Tess and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

That title is directly from Judith Viorst's classic of a similar name. Just sub Alexander for Tess and you've got it. It was one of my favorite books as a kid. That and the story of Rikki Tikki Tembo Nosarembo Chari Bari Ruchi Pip Peri Pembo. I'm not sure if that is how that was spelled, but I've never forgotten that fictional character's name. He nearly died of pneumonia or drowning because his brother had to say that entire name when looking for help. Go look it up.

I was asked by my dear friend Julia to write this blog post because she has an unhealthy relationship to her keys. I think I'll have to blog on her key problem. It got so bad at one point that my husband suggested she gets one of those lanyards to wear around her neck and couple it with one of those key rings that clips to your belt. With two points of contact with her body, there would be a good chance that she could hold on to them. My situation on Wednesday filled her with a sick kind of redemptive joy. Oh well, here goes.

Hubby left very very early on Monday morning (4:30am wake up time) on a business trip to Houston. Before he left he asked me to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I've gotten a little addicted to Facebook. One of my friends manages to be online at 11pm my time so I end up chatting with her for an hour or so. Next thing you know, it is 1am and I need to get the kids up at 6:30am. This is just not good for my health. So told Hubby that I would try to get to bed on time. On Monday night, I found my friend online and managed to stay up until 2am my time. I was a bit of a wreck on Monday morning but managed to get the kids off to school and then I crawled back in bed with my youngest. I couldn't do that again.

When Hubby called to check in that day and asked when I got to bed, I told the truth. I certainly could have lied and said that I went to bed at 11pm like a good little girl, but I know he is wise in the ways of computers and can figure out exactly when I logged out. For all I know, he has my desktop mirrored on his Blackberry. So I vowed to go to bed at 10pm that night especially since I had an 8am appointment with my son's teacher for conferences on Wednesday morning.

Well, I did better but not 10pm better. I got to bed around midnight but was feeling pretty positive about that time. A good six and a half hours of sleep might just do the trick. That was until 1:30am when Lil'T decided that she didn't want to go potty and would instead prefer to whine a good long while. She also found it necessary to fight me picking her up out of bed to put her on the toilet. I finally got her back to bed by 2 am but because Hubby is out of town, I allowed her sister and her to sleep in my big bed with me. Big mistake. Lil'T kept complaining that her sister was too close. At one point, Princess was practically lying on top of me. That's when I kicked Lil'T out of bed. Around 2:30am. I lay there for what felt like hours before I decided to get out of bed and shop Ebay for a while. I finally got sleepy at 5am. Yeah, 1.5 hours before I had to get up again to get Princess to school. Plus I had to get dressed and ready for the conference.

In the book, Alexander woke up with gum in his hair. At least he had a good night's sleep. Having the conference at 8am meant waking Lil'T up at 7am. You wouldn't think that was a big deal but she normally wakes up at 8am. A 3 year old deprived of an hour of sleep whiny and clingy. Compounded with the fact that she's on antibiotics for a sinus infection. Way more opihi than normal. How wonderful to have to deal with her while That's teacher was telling me all the ways that he shouldn't have failed Art. Or Science. The boy disliked his Art teacher. I hear it is a common problem. But he shouldn't have totally blown off Art. Meanwhile he's acing Math. He failed Science because he missed the due dates for his project since we were in Hawaii. And instead of turning the project in, he just held on to it. OHN. So, he will be turning in the final project on Monday and hopefully the grades will be revised. No matter what I say, he won't deal with Art. He'd rather just fail.

Then I get a phone call from Julia. She'd had her car serviced and hoped that I could help her out. So I went to pick Julia up at her house, picked up Princess from the bus at our house and off we went. Since we were so close to the mall, I decided to see if Ross and TJ Maxx still had some of those formal white dresses they hauled out for the holidays. I just wasn't thinking 1st communion back in December. I'll remember when it is Lil'T's turn.

Anyway, because we were leaving the island, I let the kids use the DVD player in the car. Lil'T and That wanted to stay in the car and watch the DVD. I told them that they could provided they lock the car doors. I left them my cell phone in case they got harassed by anybody. Then my son could call the police or call the store for help. Plus, I was just going to pop in and out since Princess had a lot of homework to complete before Thursday.

After about 10 minutes in the store and seeing nothing but pink, yellow, peach and mint dresses, we were headed back to the car to leave. Just as we were leaving we saw That and Lil'T coming into the store. My son had to use the bathroom. Here is the exchange that followed.

