Mother of the Year

Well, I imagine my nomination got retracted yesterday. What a day! I should preface all this by saying that what you're about to read does not reflect the standards of the house you grew up in. That's probably why I was especially horrified. We have a very sick cat at the moment, one who probably shouldn't have been allowed to get this sick, and so we suddenly have a whole lot of new challenges that I really don't need at the moment! And something horrendous has happened to my stomach in the last six weeks or so, guaranteeing that at least four days a week, I have horrible stomach pain and an urgent need for a bathroom at least four times a day. Yet another challenge that I don't need at the moment....

Anyway, we started home from a long weekend in WV, with bad weather looming, and most of the trip went smoothly. I think you were fed up from a disrupted schedule so you didn't nurse much, and I was clearly fed up from a disrupted schedule because my stomach was killing me. I had to stop about an hour and a half from home to be sick, and you were happy to sit in your car seat and smile cheerfully and encouragingly at me, which helped. Then about 50 miles from home, you were just so hungry you couldn't stand it any more, so I made it to our exit and stopped to nurse.

Fed you in the corner of a truckstop parking lot while my stomach started raging again and the snow was coming down. I didn't think I was going to make it to the bathroom, so I drove across the parking lot with you in my lap, grabbed you and the diaper bag and rushed into the bathroom. In the plus column, it was a single contained bathroom, but in the minus, there was no changing table. None. But I was too sick to wait, so I had no choice but to put your blanket down on the floor and lay you down. On a truckstop bathroom floor. I know, I know.... Take heart - at least when you have children, I'll not be harping about "putting my grandchildren in that filthy blah, blah, blah," but telling you, "Oh, don't worry about that pacifier - I changed you once on the floor of a truckstop bathroom and you didn't get typhoid!" Got you changed, crouched down and at arm's length because my boots were wet and I was shedding clumps of snow all over the tile floor around you, got back in the car and made it the last few miles home, but in retrospect, it might have been a more peaceful evening if we'd just slept in the parking lot for the night and then kept driving west.


When I pulled into the driveway when I got home, I saw that a plow had taken out the mailbox and our driveway was a sheet of ice. Even though you were fed and changed just a half hour earlier, you were fed up with your car seat and wanted out, so you'd started howling about ten miles from home. I hauled you, the diaper bag, my suitcase, three bags of dirty diapers, and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff into the house, only to discover that the pellet stove, our only source of heat was backing up and the house was freezing cold. I shut it off, started shifting things around, and saw that our sick kitty had left a lake in the bathroom. Threw some paper towels on that, got you out of your seat with you howling the whole time, changed a blown-out diaper (your digestive tract apparently started working again the minute we were home), made you a nest on the couch to keep you warm, and started trying to get things put away.

After cleaning up cat pee in two places, flipping the oven on and opening the door a bit to get some heat going, plugging in the portable radiator, shifting diapers around into the pail, sorting out three days' worth of mail, filtering some water, and clearing a path from the door, I started to get diapers ready for pickup in the morning, counting diapers in the bedroom, the diaper bag, the changing table, and the bin. Raked the coals in the stove to try to get it cooled down faster so I could clean it, tracked down the shop vac but couldn't find the extension cord or the head lamp for cleaning. You are, of course, still screaming. Grabbed you, stuffed you in your swing, tossed my winter scarf in your lap, and you cried yourself to sleep, probably because I hadn't put a blanket on you and your hands were freezing. Started feeding the cats, administering meds to Elvis, and tossed paper towels on another lake in the bathroom, before I emptied cans of cat food into a dish so I wouldn't have screaming cats and a screaming baby to deal with first thing in the morning. Stopped to rake the coals in the stove again. Filled the tea kettle and started it. Took the flashlight upstairs to examine the ceiling for a potential leak to explain several drips on the arm of the futon. You woke up, so I changed another blown out diaper and put you back on the couch, where you seemed more peaceful until I turned on the shop vac, which made you completely red-faced with hysteria. Used some beading pliers to pull the firepot out of the stove after I burned my fingers, vacuumed it out as quickly as I could, which did nothing to drown out the gagging sounds of your wailing. Got the stove lit again, as the tea kettle started boiling midway through the process and screamed at me since you'd stopped, carried you out to the kitchen with me while I put your diaper covers in the washer along with what I will now always think of as "the truckstop blanket," gathered sopping paper towels off the bathroom floor and sprayed it down with Lysol, rinsed out cat food cans, and started steeping some tea.

Settled down to nurse you again, only to discover that the remote control had been knocked out of the charger and died, so I couldn't turn the television on. Wrangled around with my only free hand, my left one, of course, and managed to pull the back off the remote, resent the battery, get it back in place and into the charger behind me, all without having you remove my breast. Got you fed, carried you with me until my arms were numb while I made tea, poured some Rice Chex in a juice glass, grabbed a glass of tea and three Hershey kisses for "dinner" and headed back to the couch. You were so tired and overwhelmed that each time I tried to put you down, you cried, so I let you sit in my lap while I ate and tried to pet attention-starved cats.

Finally, we headed up to bed, where I discovered that Charlie had trapped himself in our bedroom for several hours before the petsitter discovered him and used a shirt as his temporary litterbox, so I dropped you on the bed, grabbed my shirt and headed back downstairs to put it in the laundry and get some cleanser. Came back upstairs only to discover that there was an extra diaper in our bed, meaning the count on the diaper bag that was already out on the porch was wrong. Broke up two cat fights and finally brought a bullied old cat in to sleep with us, remembering to move the remnants of my Valentine's Day tulips, which went around the bend while I was gone, to the top of the bookshelf so she couldn't spill the water. Got everything cleaned up, climbed into bed, got you settled and sleeping, only to remember that I'd left a container with three ounces of pumped milk in your diaper bag. Slipped out of bed carefully without waking you, dashed downstairs (where it's still freezing cold), rummaged around for the milk container only to find a bag with two wet diapers during my search, meaning that my count on the diaper bag was really wrong and I'll have to deal with that in the morning.

Got back upstairs, rearranged the blankets because it's freezing, curled up with you and started making a plan for the morning. I've got to fed cats, administer meds, get you fed, write 1500 words for the column, actually get some work done for the job that pays me, clean up for an appraisal for the mortgage refi, and fix the mailbox. I make a plan for the mailbox before going to sleep and decide I'll get a scrap of wood, a hammer and some nails from the barn, nail a piece of wood across the top of the post and just use a bungi cord to hold it in place until I can make my way through the frozen slush to do a better job. And I've got cat food ready and the stove going and three pages of notes for the column, so I finally go to sleep, feeling like I have a plan for the morning.

Until I got up today to a house that's still freezing cold, another lake in the bathroom and a barn door that's frozen so solid I couldn't even pry it open with the snow shovel. Are you really attached to your name? Would you mind terribly if we changed it and moved to Montana to start new lives?