I was told, upon accepting the job in the Lunch Room, that watching the television show “Prison Break” is mandatory for employment. It seems the Lunch Ladies like the Prison Break Guys a lot and that is fine. They were just trying to include me in their inner circle.

The problem is that I have not had the chance to watch even one episode, and while my employment is certainly not jeopardized by my inability to tune in, I cannot help but feel that I am letting the team down.

While dining with my new co-workers this week, I was asked again if I had watched the current episode. Now… when asked the same question the previous two weeks I was not suffering from the hellish reality of PMS. I was not experiencing the insanity of bi-polar mood swings on a minute-by-minute basis. A normal person would have responded, “Oh, shoot! I missed it!” or “Gosh, I was attending Homecoming festivities and completely forgot.” Yesterday’s response was altogether different:

“I’ll watch it if you want to pay me my hourly wage to do so.”

OMG. What just happened? Was I just thinking that or did I say it aloud?

Head Lunch Lady stared at me and blinked. Twice.

Oh yeah. I said it aloud.

This is a prime example of My Ovaries Made Me Do It. Words, once spoken, cannot be taken back no matter how many times you repeat in your head “I didn’t just say that. I didn’t just say that. I didn’t just say that!”

In addition, as long as I’m confessing my embarrassing moments of this week…here’s a morsel of wisdom I’d like to pass along.

If ever you are at work and find yourself in a circumstance where you need to pass gas fart fluff in a situation where you have no ability to remove yourself from your surroundings, may I suggest that you not try to spare co-workers the unpleasantries by doing it in a walk-in freezer.

Sound is not all that carries great distances in subzero temperatures.

We lived in our home for three years with subflooring and it was all my fault.

In the year 2001, I had three children in cloth diapers. I know that no one wants to hear yet another mom complain about diapers in a blog but stick with me.

During this season in my life, I was potty training a person whom I shall not name because it might embarrass her to realize this horrific event began with her. (The name starts with an E and ends with a Y and there are a couple of L’s in the middle).

Potty training a child who uses cloth diapers is very different than the typical Pampered Kid. You see, the child can easily pull down the cloth diaper and step out of it when necessary. On this day, E**Y found it necessary to wake me from a deep slumber to say “Momma, me needs a new diaper. Me pooped.” I sat up in bed being careful not to wake the sleeping baby next to me and sat up in a daze. I slipped my pink fuzzy slippers on my feet and headed to the kitchen to start coffee because really, coffee ALWAYS comes first.

While I had become rather immune to the scent of my child’s poo, I realized, in the kitchen, that something was not right. The odor followed me from the bedroom, across the living room, dining room and into the kitchen and I thought to myself “Oh boy…maybe the coffee should wait. This is BAD.” I turned around to head back to the bedroom to fetch a new diaper and that’s when I discovered that I had somehow STEPPED my slippered foot into the messy, abandoned diaper and tracked my child’s poo all over the carpet. I also discovered that I do not have a Super Model’s long stride. It looked like Morticia from the Adams Family had passed through my house in her oh-so-small steps.

By this time the smell was lingering in the air like smoke from a bon fire on a windless night. It must have awakened the other children, too, because one by one each child approached me with this statement: “Mom! Something smells!”

Duh.

I warned them not to follow in their mother’s footsteps and quickly diapered E**y trying to form a game plan for the hazardous waste clean up. No sooner had I freshened E**y up, I heard a splash from the kitchen. It was the unmistakable sound of someone vomiting and I knew right away that it was Logan, aka Mr. Bad Smells Make Me Gag.

Something inside me snapped and everything faded, including the declarations from the other kids that we needed a clean up in aisle three. It was like my mind began to see everything in a nightmarish soap opera dream sequence.

“Mommm…Log-annn jusssst thrrrrrew upppp”

“Ewww. Thaaaat issss grosssss”

“Myyyy stommachhhh doessssn’t feeeeel soooo goooood”

Whoa. That last statement snapped me back into reality. The last thing I needed was one more puddle to clean up.

“Everyone to your rooms. NOW!”

When something traumatic occurs in the human mind, there is a fight or flight instinct which takes place in a primal, primitive way. I grabbed the phone and headed for the door, counted to ten and dialed.

“Hello”

“Kirsten! I stepped in my child’s shit and tracked it all over the house. Logan threw up in the kitchen because of the smell and I’m calling to tell you that I’m running away from home. My children are going to be raised without a mother now and I’m only calling you so that you can send someone over since they really shouldn’t be alone in this Typhoid Mary home.”

“Okay…explain to me what happened”

So I did.

Kirsten calmed me down enough to make me realize that leaving my children motherless wasn’t the best solution. And that’s when I saw it. It was a green and black solution laying on my husband’s tool bench: A Box Cutter.

I knew what I had to do.

“Kirsten. I’m going to be okay now. Thank you for helping me. I have to go.”

I grabbed the box cutter and reentered my house with a new found strength. I was going to remove the bacteria laden carpet on my own.

So I cleaned up the vomit and sent my children outside. I didn’t want them to witness the destruction of the place they call home. Then, for some reason, I dialed Darren’s work number.

After explaining the whole story I said “Darren, I’m cutting out the carpet. It’s going bye bye. I can’t take it any more.”

“Neen! Don’t!! I’ll be home soon. I’m leaving now!”

“It’s too late Darren. Listen.”

He listened helplessly and heard the unmistakable sound of a dull blade ripping through carpet. I hung up before he had a chance to speak.