Me: "Did you lock the car?"

Him: "Yes."

Me: "Okay, let me have the keys."

Him: "What keys? You never gave me the keys."

I ran out to the car and sure enough, he had locked every door. And he left the DVD player running so the car was on accessories power. At least the engine wasn't idling.

Remember, I had left him with my cellphone. He left that in the car too.

So I was stranded a good 17 miles away from my home. My husband was in Houston. And I only had 2 of my friends home phone numbers memorized. Who memorizes phone numbers anymore??? I didn't have enough loose change to make a phone call at the pay phone. Thankfully the TJ Maxx sales people rock and let me use their phone. I called both of them and neither was home. Panic. Then I called my husband on the off chance that he had one or the other's cell phone number. He had Julia's phone number. I hoped and prayed that she wouldn't screen the call. That she wouldn't see "TJ Maxx" on the caller ID and say, "meh, I won't answer." But perhaps the fact that she was driving at the time helped me out because she answered after only a couple of rings. She said that she could come out but she had to find a way to take care of her daughter who was at swimming lessons. I told her how to get into our house and asked her to bring every key that she saw because I had the Toyota keys there too. Wouldn't it have sucked if she got to me and brought the wrong car's keys? And she had to go back to her house and pick up her van because in case she had to jump start my car, she wanted to use the van.

So we shopped and waited. At some point I noticed that Lil'T was walking a little funny. I walked over to her and got hit in the face with that distinctive foul odor that all moms dread. I asked her, "did you poop in your pants?" She got all teary eyed and told me that she had. So I found a 5 pack of panties for $3.99. Yay for TJ Maxx once again. If it had been Nordstrom, I'd be paying at least $10 for one panty.

I tried to get by on the sly. I don't know why, but I didn't want to embarrass her and let all the shoppers at TJ Maxx know that Lil'T had an accident. The doctor told me that a lot of kids on the antibiotic get diarrhea. It is a very common side effect. Unpleasant, but common. So I go to purchase my pack of panties and Princess pipes up, "Mom, I think Lil'T pooped her pants." I swear she was yelling it at the top of her lungs, but I'm sure she wasn't. I just loved the looks I got (real or imagined) from the other people there. The checker cut the panty bag open for me and I was off the the handicap stall in the ladies room. It happened twice, but the second time with more histrionics from Lil'T. She was really upset. Clean up was aided by my quick thinking and a sanitary napkin in her underpants. When you're diaperless, you do what you can with what you have. Thankfully I had the pads. Can you imagine if I only had a tampon?

Could this day get any longer?

Julia showed up about an hour and a half after I called. I couldn't thank her enough. Luckily, my car started up no problem, even with the DVD player in perpetual menu mode as the movie had finished ages ago.

When we got home and finished eating our $0.89 burritos from Taco Bell because there was no way I was going to cook after all of that, I bathed T, showered myself and felt a whole lot better. Sadly, I still had to contend with Princess's homework. She was up a good 2 hours past her bedtime. Poor thing.

Oh well, everybody has days like these once in a while.

Even in Australia.

Girl Scout Cookie Love

Pre-orders are completed but if you still want some, I can def hook you up.

Culinary arts

When That was around 4 or 5 years old, my brother Dave and his wife Janice played and insidious practical joke on us. We didn't know it at the time, but they got us good. They bought our son a kid cookbook. On the surface, it would seem that my chef brother had good intentions. It was a cute cookbook with cartoons of bears and dogs cooking all kinds of seemingly wonderful food. What happened next was no less than a full frontal assault on our sensibilities.

My sweet son soon asked to cook dinner for us. I dutifully gathered the ingredients to such classics like tuna casserole topped with potato chips, mini english muffin pizzas, tuna melts, and so on. See, that list of food doesn't sound bad at all, does it? And yet, in the barely capable hands of my pre-school aged son, it was all bad. Really bad. At dinner times, Hubby and I would tuck in to our meals all smiles and eating with great enthusiasm for the boy's efforts. All the while, spelling out our true evaluations of the meal. Our son didn't know how to read yet.

"Wow, this is so good, son. Great job. I think this is I-N-E-D-I-B-L-E."

"I agree, Honey, really great job. I think I'm going to have another serving and maybe P-U-K-E."

"Mmmm, me too."

And so on. But the upside of us braving those early scary meals is that our son is creative in the kitchen and still comes up with interesting concoctions. He's moved on to desserts.

