Misadventures in pet sitting

Animal sitting is not cut out for just anyone. There are two qualifications that absolutely must be met: (1) the potential critter sitter must be a wonderful, generous person; and (2) said sitter has no plans to leave town for a while. A third prerequisite is that this person has to be a die-hard lover of animals, but that is more of a guideline than a hard-wired rule.

Seeing as how I fulfilled the first two requirements, I recently got stuck with quadruple animal duties.

First, my friend, Michele, was heading down to the Keys for the 4^th of July weekend and needed my help with her rabbit, Twitch, and teacup pot-bellied pig, Chops. “Teacup” is a relative term when dealing with swine, because this sucker is close to 60 pounds. I gave Chops and Twitch evening feedings at her house because a pig in my backyard was not going to fly with my husband or our dog.

Then, my sister, Meredith, left for a week’s stay in Miami on the Friday before Independence Day. I had to check her mail and make sure her cat didn’t dehydrate or starve. Cats are so easy, really. I’d have a cat myself if I weren’t highly allergic to them.

Lucky for me, her Shepard-mix canine, Haze, was going to enjoy a visit with a friend of Meredith’s who has two other pooches. I was set up as “Plan B” in case Haze didn’t jive with those other dogs. Little did we know the nefarious plot that was being hatched inside the intestinal tract of this mongrel.

Meredith left on a Friday and Haze made it all the way to Wednesday before the nastiness occurred. My belief is that the dog ate something that totally disagreed with her internal constitution, because on Tuesday night, she managed to come down with a case of explosive diarrhea.

Shepard-sized feces is bad enough all on its own, but the fact that Meredith’s friend has white carpet and white furniture just added to it. Haze’s homage to Jackson Pollock was inadvertently tracked from the contamination zone throughout the rest of the house which resulted in a midnight steam cleaning.

Wednesday morning, I picked up Haze, who still looked guilty, and transported her to my own backyard thinking the worst that could happen would be a little extra fertilizer for my dying grass.

Never challenge Fate when it comes to things having the capability of rapid deterioration.

My family loves to cool off in our 12 foot vinyl pool. Apparently, Haze saw our poor pool as a giant chew toy because that is exactly what she did to it on Wednesday evening. She also shredded a water noodle, but we weren’t sentimentally attached to that particular item.

I glared at Haze with murder in my eyes and told her that I hoped she was happy. She cocked her head to the side with that look dogs give when they’re playing dumb. Our own dog acted like she was above that type of juvenile canine shenanigans.

As for Michele’s beasts, Chops has an affinity for using his pool as a toilet and Twitch managed to escape her cage. My kids and I had to corral and catch her which was pretty hard to do considering how out of shape I am. My son found it hysterical watching me lumber around Michele’s backyard.

I finished my critter sitter sentence on Friday morning when I happily placed Haze in my sister’s living room. Haze and the cat were in the midst of an emotional reunion when I locked the dead bolt and drove away. I’m going to try and fill up my schedule a little better next year.

It’s a backyard boy’s life

My sister-in-law, Ali Lomneck, has been having some trouble with loud barking coming from the backyards of two separate neighbors. As one might expect, a canine is responsible for some of the noise, but, surprisingly, a young boy is the source of the other bark.

I found this amusing because it reminded me of my own son barking at our neighbors when we first moved into our house. He was around 4 years old at the time and our neighbors had two sons: one was my son’s age and the other was a few years older. Needless to say, he was never invited over to play at their house.

Of course, neighbors are not what they used to be. I remember knowing everyone on my street as well as the adjoining roads when I was a kid. If I were a paranoid person, I would think that, these days, people must be hiding some secret life behind their bolted doors like drug trafficking or Russian espionage, but I digress.

I had a fear that my son was going to turn into “the weird kid.” The barking was one thing, but he also exhibited an array of other questionable behaviors like shoving Fruit Loops up his nose.

The first sport he played was soccer which, as any soccer parent will tell you, is like watching a cluster of stampeding kids run up and down the field accidentally kicking each other’s shins rather than the soccer ball because they are so closely packed together.

My son was rarely ever running with the pack. Chances were you’d spy him twirling around a goal post or staring up into the sky in search of rainbows and butterflies. If he wasn’t doing that, he was giving his shirt intense quality stretch checks by repeatedly pulling it down over his knees.

