Shopping With A Toddler - The Dressing Room

Today, I went to a clothes store, figuring I could tire out Olivia and find a few clothes for my vacation at the same time, multi-tasking at its finest. I would put her in a stroller, push her around and she could be visually stimulated while I looked for some summer tops.

As soon as I arrived, I realized it was a bad idea. As I looked at the clothes on the clearance rack I kept noticing clothes were falling off the rack that was a few feet over. One slowly went off, then another one with a little more speed and then another one.

I moved over so I could see what was messing with these clothes. As other customers have a propensity to see clothes on the floor and either walk over them or leave them there, I have the nagging sensation to pick them up and I didn't feel like dealing with some thoughtless shopper today.

I turned and looked down over by the other rack, and there was my one-year-old daughter pulling clothes off the hangers as she innocently sat in the stroller. "Um, no, don't do that," I said nicely. She turned away, slowly put her hands on another pair of hanging pants, looked back at me and slyly smiled. "No Olivia, don't do that."

Boom! She pulled the pants down and looked back, smiling. I knew there was no rationalizing with a semi-non-verbal toddler who only knows the words "do do" for doggy and "ditty" for kitty so I figured I was left to my own ingenuity to figure out how to solve the situation.

I moved the stroller over to a vantage point where she couldn't grab anything and went back to look for some summer tops. I looked back at her for some reason (call it mom's intuition that something must have been happening because she was too quiet) and there she was, standing straight up in the stroller. "No, sit down, you'll fall and get hurt." There I was again, trying to rationalize with her.

I finally found a few tops and went to the dressing room where the woman kindly told me that there weren't any dressing rooms big enough to fit a stroller inside so I could use the one at the end and leave the door open, while changing my clothes and while watching her in the stroller. I said to myself, "We're all women right?, I can watch a baby and change at the same time, right?," and since I've entered my 30's I really don't care anymore about a lot of the things I used to, so I blocked the open door with the stroller and was able to get my arm out of one sleeve until, the banging started.

Olivia was close to the door and thought it made a great noise to consistently and repetitively bang the wooden dressing room door against her stroller. I took her hand and said "No, don't do that Olivia." I tried to be have an even tone and look straight in her eyes. Where upon she slyly smiled at me again as she rested her hand on the door, and once I turned around, yes, the banging started once more. Okay, my multitasking session was not working. I was not wearing her out, but rather she was wearing me out.

I pushed the stroller out of the door, took her out and put her inside with me and then shut the door so we were both inside. "Ha ha," I said, "you're not going to get to bang on the door anymore." For which she fell to her knees and quickly crawled underneath the door. I, still in my bra, had to open the door, go outside (thank God I was still in the dressing area) and capture a fast moving toddler which was headed toward the outside of the store. I brought her back in, blocking underneath the door with my legs and then she decided to go back to banging again, only this time it was the dressing room mirror.

I thought I was losing it. I had been in the dressing room at that point for a half an hour and had only tried on two tops so I put her back in the stroller, strapped her down, and shut the door. Well actually, I kept the door cracked open an inch. I've learned you can never leave a toddler totally out of your sight.

Shopping with a toddler can never be confused with multitasking, it is more like multi-insanity.

Somehow I believe that later, I will see these as precious times instead of a stressful day. So many people say that children grow up quickly and to treasure each moment you have while they are young.

I know though, I will save this story for when she is older and she will be like any other teenager who says, "Mom, don't bring up that story again, your embarrassing me." And I will reply, "Until you have to run out of a dressing room chasing a baby in your bra, I think I have a few more times that I can remind you of the first time we went shopping together."

It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, No, It’s a Black Hairy Tongue

Ah, side effects. Every medication has a side effect, but do you ever really notice the side effects or care about them when you’re in the doctor’s office feeling like crap? And those beautiful drug commercials where the side effects are given at the end of the commercial in one of three ways: in fine print smaller than the human eye can see, told to us by some super sonic speed reader or gently flashed at the bottom of the screen while a woman in a bikini runs above to avert the commoners’ eyes.



