Plan A – Last Wednesday

Get up, pack the car, meet a friend for lunch (haven’t seen her in 13 years, she lives in San Fran but was in state seeing relatives), get on the road for Mimi’s house (my mom).

The reality (take a deep breath and read without taking a new breath, that is what the morning felt like.)

Get up, start packing the car, get Alex dressed, Alex has a diaper blowout, strip him down, run laundry, can’t find one of his shoes, search house for shoe, get ready to put laundry in dryer, discover contents of blowout diaper have merely redistributed onto entire load of pseudo clean clothes, reboot laundry, still can’t find shoe, leave house for lunch.

Have a great lunch with friend, chalk up one more thing in the “go to BlogHer” column (remember, friend lives in San Fran.)

My mom calls during lunch, I check message on the way home, my great uncle has died, bring dress clothes, rearrange plans for what day we do what while at home, return home, grab dress clothes for Scout, Alex and I, still can’t find second shoe, pack first shoe just in case second shoe is already packed, load up cat, get in car, start driving.

Stop twice to nurse Alex in various parking lots, flash a trucker accidentally, Alex is the definition of awesome on this drive. Stop for dinner, food is so mediocre that even Alex will not eat it. Keep driving. Switch drivers, it starts to rain, Alex is sleeping, the cat is meowing for the first time in 9 hours, we are 30 minutes from home, let cat out, open litter box, cat takes a dump [ed: why do you “take a dump” and “give a shit”?], cat walks on Alex, wakes him up, but he’s so happy to have kitty so close that he just tries to hug kitty. Kitty wanders around car, Scout closes litter box cuz cat dump stinks, kitty sits in back window blocking my view, kitty comes and sits on my shoulder while I’m driving in the dark in the rain, kitty puts claws in shoulder, kitty gets thrown off shoulder, kitty meows more, we hear PSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHSSSSSSHHHHHing sound from backseat.

omfw.

The cat has pissed all over our dress clothes. 20 minutes from home. The cat has pissed all over our dress clothes.

I pull off on an exit, throw the cat back in her box, drive home, arrive 11pm, go straight to washing machine to do laundry – everything is washable save for the sport coat. Alex and Tavish wander house, Alex meets his new best friend Graham Cracker and we all collapse in bed, where Alex then nurses all night as payback for sitting in the car all day (which is exactly what I expected.)

Thursday was thankfully a quiet day, we went to the local frame store to get the “approximately a shitload” of pictures/miscellany dropped off for framing to pick up in March when we are back. Alex slept through the process and the day was a nice blur of doing not a whole lot.

Oh. Other than discovering that my mother has taken her whole anti housework thing to a whole new level. My grandma/her mom was a fanatic about keeping a clean house and mom has always tried to go the other way, well at this point her dust has turned to dirt and Alex’s socks were quickly grody dirty from the floors. There’s dirt on the curtains, on the ceiling fan… I had to use a layer of Scrubbing Bubbles on the spare bathroom because the toilet was way too peed on from when my uncle lived there in the spring after he burned down his apartment (smoking cigarettes and oxygen tanks don’t mix mmkay?) The porch still isn’t fixed from when the tree plowed into it 5 years ago, there’s a couple of water stains on the ceiling she hadn’t noticed and the windows really need to be caulked. We’re thinking the house might just fall down around her, and Scout would call Merry Maids but he’s afraid they would run away in fear. Mom’s attention to detail is still in place, we know this because she made Alex two completely kickass appliqued books (photos later – she can show all of us up on “Showin’ off on Saturday” some week). So the parent who we generally consider to be the stable one has now upped the eccentric rating to approximately an 11.

At least I’m inspired to clean my house now. Scout would call this a good thing.