This was all very difficult for my husband to tolerate. He would watch helplessly at the abundance of athletic potential being wasted on tomfoolery in the dew-covered grass during those unbearably muggy Saturday mornings.

I thought basketball would be a better fit, but that turned into an outlet for him to demonstrate his love of raw, untrained ballet moves. Any time the ball went out of bounds, he’d scramble over to the referee so he could throw the ball back in the game, but not to his team; instead, he’d catapult the ball over their heads and into the hands of the opposing team.

I should have known he was different when, at around 18 months, I caught him raiding the fridge. He wasn’t looking for cheese or grapes, but did manage to locate a stick of butter and shove it in his mouth before I could wrestle it out of his hands. Why waste time with the bread when all you really want is the spread? Take my word for it: butter is very hard to snatch out of someone’s hands.

My boy is now almost 11 and anxiously awaiting the onset of puberty so he can focus all his attention on girls who are, unfortunately, already seeking his attention. If you ask, he’ll tell you a shockingly long list of “girlfriends” he’s had since the 1^st grade. He’s quite adorable (all bias aside) and is one of the tallest boys in his school, so I suppose it is only natural that the girls have taken notice.

Even though he’s in a hurry to grow up, he still likes to cuddle with his mom, but, at his size, having him plop down on my lap is kind of like having an enthusiastic Labrador jump on my abdomen. I try to tolerate it as long as possible, but I eventually have to breathe. Sometimes, it is worth the lack of oxygen.

Lateral violence: immaturity in the workplace

On Wednesday, June 15, something wonderful is going to happen at South Florida Community College: a new crop of Registered Nurses will be getting pinned. I’m excited because my sister, Meredith Eastham, as well as some friends, like Amy Wuthrich, will be included in this prestigious group.

I know myself well enough to prepare for this ceremony by bringing a plentiful supply of tissues (me being the absolute cry baby that I am).

I just filled my purse with tissues this past Wednesday because my daughter was “graduating” Pre-K and I knew, as soon as I saw her in that miniature cap and gown, the waterworks would commence, but my angel spared me any emotional embarrassment when she got onstage and began repeatedly smacking a little boy in the face until my husband finally made her stop. It is hard to cry when you see your child acting like a little bully.

This brings me to a topic that seems to be the open secret of the nursing world: lateral violence. It can take many forms including verbal or physical abuse as well as persistent gossiping about a coworker. There is even a saying, “Nurses eat their young,” which is well known in the medical community. 

When I first heard that lateral violence was an issue, I thought of the 7 years I spent at a subcontractor’s office. I remember training a woman who was going to replace me while I was out for maternity leave. She broke into tears when someone was a little rude to her. Though I thought she’d be great for the job, I told her if her feelings were hurt by something like that, then it would only get worse from there. She left that day never to be seen again and 14 more people flowed through that position until I finally returned.

I have a theory about workplace bullying that is eerily similar to my views on prison life: take out the biggest jerk on the first day to earn their respect and no one will bother you again. If you can’t take them out, then become their friend.

For some reason, I’m naturally pulled towards “assertive” individuals. There is an honesty about them that I can’t resist. For instance, you never have to worry about walking around with lettuce in your teeth because these people have no compunction about letting you know. I appreciate nice people too, but if they are too nice, you can forget about putting them in charge of the office and you can never trust their opinion on clothing.

This brings me back to my sister.

I’m not worried about her having an issue with lateral violence because, as the older sister, I have trained her well throughout her life in preparation for the possibility of workplace bullying. I may not have realized it while I was crushing her spirit when she was younger, but I now know that she has me to thank for her toughness. I’ll go ahead and say a preemptive “You’re welcome” in case she is too overcome with emotion to thank me herself.

Though I can still make her cry at will, my sister is one of the strongest people I know. She has had 2 years of personal adversity and overwhelming disappointment to overcome in addition to attending nursing school. She is a survivor; an inspiration.

I love you, Meredith. Congratulations to you and the rest of SFCC’s 2011 graduate nurses for completing such a challenging endeavor. You’re all on your way to better days.

If some mean nurse tries to figuratively eat any of you, be sure to make them choke on the way down!

There really is no place like home

Every now and then, I let my imagination wander and begin fantasizing about living in a big city like New York or Seattle. I’d own a luxury condo furnished in a modern, minimalist style with huge, glass windows overlooking whichever sprawling metropolis and its appropriate natural background.