But have you ever seen this side effect?
And no, this is NOT my tongue.

One which looks so gruesome it could be used in a midnight B movie on the Sci Fi Channel with some title like, Attack of the Killer Tongue or The Mutation Project.

On Saturday, I was prescribed penicillin for a cold and throat infection. After a few days, I finally decided to peruse the side effect sheet, you know the one that is on the medication bag and is consequently stapled shut from every angle. It stated, “Although uncommon, you may develop a black “hairy” tongue while taking this medication. This effect is harmless and usually goes away after treatment. Maintain good oral hygiene and brush your tongue with a soft toothbrush twice a day.”

“Stephane,” I yelled, “what the hell is a black hairy tongue? Quick, look at my tongue. I don’t want hair on my tongue!” I must say, I was not handling it well.

My husband grabbed the flash light and peered into my mouth. “I don’t see anything. What is it supposed to look like?”

“I don’t know,” I whined, “they call it a black hairy tongue so I guess it looks like a black hairy tongue.”

“I don’t know what a black hairy tongue is?”

“But do you see any hair on my tongue, any at all?”

“Well I don’t think so but I really don’t know what to compare it to?”

I run to the mirror in the bathroom and stick my tongue out as far as possible. After ten minutes, I concurred that I did not thankfully, have the dreaded black hairy tongue.

A week later, I am happy to report, I still do not have any kind of hair on my tongue. But it may be due to the fact that I have brushed my tongue more times than I can count - all to avoid looking like a space alien or monster from the deep. I did notice my husband hasn’t kissed me much this week. He says it’s because I have a horrible cold but I wonder?

I mean really, the sheet said it’s harmless. I shouldn’t worry - so you would think? But tell me, if your tongue turned out like the one in the picture, would you say to yourself, “Oh well, it’s completely harmless,” and then saunter off to work with your business suit and your black hairy tongue. I think not.

It may be physically harmless but nobody wants to be known as the Black Hairy Tongue Girl. Can you imagine how many of your friends would no longer let you taste any of their food because they can’t get that visual out of their mind? It's social suicide I tell you. On the other hand, it would make a great Halloween prop.

Happy Birthday Baby!

A child's first birthday. Either you host the birthday party or you are part of one at some point and they are always, always over the top. When we started to plan our daughter's first birthday party we thought it would be something small, no fancy decorations, just an easy homemade cake. Well, that's how it was supposed to be anyway.

The whole event started at The Party Store where there are rows and rows of childhood necessities to make the ultimate birthday party. You're roped in when you hear the saleswoman say, "Oh, I've seen people spend $400 on their child's first birthday party."

You look in your cart where you have one Happy Birthday Banner, the cheapest invitations you could find, and a package of balloons to blow-up.

By the time you leave, you have everything matching in a certain theme of course, whether it be Strawberry Shortcake, Winnie the Pooh, Elmo or the tons of other child themed cartoon characters that are out there. By the time we left, we had matching napkins, hats, invitations, thank you cards, two banners; one for the kitchen and the living room, tablecloths, cake candles with press on figures, first birthday bib, first birthday sippie cup, first birthday crown and the ever dreaded piñata.

All for a small family affair, that is until your mother realizes you aren't inviting Aunt so and so, or the cousin who just moved back to town that you haven't seen since you were eight, or her friend from work who would love to attend because she says, "What a cute grandchild," every time your mother flashes your daughter's picture.

We decided to have dinner at the party which included a whole other set of issues. My sister-in-law doesn't eat certain types of meat and the meat she does eat, my only sister pretty much doesn't eat. And that pretty much leaves hamburger.

So I run down the list of what we could easily make since all of my family live three hours away in South Bend and all parties have to be there otherwise, I don't think anyone would attend.

Hamburgers would be okay, but it is too cold to grill outside, there's spaghetti which is pretty much the poor man's dinner (I mean really, you don't go to a special event and eat spaghetti with Prego sauce dumped on it), meatballs which personally I have no idea how to make, lasagna which takes a long time, so that left tacos. All of the high school/college kids that would be there like them, my nephew engulfs them and voila, it has hamburger! Not much in the way of gourmet food but I figure it'll pass.