I wish I had a picture to show you, but I think it would look a little rude. You'll just have to imagine it yourself. The look of it is likely quite familiar to you.

Our son decided to experiment with Jello brand products -- the two major categories of which are pudding and gelatin. Unfortunately, all we had in our pantry was chocolate pudding and lemon jello. Still sounds perfectly sane, right? It isn't. So here is my son's recipe:

1 six oz. package of chocolate pudding
Milk
1 six oz. package of lemon jello
Hot & Cold water

1. Prepare chocolate pudding according to package instructions. Pour into 5 squat highball glasses, preferably clear glass. Don't worry if slides down the sides of the glass. This actually enhances the final effect.

2. Prepare lemon jello according to package instructions. Pour over the chocolate pudding, taking care not to disturb the pudding much, you don't want the jello to dissolve the chocolate pudding.

3. Cover each glass with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for several hours. Serve.


You will learn that jello doesn't firm up well with the chocolate pudding inside of it. We didn't know if this was because of the milk in it or if the dessert itself knew that it was going to be a disaster. So imagine the lemon jello is still liquid when served. The chocolate pudding, semi solid. See where this is going?

My sweet husband called me to the refrigerator while these desserts were convalescing. He told me to brace myself and then take a peek inside. What I saw when I opened the refrigerator reminded me greatly of my last bout of the stomach flu. Or maybe the day after overindulgence at an all you can eat buffet. Sorry to be gross. But we still refer to that dessert as diarrhea surprise.

It tastes okay if you keep your eyes closed.

The wart hog from Namibia

I just wanted to put this clip in here because when we saw it on tv last summer, my kids were entranced. We don't have cable/satellite. When we visited my brother, we were introduced to a whole world of new programs on television. The kids still talk about this show in particular. Princess will even detail how to prepare bugs (in the next segment of the show) as a crunchy treat. Around 4 minutes into the vid, you'll see the best part.

My speech from Uncle's burial service

I did not think I'd give this speech so soon. I should have had at least another decade or two to organize my thoughts. A man so famous for his tardiness should not have been so early to enter heaven.

Uncle always styled himself as a Don Juan, and even introduced himself as "Ono" as in "tastes good." He was a real heart breaker and looking at all of us, I see that he was right. Our hearts are broken.

Uncle and I talked about his funeral a few months ago. It was a conversation full of laughter. He hoped there wouldn't be too much weeping -- especially because he loved the sound of laughing. We talked about him recording himself telling a few jokes. He told me about his joke with Verna and Felicia -- his fellow Pilipino Passion Puppets -- that when they come for the viewing, to look real close. He promised to smile.

For most of us, we touch the future by marrying and having children. But Uncle Nofre chose a different path, instead his legacy is borne in the generosity of his heart -- cultivating every relationship in his life -- with friends, co-workers, church family, classmates, fellow dancers -- and with family.

I'm sure my cousins and my brothers have said how Uncle was a second father to us. But what is remarkable is how this unspoken fact was acknowledged in our lives.

When my brilliant and handsome husband and I were preparing for the birth of our first child -- a boy -- he suggested we name him after Uncle Nofre. After all the heavy handed hints Uncle Nofre had made, we decided to go ahead provided my dad approved -- after all, this was to be his first grandson. Dad gave his permission without hesitation, saying, "Onofre would really like that."

When my cousin Shamayn was planning her wedding, she wanted Uncle to walk her down the aisle with her dad. It is the quintessential father/daughter moment. Sham told her parents of her intention -- and not only did they approve -- they were thrilled. Uncle was so proud to be involved in that way.

You see, his brothers knew and acknowledged Uncle's role in our lives. His siblings appreciated and gave credence to his role as a second father to us. He maintained this relationship through the generosity of his spirit, always freely given and joyfully received.

When Dad died, also at Christmastime -- seriously, I could go all bah-humbug on the season if You keep this up, Lord -- Uncle Nofre stepped in quickly with the generosity of his time to help our family. In the intervening years he stepped up - unbegrudgingly - bringing us to and from the airport, spending time with us, and driving Mom and Aunty Lydia (his brothers' widows) to their appointments.

The last time we saw each other in October of this year, he lamented to me that my youngest child did not know him very well. That she wasn't in his words "used to to" him. I want to assure him that I shall remember him to my children. I shall strive to love them and love life in his example. And that as an aunt, I shall always give toys, not clothes, and will always, always have gum.