The part of my brain responsible for reason knows I’ll never pull this off without buckets of cash at my disposal and way more patience than I currently possess; especially when it comes to my little road rage issue.

Thanks to my husband’s hard work and determination along with the generosity of Southeast Toyota and their annual banquet honoring their top sales people, once a year, he and I get to live the high life for a few days.

The latest trip was to Miami’s South Beach where we spent 3 days and 2 nights in a hotel room complete with a view of the beautiful Atlantic shoreline. We would never spend our own money on something so lavish. In fact, any time we get a big chunk of cash, it gets funneled away towards paying bills.

On the long trip South, I was happy as a clam to drive until the stop-and-go traffic of the major roadways conspired to push me over the edge, but the fact that aggressive Miami drivers cut in front of me without bothering to signal with their blinkers really fired up my anger center.

I think car companies should be applauded for placing the blinker switch so ergonomically that you don’t even have to take your hands off the steering wheel to engage the device. Rethink the blinker: it is safe, convenient, and may stop crazed motorists from following you home.

Another thing I don’t think I could overcome with Miami is my sense of sticker shock. A daiquiri sounded like a good idea until I discovered the price of said drink was 15 dollars! It didn’t even come in a carved coconut or fancy glass either; just a 12 ounce plastic cup of overpriced frozen beverage.

Hitting the beach on our second day, I was under the impression that the hotel provided those comfortable-looking lounge chairs and shady umbrellas, but I was wrong. It seems that another company rents out these commodities: 10 bucks a piece for the chairs and 15 bucks for the umbrella. Since my blanket was tucked under my arm at the cost of free, we decided those chairs were too shabby for the asking price and continued on our way to the sparkling, blue ocean.

We saw some adventurers on jet skis and parasails and thought we’d peek at the cost. If it was reasonable, why not splurge a little?

The jet skis rented at 80 dollars for a half hour! At that price, I want a dolphin escort to an island of gold. Parasailing was double that cost. I figured that I could drive around Miami and get the same sinking feeling in my stomach for the bargain price of a few gallons of gas.

Ultimately, the beach was relaxing until the clear water revealed to my husband a UFO (unidentified floating object).

Another deterrent keeping me from being a Miami resident is that, when you drive through the regular, non-gated neighborhoods, there are bars on all the windows. I can’t comprehend waking up each day to the morning sun casting jail-bar shadows across the floor, even if I imagined myself as the warden.

All in all, the hotel was above par and the people we met were wonderful. My final rating for Miami’s South Beach is: nice place to visit, but couldn’t afford to stay longer than a couple of days. Thank heavens we didn’t.

Misuse of knowledge is not power

Nursing school involves constant mental emersion into the facts and physiology of the human body. As a student, you begin thinking of everything in medical terms: nearsightedness is myopia, vomit is emesis, urination is voiding, and pregnancy becomes gravidity.

You write “hypertension” (high blood pressure) so much that you just start abbreviating it “HT.” You feel the need to educate people and begin thinking things like, “Sir, please step away from the doughnut or your glucose level is going to skyrocket.”

One aspect of nursing care is to state a diagnosis that follows a specific format. For instance, if a patient is a raging alcoholic, the proper diagnosis would go something like this: Ineffective health maintenance related to cognitive impairment as evidenced by voiding into neighbor’s potted plant at 03 00 hours. Well, something like that.

A few of us students like to have a little fun with these diagnoses. A bad driver has a knowledge deficit related to inferior genetic heredity as evidenced by failure to yield in the face of oncoming traffic. If we get a low test grade, we have suffered from an altered self-image related to ineffective studying as evidenced by a failure to pass exam.

Sometimes, I think the nursing student is armed with just enough information to be a danger to ourselves, because, as we travel through each body system, we begin to think differently about those old, familiar aches and pains that have been experienced throughout our lives.

Everything is now under a cloud of suspicion: a pain in the chest becomes a pulmonary embolism, a blemish turns into a potential staph infection, and an ache to the right side of our upper abdomen accompanied by intense sweating has developed into symptomatic cholelithiasis (gallstones), which will undoubtedly result in a cholecystectomy (surgical removal of the gallbladder). It doesn’t help that I know 2 people in class, close to my own age, who have had this surgery.