The party was going to be held at 4:30 P.M. so the plan was to go and buy the balloons and then buy the groceries. The party/balloon store was very busy and when we finally arrived at the counter to buy balloons the cashiers were ready to get the order and get us out.

"We need some balloons," I told them.

And then the questions boomed out at me, "How many, what kind, how do you want them attached, did you want to order the twelve for this much or the four for this much, what kind of weight do you want them attached to, blah, blah, blah."

Since I have never bought balloons for anything before I started asking questions. This was where it started to go wrong. There wasn't room for questioning, not with a line of ten people behind me. After the balloons were added up, the cashier overheard me saying to my husband that we have to go to the grocery store now.

"You're not going to leave these balloons in the car are you?"

"Um," I said, "I was."

"Oh no, no, no. You can't do that, they'll pop."

I made a mental note to myself to check out a book called Ballooning 101 the next time I was at the library because obviously there is some science and preanalyzing that needs to be done before you step inside a balloon store.

I thought I would start the party with a few games. I happen to love party games, most of the adult population (and older relatives) do not like party games. Me asking the guests to write down on a piece of photo safe/acid free paper "Why is Olivia special?" for the scrapbook I was going to make was probably asking a bit much. By the time we got to how many M&M's are in the jar, I pretty much lost them.

After the games, we moved on to the taco dinner. Just saying "taco dinner" sounds like I had a trailor park birthday party. It's like those charity luncheons where you pay $50 dollars and expect chicken or steak and all they have is a table long sandwich from Subway. I guess that's why I wrote appetizers and dinner will be provided on the invitations instead of get ready for a taco dinner made from a Taco Bell kit.

After dinner, Olivia blew out her candle on her Care Bear cake. As you can see by the picture, she was not fond of having her hands covered in frosting. She first thought it was neat to stick her fingers in the cake, then looked at her fingers like, "How do you get this stinky junk off my hands?" and then it escalated to, "Someone get this stuff off my hands now!"

By the time we got to the presents, the party had been rather long. My brother was yawning and people were looking pretty bored. But the main thing is that we have pictures and when she grows up, she'll see that she was loved, even at the age of one little year.

The Beverly Hillbillies of Scrap Iron

One trash day a year, our city has a free-for-all day, where citizens of an otherwise modest community group together to throw away their trash: busted television sets, broken refrigerators, rusted bicycles, stained mattresses and outdated computers – absolutely free of charge. No one garbage can maximum, no expensive yard stickers to buy, it’s a pure unadulterated garbage fest and people come out sliding, pushing, and carrying anything and everything to the curb that is both attached and unattached to their house for the next morning’s pick-up.

But here’s the clincher: before any city worker, recycle center or garbage truck can pick the stuff up the next morning it’s gone, all gone, or if you want to be exact, mostly gone.

I had heard of these zen masters of the recycle world. These phantom garbage men who slowly venture into the night when everyone is asleep, to scour the streets for trash items which can be recycled for profit, reused, or are being kept for some world’s greatest garage sale that nobody knows about. And I was bound and determined that day to see what all the commotion was about. Why did they come out when nobody was around?

Today, I knew they would be at their best because it was the one day they would be able to collect to their heart's content. They were sure to be on a regular rotation schedule, wanting to get all of the unwanted goods before the next day. I thought for sure I would be able to hear them coming, the truck shifting into high gear or at least jerking to a halt to deal with the excess junk in their trunk. But these were the Gods of garbage hunting. They knew how to swiftly drive by and collect without anyone ever noticing.

The morning started out well. My husband and I decided to first clear out the excess from the attic and upstairs. Out went an old shower door, a painting of a woodland scene on particle board that the previous owners so graciously left us, tubes from a make-shift outdoor cat cage and one bag of trash. After two hours, we decided to go down to the corner restaurant to eat breakfast and when we arrived home, the shower door was gone, snatched up in broad day light without me ever getting the chance to see who were these wanderlust collectors of well, crap.

