Had a bit of a meltdown this evening over a rubber ducky. Yep, Ernie’s best damn friend got the best of me. I usually think they’re great — in fact, we have a whole song about a pirate ducky that I made up for z-baby — but not tonight.
Sig-o is working a double shift today and I knew it wouldn’t be an easy day. So I planned ahead and scheduled time outside of the house to go walking to get a change of scenery and let the world entertain z-baby for while. Things were going fine. Then my suegra called (mother-in-law). Just to check on me. So I told her the truth. “You know, it’s a bad day, but we’re at the mall walking since it’s raining and that helps some.” So she and my sister-in-law invited me to dinner, which was very nice and a welcome reprieve. I let them fight over who got to hold the baby and who got to hold him down in the high chair while I munched away. I didn’t feel like being alone at the house so I invited them over…but they didn’t come. Now, usually I would think I’d narrowly escaped a natural disaster, but I really did want them to come over tonight. So I got in my car with a screaming baby who finally fell asleep three blocks from the house.
Z-baby had been breathing heavy all day so I surmised that he must have a massive boogie up his nose and decided to give him a steam bath to try and loosen up the monster boog. We headed into the bathroom and I let the water start to warm up and then I realized that the fireman ducky that supposedly protects the baby’s head from faucet doom had to come off to pull up the thingy to turn the shower on. This is a forever annoying task, but not a hard one. So I don’t know what came over that f’ing duck but he would NOT come off. I started pulling and twisting until I actually turned the faucet head and then I just started yanking as I cussed a blue streak at the poor guy (the ducky, not the baby, who was across the way in the bathroom playing with a flash drive he confiscated earlier in the day). My dog just stood there looking at me with her ears up and head cocked, like she wasn’t sure what had gotten into me or where this was going. I stopped just short of yanking the whole thing out of the wall because I realized that would really send me over the edge. I thought about calling sig-o and asking him to come home early, that I give up and need some help. But just then the little pecker popped off the faucet and all was well. We finished our steam bath, and I felt a small sense of accomplishment since I gave the baby some kind of bath and could truthfully answer “yes” when tomorrow sig-o asks me if he got a bath last night. Guess that’s cheating, but who cares. Only the baby, the dog, and that f’ing duck know the real truth.
The Vaca Loca 