A couple weeks ago, I received a concerned phone call from a female who I’ll call “Jane” to protect her identity. She exhibited a blue coloring on her right arm that spanned from her inner wrist up to her biceps. I told her she should head to my house so I could look at it and run her to the hospital if needed.

When she arrived, I grasped her hand to observe the cyanotic coloring of her wrist. I was shocked that it was ice cold, but when I expressed this, Jane said, “I just had the air-conditioning in my car on high and it blows right on my hands.” Relieved, I felt her pulse which was normal and inspected the affected areas of her arm.

We immediately ruled out a ruptured vein, which could pool blood into the surrounding tissue, because her veins felt and appeared fine, not to mention that the color was all wrong.

After scratching our heads for a while, I noticed a spot on her shirt. I said, “Jane, what is that on your shirt?” She looked down and turned a deep shade of “embarrassment red” before erupting into laughter.

“I had my blue folder under my arm when I ran out into the rain to get to my car! This blue is from my folder!”

Relieved and giggling, we both decided that this story should never be told in case a potential employer should question our nursing capabilities. I waited a week before begging her to let me write about it. She agreed on one condition: don’t use her name.

Nursing diagnosis: Impaired thought process related to medical information overload as evidenced by failure to recognize the most obvious conclusion.

The dumbest story ever told

According to dictionary.com, a galoot is a clumsy or uncouth person. This is a word I tend to associate with myself and I have plenty of scars to prove it.

My life’s history is packed full of spectacularly awkward moments. Once, I ran into an electrical outlet in our carport which protrudes from the wall. I wouldn’t say it was a menacing obstacle that threatened to maim me daily, but on the particular day I tried to take off my arm with it, I was being distracted by a wasp that was flying suspiciously close to my hair so I took off at a lumbering gait to gain access to the safety of my house when I slammed into the outlet.

I realize that the huge bruise on my arm probably hurt more and lasted longer than the sting of a wasp, but I have an intense dislike of flying bugs mixed with an irrational fear that one of these creatures could get caught in my hair. In my mind’s eye, I can visualize the alien insect expertly using my locks like Tarzan on a vine, swinging from side to side in an attempt to plant its stinger into each of my eyes which would swell shut and allow for more flying critters to attack me as I feebly thrash around on the ground.

I did say this was an irrational fear, right?

There are also certain shoe styles that play a significant role in some of my more maladroit moments. Flip-flops are probably the worst design because they lack even a hint of traction and, whenever I wear them in the rain, I know that I’m really just setting myself up for disaster.

When I lived in Washington State, I fell in front of a Target store while walking on what appeared to be level ground. I also slipped on the ice at Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains while holding our brand new camcorder. Being a bit of a professional at accelerated descents, I managed to spare the electronic device from any harm.

Though most of my klutzy accidents are brought about by objects lurking below my line of sight, such as the foot board of my bed, I have recently rediscovered the many possibilities that exist for unintentional burns.

Since I have a problem with cognitive thinking and depth perception early in the morning before my second cup of coffee, the toaster oven, stove top, and iron are constant hazards, but last week, a series of events fell into place that resulted a true galoot-worthy moment.

It started with bacon. Evidently, when one cooks bacon while their hair is still wet, that bacon smell infuses into their damp hair strands. I didn’t think about this until I was using my flat iron and noticed a residual bacon odor. I pulled some hair under my nose because I couldn’t fathom the possibility that my hair actually smelled like bacon.

When I did that, I noticed that my flat iron had an unidentifiable substance smeared on it. I knew it was some type of lotion or sunscreen and figured that a couple of days previous, I had put it in my travel bag before it had a chance to completely cool.

My next move was ridiculous even for me: I put the piping hot flat iron to my nose so I could smell which lotion was being forever heat-sealed on the device.

It is a week later and I still have a horizontal burn mark slashed across the tip of my nose. I called my friend, Amy, and broke the news to her that the title of “Dumbest Smart Person” was returning to its rightful owner. For some reason, she didn’t seem at all broken-hearted about it.

Canned cheeseburger is not on the menu

There are countless food items from around the world that are of questionable consumption. I’m not referring to items people eat that we really shouldn’t, such as fried green beans, gravy, and cookie dough. In fact, my husband advised me not to eat cookie dough just last night, but I can’t seem to resist its delicious sinfulness. I only had a teaspoon which, I choose to believe, greatly reduces my chances of contracting salmonella.

