Caution: Bird Lime Ahead

We mothers are saints. I’ve always suspected this but at no time is this more apparent than when we are sentenced to a week at home, sucking up to a cranky, peevish, ailing child.

Every once in a while, the bad-luck bird flies by and drops some whitewash on you (usually when you’ve got a rigid, NASA-worthy and meticulously-laid out weekly agenda), and you my friend are now one of thousands of saints waiting hand and foot on their irksome, capricious offspring.

The last few days were my turn in the crosshairs. Here’s how the week, henceforth known as Dante’s Tenth Circle of Hell, went down.

Monday started out pretty much the same as any old lame Monday does, with me running around trying to hustle kids out the door, while Cupcake did her best impersonation of an Australian tree sloth and Beefcake went through his typical fusspot despot routine.

After dropping Cupcake off at school, Beefcake and I went to the gym, where I had what would turn out to be my last encounter with sane beings for the next few days.

[Birds, several of them, dive-bombing, aiming for my hair] As I pick him up from Kids’ Club I see he’s got a raging fever. I quickly whisk him away so the bored, overly-made-up-for-Kids Club teenagers in charge of the little nut jobs don’t notice that he is pretty sick and had no business being there in the first place.

Faster than shit off a shovel, my sweet, even-tempered, tender-hearted boy turned into Dr. Evil’s Mini-Me. I could have reached for the moon, broken off a piece and handed it to the little ungrateful twit and he would have stomped his pudgy little feet and demanded more.

“I want juice!” (At your service, my sweet handsome boy…) “This juice has turned bad! It tastes terrible!”

“Mommy I want some milk.” (OK, sweet punum.) “Yuck, this milk is disgusting. Why are you giving it to me?!”

Ah you little fucker… I see where this is going.

“Mommy, I’m hungry, can I have a Nutella sandwich…” Here you go sweets…”What is this?? I didn’t want a sandwich!”

Are you following what’s happening here? I’ve never been through something like this. This kid was making me want to strangle him—and he was my own freaking spawn!

Let me add that this insanity is going on because Beefcake r-e-f-u-s-e-s any medication whenever he’s sick, medication that will alleviate his symptoms and allow him to eat or drink something.

By now I am panicking as I am mentally canceling all workouts and plans for the week: Tuesday lunches, Wednesday play dates, Thursday meetings, and (GASP) the Friday outing at the Belly UP with my girlfriends who not coincidentally are my best drinking pals.

[Mayday! A flock of seagulls!] The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came on Wednesday when this godforsaken virus worms its bacteriophagic self into poor little me. Now I am the one going batty thanks to my microscopic bodily intruder.

But more than crazy, I’m now pissed and wallowing in self pity as in poor me, why me... Which of course, is such a load of crap because really, the kid and I just got sick, right? It happens! Kid gets it, momma gets it, everyone gets it…

Well. It’s not just that Beefcake and I were sick. This was the second or third time we’ve gotten sick in two months. And this was the craziest week of the new year so far. I had places to go to and things to do. I had to set up this blog which was already making me rip my hair out. I had another child who is mostly reasonable but prone to head-spinning when she feels she’s not getting the attention she deserves. I had… I had… I had…

“Mom can we got to Applebee’s?” (Grrrrrr…)

Oh, I also have a husband, an amazing, compassionate, loving, husband but a husband who, like most Dudes, breezes in merrily at the end of the day, without encumbrances, and leaves me again at the ass crack of dawn so I can wrestle with Damian for yet another interminable 12 hours.

Beefcake’s incessant demands grew exponentially more unreasonable. He screamed in a language I could not understand, accused me of waking him up, making him cold, covering him with blankets, not answering him quickly enough… his attitude was enough to make me want to kick his ass into tomorrow, to hell with the fact that he had a fever.

Another reason I was so out of my mind was the fact I couldn’t go to my beloved spin classes. I was just sitting here watching my muscles atrophy and my ass expand by the hour, while I’m being held hostage by this raging puny-zilla and his teeming Petri-dish of a body. Still, as I staunched the constant drip-drip of my own nostrils, I would gaze at him in his fitful sleep and worry over his stubborn temperature.

A doctor’s visit confirmed that indeed my little mama’s boy has a raging ear infection. As for me, I have a “retracted” ear drum with some bleeding behind it. OK, now I’m feeling a lot more sympathetic toward my little stud muffin.

We are now on antibiotics, praying that tomorrow will bring him relief and a more reasonable outlook.

“Mom, I want some spaghetti and meatballs…”

Ah, my Thing One and Thing Two, how much joy you’ve brought to me and how much you truly, truly, have taught me the meaning of the phrase “One of these days…one of these days…POW!! Straight to the moon!!”