She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named

So, Tuesday, April 19, might have been my worst day as a parent ever.  And it pretty much revolved all around my little darling….She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

Actually, that WAS indeed what we called her yesterday.  Today, I'm *almost* over it, and can go back to calling her Shelby.  Besides, typing out She-Who-blablabla is way too much hassle.

Tuesday morning I found myself messing around on my computer (no surprises there).  Connor was home because it was spring break, and he was messing around on his computer next to me.  Shelby was upstairs, and to my knowledge, playing in Connor's room.  I was looking forward to a very quiet and uneventful day, given that Noah was at Zoo Camp all day.  You see, in our household, if there's a ruckus or argument or any kind of noise, Noah is involved.  I had a friend recently express surprise when I told her that Noah was at the heart of most of our kid ruckuses.  Yup, cute little, wide-eyed, usually smiling and joking Noah.  He's trouble.

Anyway, back to my Noah-free, trouble-free morning.  Shelby was VERY quiet upstairs.  And I KNOW I KNOW!  It's the first rule of parenting, right?  When they're being quiet, it usually means they're up to no good.  I called out to her every 15 minutes or so, and each time she'd answer me, "I'm okay, Mommy!  I'm not done yet!"  Yes, the "I'm not done yet" should have tipped me off.  But it didn't.  I even had a little conversation with Connor that went something like this, DURING THAT very time she was upstairs:

• Mommy:  You know, Connor, they always say when a kid is too quiet it means they're doing something bad.
• Connor:  *smiles*
• Mommy:  But I never had to worry about that with you.  You were a great kid.  So is Shelby.
• Connor:  Noah would get in trouble, though!
• Mommy:  Yup, true that.  Are you sure Shelby is playing with your pyramid set?
• Connor:  Yeah.  She's kind of making a mess, but that's okay.

Yes, that was Connor leading me down the garden path.  No, I'm not blaming him.  Not very much, anyway.

So, after about 90 minutes of quiet from upstairs and quiet computering between Connor and I, I finally decided I'd better go upstairs to check on Shelby.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

That's not really what I said.  If I type what I really said, I think Blogger would flag my blog and delete it.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

There is cat litter.  EVERYWHERE.

It's in the hallway.

It's all over the laundry room (where we keep the litter box).

It's all over Shelby's room.

It's in my master bathroom (clear on the other side of the top floor of our house), all over the floor and piled 3 inches high on the windowsill.

It's in Connor's room, all over the floor and a nice little pile on Connor's lower bed.

In each pile of litter is one of Shelby's stuffed animals, also covered in litter.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

The only place unscathed is Noah's bedroom.  I can't figure that one out, other than the fact that he left his dinosaur set out and it was kind of blocking the door.

For her to have displaced as much litter as she did, she must have carried at least 50 scoops of litter OUT of the litter box in her little VERY BAD hands.  It must have taken her….well…..about 90 MINUTES!  90 minutes of unsupervised time by a VERY BAD Mommy.  No wonder she "wasn't done yet!"   We do have a child-lock on the laundry room door.  And still have baby gates at the top and bottom of our stairs.  Of course, they don't do any good if THEY'RE NOT CLOSED!

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

From my perspective, the only break I caught with this was the fact that the cats had not yet done poopies in the letterbox that morning.  Who knows where those would have ended up.  *shudders*  I can't even go there...

So, I snatch my VERY BAD little She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and wash her hands for at least 5 minutes and then stomp downstairs with her where I firmly plop her in front of the TV and tell her that SHE WILL NOT MOVE HER BODY WITHOUT MY SAYSO. 

I then realize that I cannot reclaim my upstairs without a Diet Coke to sustain me.  A HUGE one.  Probably 2 of them.  And besides, it's almost lunchtime.  And if nothing else (can't claim to be a great hands-on Mom, can I??), I am a champion procrastinator (and justifier).  I need nourishment and Diet Coke if I am to tackle what has happened to my house.

Thirty minutes later and we're back home from a Taco Bell run.  I'm sitting on the living room couch eating my 7 Layer Burrito, and dousing each bite with lots of TB's Hot Sauce (which I LOVE).  I'm also watching Tori & Dean's new wedding plan show.  Told ya - I'm a champion procrastinator.  What better time to catch up on the 3 DVR'd and unwatched episodes of Tori & Dean than NOW, when the upstairs of my house is virtually uninhabitable (for anything other than cats)?   There's one particularly tender moment when the bride comes out and looks so very pretty and everybody starts crying, so naturally I start to shed tears.  This blurs my vision, right in the middle of a douse of hot sauce on my burrito.  My hot sauce MISSES my burrito and lands on my couch.  THE VERY COUCH that just 4 weeks ago I took apart from top to bottom and spent an entire day cleaning and painting and fixing.  ^@%$^^#&^&#!!  The very couch that I FORBADE anyone to eat anywhere NEAR it.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

And yes, I blame that on She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.  I wouldn't have been eating a burrito to drown my frustrations if she hadn't done her litter box relocation projects!