The foods in question are more like a certain dish enjoyed in parts of Asia: the century egg. It is essentially a rotten egg that is so spoiled it is somehow okay to eat. I can’t imagine putting this “delicacy” to my lips once the ammonia and sulfur odor infiltrated my nasal cavity and caused my olfactory nerve to warn my brain that what I smelled was a mix of brimstone and cat urine. This would cause my brain to declare: “Warning! Do not put this in your mouth or I swear I will turn on your vomiting center just for spite!”

I’m not coming down on rotten food either because I really like aged cheeses which usually smell like gym socks. I just don’t think of old eggs as something to experiment with too much.

As for shear appearance, the goeduck (pronounced “gooey duck”) that can be dug up out of the mucky Pacific Northwest shoreline is basically a huge clam that looks outrageously obscene. They can live for over 100 years and, on average, grow about a foot long.

I like clams; in soup and fried is fine with me and they are small enough so that I don’t have to think too much about what they look like. If someone slapped a goeduck on a plate and told me I had to eat it, after blushing profusely, I’d either run away or start to cry.

I will give an honorable mention, but refuse to discuss Rocky Mountain oysters.

Then there is Spam: a salty, “meatish” product that is crazy popular in Hawaii. Spam has been around since 1937 which means that it has some sort of weird staying power. There is a whole culture dedicated to preparation and consumption of Spam.

I’m not a fan, myself. I do enjoy the occasional canned product like tuna fish, beans, diced tomatoes, and sweetened condensed milk, but canned chicken or pork does nothing to whet my appetite.

This all leads up to a very disturbing bit of knowledge I just received from my sister’s boyfriend, Shannon. He thought I should be informed of a particular product that the Swiss have pushed onto grocery shelves: the canned cheeseburger.

I don’t know where to begin with this one. For starters, thank goodness this didn’t originate in America and my heartfelt appreciation goes out to the FDA for not allowing its sale in the United States.

I visited the link, conspicuously called “cheeseburgerinacan.com” and read in disbelief a little about this product. Being the skeptic, I had to assess for authenticity so I did a Google search which led me to a video of how to prepare the abomination.

First, you boil the can in water for ten minutes for that fresh cheeseburger temperature to be achieved. Next, pop the dual-sided lids and slide your meaty treat onto your plate. Enjoy!

The guy in the video cautiously picked apart the burger for inspection. It appears to come complete with bun, tomato, and some green debris that resembles dehydrated lettuce.

I don’t care nor do I want to ever know how this thing tastes. All I keep thinking is that its existence means we are that much closer to the apocalypse. Thanks a lot, Switzerland. You have disturbed me beyond comprehension.

Supermarket Maniac Meltdown

Do you ever go to the store and hear a screaming, out of control child? Chances are that insolent child may have been one of mine. My standard M.O. is to visit the restroom with the offending offspring for a bit of a “meet your maker” discussion. This has proven to be successful with my son, but my daughter has perfected the art of being stubborn and I’ll admit that I am at a loss of what to do with her. If I spank her, she’ll scream like I’m ripping off her arms. If I make her wear pants, she’ll scream like I’m ripping off her arms. Get the picture?

An example of a recent incident occurred at a local grocery store which I’ll not name in order to protect the innocent. On this day, my little angel is liberally spreading her new sparkle pink lip gloss around the area of her mouth when a catastrophe sets upon us: a missing cap. She alerts me to the absent cap and I look behind us thinking that we are ¾ of the way through the store and it could be anywhere. I tell her, “Sorry for your luck,” and resume shopping.

Her reaction is to catapult the capless tube at my face. I react calmly by picking up the tube and tossing it into a garbage receptacle believing that this will get my point across very nicely and nonviolently.

Engage ultrasonic, high pitched scream fest.

Being a woman, I can understand the minor devastation involved in losing a make-up product, but this child literally lost her mind. While shrieking at a decibel level that I believe capable of causing permanent tympanic membrane damage, she begins frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog with her eyes rolling madly around in their sockets.

At that point in time, I’d rather believe my baby girl has contracted some rare form of rapid-onset rabies than the obvious evidence that she is capable of instantly going so deeply insane. My son and I both take a step back; a bit from the noise level, but mostly because she is now spitting and trying to grab us with her super-human, pinchy-claw fingers.