***********
Looking back I realize that I did what seemed logical at the time. However, I freely admit that I didn’t think past the point of removing the carpet. We had no “new carpet fund”. We weren’t expecting a windfall on our doorstep. In fact, I lived with plywood subflooring for three years before being able to afford new floorcovering.

Darren chose ceramic tile

When I was about eleven years old I asked my mom if I could wallpaper a hallway in our home. For some reason, which has completely disappeared with age, I enjoyed the process of measuring spaces and places to determine things like “How much wallpaper will I need to cover the walls?” My mom talked it over with my dad and I vividly remember hearing him say the words “I think she’s too young for a project like that.” Those were magical words to me. Tell me I can’t do something and I will make it my life mission to prove you wrong.

Mom let me begin the project and I did a splendid job. For an eleven year old.

My mother, in particular, always makes me feel like I can do anything I set my mind to. She taught me from a very young age that I was capable. What a gift to be given! This is why I was able to teach myself to milk goats, make homemade soap, homeschool seven children and basically to bloom where I am planted. I know people who are filled with self doubt over little things and it baffles me.

On the other hand, I’ve got quite the rebellious streak in me. There have been times in my life where, while going through difficulty, I’ve chosen the hard path because I was certain I could handle it on my own without seeking God or the wisdom of good friends. Looking back at those times I think of the poem “Footprints in the Sand”:

One night I had a dream–I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the
Lord and across the sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene I noticed
two sets of footprints, one belonged to me and the other to the Lord. When the
last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the
sand. I noticed that many times along the path of my life, there was only one set
of footprints. I also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest
times in my life. This really bothered me and I questioned the Lord about it.
“Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you, you would walk with me all the
way, but I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life there is
only one set of footprints. “I don’t understand why in times when I needed you
most, you should leave me.” The Lord replied, “My precious, precious child, I love
you and I would never, never leave you during your times of trial and suffering.
“When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

My version would end with the words:

“My precious, precious child, I love you and I would never, never leave you
during your times of trial and suffering. When you saw only one set of
footprints, it was then that I dragged you along kicking and screaming.”

I’m pretty sure God’s car has a bumpersticker which says “Big Redheaded, Know-It-All Baby On Board”

“OH NOOOOO!!! WHAT A [bleeping] IDIOT! HE FUMBLED THE BALL AND THEY WOULD HAVE HAD THE GAME IF THEY WOULD HAVE JUST LET THE CLOCK RUN OUT!!!”

This outburst was followed by the crashing of a laundry basket onto the floor and what sounded to me like a combination of fingernails on a chalkboard and an 18-wheeler locking up its brakes. There is a technical name for the sound: The Man Cry.

I have only heard the Man Cry during sporting events and deer hunting season. I’ve not heard it in the delivery room as our children were born, nor have I heard it when serving Darren’s most favorite meal. I have not even heard it in the bedroom. Apparently there’s nothing I can do to elicit this response.

It seems to me that the Man Cry is made when a male is overwhelmed with either grief or joy, usually because of another male’s actions during a GAME. The Man Cry is most often followed by a physical outburst of some fashion. Today’s casualty was the basket of folded towels.

Men think women are impossible to understand.

Ha!

I will never comprehend Hemotions.

When is the last time you heard a woman staring at the television yelling at the top of her lungs:

“OPRAH! NOOOOOOO! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING PAIRING THAT BLOUSE WITH THOSE PANTS??? WHAT ARE YOU?? A FREAKING IDIOT!”

[Crashing of a vase to the floor]

Shemotions are much quieter. Shemotions are far less likely to cause the unfolding of folded towels or the deafening of ears. Females don’t waste their breath in short, powerful outbursts. We like to drag it out for long periods of time.

I know opposites attract and that male and female complement each other in the obvious ways…but really…did God ever consider Sunday afternoons when pairing us together?

She was seven pounds, fourteen ounces when she was born. She was a beautiful baby, content and cheerful most of the time. When Kevin was born, Kait took immediate ownership of him and nurtured him with patience and kindness, always including her toddling brother in her adventures.

When Kait was five she was determined to have her own cable television show where she would read to all the children “in the world”. We would practice together with one of those video cameras which held a full size VHS cassette tape. For hours I would record her reading stacks of books while Kevin, twenty six months younger, would jump up and down in the background “ruining her perfect take” of “The Cat in the Hat”. Despite her frustration she never was mean to him.

During my multiple pregnancies, some of which I spent on complete bedrest, Kait would take over the laundry or bring me meals of sandwiches and ice cold milk “for the new baby” growing inside me. The love for her family was not just in words, but actions.

Kait is a self motivated learner. If she wasn’t out brushing her horse, she had her nose stuck in a book. When I bought a year’s worth of curriculum, she had it completed in four or five months. I just couldn’t keep up with the child.

Then she started public school and I had no doubt she would make fast friends with the other students. I only worried that she would find children equally mature as she was to spend time with. Her teachers loved her. Parent teacher conferences were always a joy.

Kait got her license last year and then her first job working as a receptionist in a hair salon. Everyone there loved her, too. Now she’s employed at a bank closer to home and enjoying her last year of high school.

I conceived Kait after praying for God to bless me with a child. I had no idea just how blessed I would be. We just received her senior pictures today and I’m overwhelmed with the emotion of knowing that she will soon be an adult. I look at her now and I know that I’ve done a good job raising her. She is my proudest accomplishment. Now I pray that God will bless me with the ability to let go and stand back as she implements what she’s been taught in the time spent with us.

I’m also going to buy stock in Kleenex tissue.