Although I was dismayed, I was also undaunted. I told Stephane we had to put out more collectible and recyclable trash. I went to look around the house for products of value for which Stephane reminded me it's supposed to be stuff we don't want, not something we actually still use.

We decided to head out to the garage. There was an old stationary exercise bicycle, a rusty Schwinn bicycle, a garbage bag of plastic flower containers, and a bird house that leaked. And of course, plenty of those someday items which everyone stores in the garage, you know the ones that are kept there just in case someday you are in a situation where you might need them: renegade screws, plant food for the garden you never planted, lose boards, a left-handed work glove in case the mate is ever found. Yes, we got rid of it all. I had a monolithic mountain by the curb, bigger than any of garbage heaps on on the block, and I knew the truck had to be coming by soon, figuring that by some unknown ESP or hunting sense, the truck would know some irresistible treasure would be lurking in the vicinity and they would use their radar to find it.

Alas, this second round of trash Olympics was not going to be mine to win. Somewhere between walking twenty feet from the curb back to the garage, the exercise bicycle had been snatched. I went back again to the garage to tell Stephane and when we went back to the curb, the rusted Schwinn bicycle had been snatched too. That truck must have been on some super mega rotation schedule.

These people were playing hard ball and now and I had another plan in mind. I yelled back to my husband who was in the driveway, “Stephane, we need some major aluminum bait!”
We looked through the garage and there it was in the corner, almost as if it had a shining aura of godliness cast upon it, the piece de resistance - the bent aluminum tire rim from my car.

I first must admit, that with every item we hauled out, I asked the typical question that at least one person in every couple asks, “Can we use that for anything? Can it be fixed? What if we need it one day?” For which the sane person of the couple immediately replies, "no, no and no” and runs to the curb with it before the other person can think of some reason to save it. But with my bent aluminum tire rim, I was sacrificing it for an important purpose, to catch the Garbage collectors.

As I put my found treasure on the curb, I thought of how quickly the truck knew when I had put something out. There surely had to be some resident spy staged on every street, somehow being paid to look out of their window. I could just see the elderly woman down the street, the one who didn't like that we had our Christmas lights out after the snow melted, using a walkie talkie to inform Pedro or Bud, "The goods are out, the goods are out! Run and get the wheel rim from the white house!"

So I immediately looked at peoples' windows (especially hers) and glanced down both sides to see if some truck was posted at the end of the street, conveniently concealed by the trees, ready to make a quick drive by. But there was nothing.

I ran back into our house, went inside and concealed myself behind the window curtain. I was going to see what or who it was that came by and I had my camera just in case it was some ghostly garbage ghoul which plunged out of trash hell just to grab the goods.

I took a moment to stop and reflect, “What the hell was I doing? This had to be the lamest way to seek entertainment.” But then I realized most of my amusement had to come from our toddler, so by rights, I had a reason for this insanity. And then it happened, from the beginning of the street, I heard it coming. I knew it was coming. The abominable truck. There was no mistaking it, for if you looked at the picture, there is never a truck like this one parked next to you at work. It was slowly inching itself towards my shiny aluminum tire rim.

I ran out the door to take a picture of the truck, maybe to prove to myself it really did exist. If the men wondered why the crazy woman on her front lawn was taking pictures of them picking up trash, they did not seem to care. They were on a mission. I would have loved to go on their adventure, interview them for some newspaper column, "What junk is valuable? Has their truck ever turned over from too much poundage? Have they ever ran into a homeowner running out the front door with a shot gun yelling, 'Get away from my yard.'" You know, the usual questions. Just as reporters like to go on beats with cops so too, would I like to see the peril and personage these people commit to once a year.

