my arm. It started running up the INSIDE of my sleeve!

Now bear in mind, my mailbox sits in front of the neighbor’s house and the neighbors like to sit on their front porch, which is where they were when this unfortunate fiasco occurred.

I threw the car into park, ripped open the door and jumped out screaming. I stood there, in front of the mailboxes and proceeded to beat my arm repeatedly against anything near me - the car, the mailbox, a tree, someone else’s mailbox - until the shriveled corpse of what was once a creepy, crawly, nasty spider fell out of the arm of my shirt.

At this point, I calmly pulled my sleeve down, hopped back in the car and continued my merry way into my driveway. The neighbors now think I’m insane.

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