Hat Day

Yesterday morning when I woke up and looked in the mirror, I knew it was going to be a hat day. And unfortunately, for me, though a baseball cap could disguise my bad hair, there was nothing in my closet that could compensate for the crazy day I was about to experience.

In the morning, in celebration of the beautiful weather, we picked up pecans. However, the kids were not enthused, especially Owen, who used his new toy skid steer to pick up ONE AT A TIME. We continued until our buckets were full, which happened to be right when Mrs. Stafford pulled in for Owen’s speech therapy. Walking toward the house was slow going. Helen spilled her pecans and wailed about her load being “too heaby!!” Owen was unhappy about giving up play time for working on his sounds, to say the least, and so I had to have a little talk with him elsewhere, out of Mrs. Stafford’s hearing distance. Awkward moment, I know. Meanwhile, Jack screamed so loudly about me leaving the room that Mrs. Stafford picked him up to settle him, which he didn’t buy.

During speech therapy, Mrs. Stafford called my attention to my beans that were boiling over, streaming down the cupboards and onto my just-mopped floor. Fortunately I got it cleaned up quickly and it didn’t stain this time. I switched the beans to a bigger pot and a different burner.

After lunch and rest time, I discovered that my beans had been burning on the stove. I salvaged what I could, but the bottom of the pot was covered with at least a centimeter of black crud, pock-marked with little bean imprints. I poured some water into it and let it soak, the only sane thing to do at that point in time. I put the beans back in the original pot, on the original burner.

I needed a break, so I called Jason to see what he was doing. He was digging peanuts, and bored out of his mind at his 2-1/2-acre-per-hour speed on auto steer, so he was willing to accept an Owen drop-off. Excellent!

Except that I misunderstood his directions out to the field, and I thought I could get there without driving on a road. I threw the kids in my Expedition, not bothering to strap them in or get my purse, and then I remembered that my gas tank had just hit empty. Since “freshly empty” and “appallingly empty” are two different things, I proceeded with my plans, driving very slowly over the bumpy field lane so I wouldn’t spill the coffee I had just brewed, trying to ignore the big “0 miles to empty” flashing at me. And then I approached a foreboding ditch and thought better of it, so I turned around and got stuck in some deep mud while backing into a field. And while I was waiting for my rescuer driving a big green tractor, Jack pooped, and of course, the diaper bag was hanging on its hook at home. So we sat in the smelly truck and laughed.

The on-and-off sprinkling rain that started after lunch allowed no field work other than digging peanuts. It picked up a bit, so Jason decided to quit for the day. That wasn’t so bad, for me.

After a supper of city-roasted red beans and rice, which Jason ate good naturedly, I kicked everyone out of the kitchen so I could work out my frustrations on the dishes and that nasty stockpot. And then Jack grabbed the empty juice bottle that was waiting to go out to the recyclables, because I am a good little girl and recycle plastic and cardboard, and, of course, juice dribbled all over my floor.

The tide turned while I was cleaning; Jason played hide and seek with the older kids; I made some fruit smoothies that turned out really awesome; and suddenly it was 8:00 pm, a very sacred time at our house! The kids went to bed and I got to work undisturbed on my backed-up typing.

At our house, some days are great, most are so-so, and a few are really bad. For those so-so-ish to bad days, thank goodness for hats!

Monday

Jack had a major blow-out in his crib this morning. It was not lovely. It was smeared everywhere, even on his arms and face, and he had a huge glob stuck on his back, right above his pajama pants. He was grinning like a cheese grit, and somehow managed to look cute in spite of the smelly poo. I had to hold him over the toilet and wipe him down before I could stick him in the tub, and then I had to wash him off before I could draw the bath water. He had nearly gone artistic on me in his crib. It was on the sheet, the blanket and the crib rails. He had pulled down the dangling metal toucan from his mobile, an accomplishment he was quite proud of, but it was a little messy, and all I could think about was cleaning brownie batter out of beaters. The clean up got to me after a while; I threw away an almost-new cardboard book, and I am intensely practical.

The morning continued in its busyness, I got engrossed in my sewing, the household clutter and dirt began to get out of control, and that’s when the vacuum cleaner salesman showed up to clean and service the Electrolux. Man, were those gross sticky streaks on my kitchen floor ever humbling. And it continued to get humbling. Especially when he pulled out an air particle sensor/tester/thingamabob and showed me that we have 21,300 or more icky particles per cubic foot floating around in our lovely indoor air. “Any of your kids have allergies?” he asked. Not really, I said, but then I had to think about the $85 we had just shelled out for a teeny bottle of allergy drops for Owen, whose eyes had been gunking up for over a week. He explained about all the junk that’s in dirty, unfiltered air, air that hasn’t been zapped by the Aerus Electrolux purifier’s UV light, which by the way, is $1199.99 plus tax, and we can arrange that in 6 monthly payments: aerosol cans (which I don’t use), hairspray (which I don’t use but maybe I need to?), air freshener (which I don’t use often), the glue used for carpet padding (we’ve got that in the basement), dust mites in mattresses because we shed a pound of skin a year (gross!!), ad infinitum. The bad part of me had to wonder if his little machine would have sensed the air particles in Jack’s room earlier. And hey, I’m not defending the wholesomeness of our air, but I am a little skeptical of a salesman’s biased evaluation, even a nice salesman, which he was.

I do think the funniest moment, apart from Jack grabbing onto the man’s rear while he was putting the sweeper back together, was Owen’s comment about the Vaseline he was using to grease a part of the vacuum: “Hey, that’s for my pee-pee!” (He felt perfectly fine about talking about his rash to a perfect stranger. I can see we have some work to do.) Sometimes I am extremely glad people have a hard time understanding Owen.