They ended up coming around about ten more times before I finally got bored and went to take a nap. I guess they were desperate to get the best goods from a day that was almost done. After I woke up, Stephane told me that he took out the broken dryer to the curb. The man stopped again and actually called for back up for our monolithic appliance that he could probably get top dollar for and didn’t want to leave behind. I went to drop off some library books and noticed everyone who had been hauling things outside had stopped for the day and most of the items had been taken except for the real trash. I guess you can’t get any money for banana peels, dirty diapers and old coffee grounds.

So in reflection, I take my hat off to you O Beverly Hillbillies of Scrap Iron: for being the purveyors of Al Gore’s initiative, for saving unwanted stuff from certain doom in the junk yard, and for taking the time to do the hard work so you can make the money to feed your families. And if you remember the long ago show, The Beverly Hillbillies, you will see that they ended up filling their truck with junk too, hoping for a better life. (Although the truck I saw contained junk and scrap iron and apparently, the Beverly Hillbillies truck contains junk and grocery bags of Kellogg's Cornflakes. A product placement if I ever saw one.)

And somewhere near or far, I believe my prized bent aluminum tire rim is being melted into something better and its life will again be of value. So when you go to a tire store or used car lot, be on the look out for a tire rim which has an aura of Godliness shining upon it, for it just may be my treasured bait, all shiny and new because someone valued it enough to save it.

So in honor of my day of free entertainment with the hillbillies of Scrap Iron, I say a fond farewell, with a verse from the Beverly Hillbillies song:

Well now its time to say good-bye to Jed and all his kin

And they would like to thank you folks fer kindly droppin in

You're all invited back again to this locality

To have a heapin helpin of their hospitality

Hillbilly that is. Set a spell. Take your shoes off.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Dogs - The Houdinis of Food

A dog’s bed is not merely for sleeping, but a catch-all for every little conquest your dog has made for the day: your brand new shoes, a dirty wash towel from your laundry hamper, the Styrofoam container from the trash that holds the meat you buy, chicken bones and any scented wrapper, peeling or paper towel that had fallen off the counter or was conveniently left head deep in the trash container. As you can see by the picture, even if the cat ventures to take a nap in their sleeping quarters, a dog will claim him too.

Dogs' beds are their sanctuaries and they believe anything they can find in the house and cleverly put on their mat before you notice is their domain to claim – it’s dogs law.

Yesterday morning, before work, I noticed a conspicuously concealed EMPTY box of Cepacol cough lozenges located in our dog’s bed, six of them in total were missing. Knowing that medication can be poisonous to animals, I did what any woman would naturally do in this type of situation, I called my husband.

He of course, had no idea if it would cause any harm, after all he reminded me that he isn’t a pharmacist, a vet and never worked for poison control. He did say that since Cepacol is a numbing agent for the throat, our dog wouldn’t be able to feel her mouth for several hours.

He told me to call a vet, which was an obvious answer, but still, aren't husbands supposed to know everything? How to repair a drain leak, how to install wood floors, how many tablespoons of flour are in a cup, how to drive to a place three states over, how to disinfect a dog after she was sprayed by a skunk and how to program the DVD player? (Okay, maybe not, and maybe not any of the things I just typed either.)

The first vet said to call poison control and there would be a $50 dollar charge. So far we have shelled out countless amounts of money for our pets, the emergency room visit when our little cat, Chewie, sat down near a lit candle and suddenly poof, his tail was smoking, which is just one in many, many incidents. So I called another vet who kindly told me that Cepacol shouldn't be poisonous, but to watch and make sure the dog isn’t lethargic and doesn't throw-up.

So I go outside to get our two dogs after their potty break and luckily, Daisy, our dog, doesn’t seem lethargic. She is doing her usual thing, sitting at the bottom of a large tree, waiting for a squirrel to venture down so she can chase it and humor herself into thinking she's going to be able to catch it. After five years here, and no squirrel caught, you would think she would give up but I guess it all has to do with the thrill of the chase. (She wouldn't know what to do with it anyway if she caught it.)

I was pretty happy that she was okay until I saw the three big white spots on the back porch. I freaked out; my dog must be throwing up or worse, foaming at the mouth. After inspecting what appeared to be throw-up and looking for half-digested throat lozenges, I soon realized I was looking through residual snow. Not one of my finest moments.