Okay, hot sauce mess gets scrubbed out and I'm back on the couch watching my Tori & Dean marathon, trying not to sit in the wet spot.  Shelby comes in and says (I thought), "My teeth hurt."  She looked so sad that I momentarily forgot about how VERY BAD she'd been and I wrapped my arms around her to hug her and hold her.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

I feel squishy stuff on my arms before I catch the smell.  THIS VERY BAD kid has just had the worst poopie blowout of her little life, with it going all the way up her back and up to her neck.  And now it's all over my arms and shirt.  I know if I ungrip her that it'll get on my AGAIN freshly cleaned couch.  !@$%^&%$^&!$%&^!@%$&!!  So, still stuck together WITH POOP as our glue, Shelby and I make it upstairs to the kid bathroom.  I strip down to near nothingness and then I strip her down, although I just threw her shirt in the garbage.  No way was I even going to try and get the huge globs of poop off of it.  Besides, I just placed several kid clothes internet orders.  She has plenty of shirts, dammit!  I then open the toilet up so I can start wiping her down before I toss her in the bathtub.

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

There is poop smeared all over the toilet!   NOAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  @&*$%*&@#&*@#&!!  Noah, who lately has been VERY BAD about wiping his bum BEFORE he slides off the toilet, has left a nice little surprise for me to find later, as if to leave me a memento of him while he's gone away from me at Zoo Camp.  So, I have to hold Shelby with one hand so she touches NOTHING, and use my other hand to scrub down the toilet.

I clean the toilet.  I clean Shelby.  I clean myself.  I clean the bathtub.  I do 2 loads of laundry (despite the cat litter everywhere which I must walk through and which is sticking to my feet - and at this point I'm really wishing I'd cleaned up the ^#@^&$! litter BEFORE eating lunch).  I sweep all non-carpet rooms of litter.  I clean our master bathroom (which was hit particularly hard by litter, for whatever reason).  I vacuum.  And vacuum.  And vacuum.  I get a new vacuum bag out once it's full of litter.  I do this TWO times.  About 4:00 I'm finally done cleaning and I come downstairs, only to discover that there was POOPY on the chair Shelby was sitting in during her blowout. 

HOLY FREAKING HECK.

So I clean up MORE poop.  Because it's what I do.

 

At this point, I call Mark and tell him to pick up Noah and then meet us at Twin Trees restaurant.  Now, just that very morning, we'd agreed to curb our eating out at restaurants to save money for our many trips planned this spring and summer.  Mark naturally begins to protest, at which point I say, " DO. NOT. QUESTION. ME.  DO. NOT."  Mark then wisely agrees to meet us there.   I should explain that I've been researching "true New York pizza" since in our 8 years here we've never had a good pizza.  I know, right??  Anyway, I've compiled a list of 5 supposedly must-try pizzerias in Syracuse, and Twin Trees is the closest.   It's not the #1 choice but I seriously canNOT eat one more time at Chilis or Olive Garden without going postal with a fork.  Seriously.  Syracuse is renowned for bad food (as I've discovered in my pizza research, and after 8 years of my own dedicated research to this cause).

Unfortunately, Shelby wants to sit by me, shrieking "I WANT TO SIT BY MOMMY!  I WANT TO SIT BY MOMMY!"  Yup, a bond forged in poop (literally) is VERY STRONG.  For the rest of the meal, Shelby behaves like an utter terror, so much so that we must have said her name so many times "SHELBY!!!" that one of the waitresses (who was NOT ours) notices one of Shelby's absences (Mark has her in time out) and says, "Oh!  Where is Shelby?"  BUT, She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named is on Mark's clock now and all I have to do is pretend that I don't have any kids and that all I have to do is eat this fabulous pizza.  And order 2 more Diet Cokes.  Bliss achieved.

Happily, Twin Trees is very family friendly (meaning it's plenty loud so your kids can be loud, too), AND the pizza actually tastes kinda like my beloved, long-lost pizza from Fredricos in Logan, Utah!  I'm pretty sure it's not genuine NY style pizza, but I'm happy.

HOLY FREAKING HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!

And today, with Noah at Zoo Camp again, actually DID turn out to be my quiet, relaxed nirvana day.  'Course, I DID buy Shelby a new DS game and let her play on Noah's DS all day long.  And locked all of the baby gates.

And um, yeah, I did end up booking my road trip shopping spree for next week that I'd been delaying booking because I felt kind of guilty about it.  Maybe by next week (when I'm 1000 miles away from her), I'll be thanking She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.