The moral of this story: don't leave anything anywhere that your dog can root through (like the trash), sniff around and grab (like something on your bedside table), nothing on the counter they can slide off with their tongue (I found our big dog licking the steaks in the frying pan once and yes, we did throw them away), don't let your dogs have access to your cat's or rabbit's food (I have found countless Collard greens in the dog's bed because they "think" they like it, they know they want it, but after chewing it, they realize they aren't too enthused about it, yet still they want it near their dog bed for ownership purposes), and never ever leave a tuna fish can (empty or totally sealed shut) anywhere in the vicinity because they will bite through the steel for their absolute favorite – tuna fish. Believe me, the can will be chewed up and licked clean. (They even like it more than chocolate, the absolute food they can't eat, but they'll try everytime.)

So the next time you find something missing, scamper over to your dog’s bed and if it’s not there, it’s probably in their next best hiding place – their stomach.

Never a Boring Moment at the Library

Okay, this isn't one of my better life lessons. But it will teach you all to be leery of the library and to certainly bring a Glade scented spray can with you. I wonder if that would be flammable around a fireplace?

As many of you know, I took a much needed break for part of the week from work. Since my sister is watching Olivia (my daughter), Stephane (my husband) and I decided to go to the library for the first time since Olivia was born. We went to sit in the quiet room, an ultra modern enclosed room with plenty of seats and four fireplaces, all to create the perfect ambiance for reading a great book. I was ready for a long hour of silence: no baby crying, no dogs barking, no dishes to be done. The perfect atmosphere.

As we sat down in two vacant chairs, Stephane announced that he had to go to the bathroom.

"But I don't have a book yet to read," I told him. I didn't want to just sit there looking at the two other people in the room on a Sunday afternoon.

"There is a book on one of those fireplaces," he said and turned around and left.

"Well at least there is something to read," I told myself, never liking to be without a book if I have nothing to do.

I went to pick the book up and was able to get to the second sentence until I realized I had no idea what I was reading. It was called Exercises in Electrical and Magnetic Measurement. I put that book down faster than I found it. I looked around and found Stephane's work notebook near his coat. Maybe I could find something illicit and not for me to see in it. For the next fifteen minutes, I read notes and entries regarding computer programs. I've never been so bored in my life.

After Stephane came back twenty minutes later I went to get some books and came back. The fireplace was going full blast, which made it extremely hot. I pushed my chair back, further back, and then further back again, until I was sitting right next to a man who I presumed was homeless based on his fashion sense and well, he was sleeping.

Now I first encountered snoring from our dog Emmy, then Stephane when he's tired, then Olivia when she has a cold. It's a regular musical production at night in our bedroom and now I went all the way to the library to hear the homeless man snore. Not the quiet, even tempered snoring that could possibly go with the crackling of the fireplace and the slow cascade of water from the Zen fountain in the corner, but the deep guttural snoring where occasionally one gets tripped up in their breathing, coughs something up, looks up for a moment wondering where they are and then hunkers down in their chair again, dead asleep and snoring once more.

I look around to see if anyone else found it funny that this man is snoring in the "quiet room" where the silence is deafening. Stephane looks at me, notices it for a brief moment and then goes back to reading his book. Finally, I'm into the whole rhythm of the snoring, the Zen fountain and the fireplace, combining them until they all cancel each other out, until suddenly a bang erupts and I look at Stephane to ask him what it was. Stephane looks at me and whispers, "I think he just tooted."

Oh the joys of communal places.

Everything else went well. There were only two other incidents that happened. I went to walk three dogs in the freezing weather and they ended up all getting wrapped around a telephone pole. It took 15 minutes weaving three leashes in and out until finally the dogs (and me) weren't all attached to the pole anymore. The other thing that happened was that we heard this loud boom one night. We had thought one of our pets knocked something over until around midnight, I yelled from the bathroom, "Stephane, the bathroom ceiling fell in!" (And yes, it really did.) So besides those three things, everything else went quite well.