He falls to the floor in a hysterical fit of laughter at his sister’s blatant overreaction while I’m slack-jawed and “deer-in-headlights” stunned. I consider either lighting up her backside in the bathroom or trying to reason with her, but I have no time to choose because groceries begin flying out of the cart.

I react in the worst possible way by contracting a sudden case of the giggles. The fact that my son and I are both laughing just causes her to become more enraged. By this time, we have cleared five aisles of customers and when we get to the checkout, no one will look me in the eye. She has somewhat calmed down to gasping sobs and I’m sure all the employees and customers believe that I have publicly abused my child and the security cameras will provide sufficient evidence to convict me. I loudly proclaim, “She missed her nap today,” to anyone who is interested.

We are about to leave when a couple of tween girls run up to us and one says, “Miss? There are two little girl’s sandals over by the eggs.” I look at my daughter’s bare feet and receive visual confirmation that the shoes are hers. My son runs to get them and I vow to stay away from that store for at least two weeks, but I know the emotional scars may never heal.

Adventures in the Wild

Sometimes I can be very impulsive. This quality usually presents itself while I’m shopping, but every now and then I read about an exciting opportunity that I can’t wait to fully immerse myself into; like the time I read a newspaper article about geocaching.

In case you are not aware of this activity, it is like a modern day treasure hunt where people use their GPS to locate a cache (hidden container). Inside are either an ink stamp used to validate your find or a trinket to take and replace with one of your own.

I couldn’t wait to start an adventure that was easy and cheap enough for me to consider embarking upon so I convince my friend, Michele, to come along and we gather our children and set off to search for a cache stashed somewhere along the banks of the Peace River.

On this muggy morning we head to Ft. Meade lacking any proper equipment for trail walking (i.e. bottled water or sensible shoes). We park in a very small, empty lot next to the trail head just south of the middle of nowhere and set off to trek a mile and a half towards the river’s edge and locate our prized stamp.

The first thing I notice is that my cell phone’s bars are conspicuously absent and I will not be able to call 911 should an emergency arise. It took no time at all (about 6 steps) for all my irrational fears to kick in and I start constructing mental images of the exact type of serial killer who would stalk for victims in this mosquito-infested marsh. He wouldn’t look like an obvious murderer, more like an upstanding citizen who could blend in at a local chamber mixer. If he ever gets caught, all his neighbors will testify that they never would’ve suspected him capable of such heinous acts.

 I begin complaining of the heat and general creepiness of the fact that our phones are useless when I abandon the killer scenario and mentally switch gears to the possibility of being attacked to death by a carnivorous beast. My friend’s son is wearing flip flops so he won’t be able to run for it; easy pickings. I determine that it will be up to me to save these innocent children and decide I need a stick so I snap off the shaft end of a palm frond.

While my right brain is hard at work fabricating vivid images of bear teeth ripping into my flesh, my left brain is frantically scanning its mental files for anything resembling statistics on nature trail deaths due to animal mauling in the Central Florida area. I yell at the kids to stay close and my friend is busy telling me that I’m acting crazy when we come upon a patch of mud.

In this mud are footprints; large, bearlike animal footprints. It rained the previous night so these tracks are fresh from this morning. Michele finally succumbs to my paranoid delusions and we decide to abandon our mission.

The kids are less than enthusiastic as we quickly stumble our way back through the woods. I’m trying to figure out the best way to kill a bear with my bare hands and a palm frond shaft while attempting to predict how cooperative said animal will be in assisting with its own demise, but we manage to make it back uneventfully and vow to never do this again without our big, strong husbands present.

Thus ends my one and only adventure with geocaching. I suppose we’ll try to stick to more public caches in the future.

What Lies Beneath Our Feet

Every year when the Christmas parade comes to town, I realize three things: (1) it is painful to sit for long stretches; (2) I’m running out of time to finish my shopping; and (3) it’s time to clean the carpets again.

Since my carpets are probably as old as I am, the stains are beyond tenacious. Usually, I pay a carpet cleaning company to come in and deal with our nastiness, but this year I decided to go ahead and do it myself.

After I moved all of the furniture out of the way, I experienced a bit of nostalgia while I surveyed the numerous stains in their naked, unobstructed state. There was a large splotch (normally covered by the area rug) from the time my son vomited red Gatorade in the middle of the floor. There were soda stains and orange juice stains and a stain that looked like green wax. I reminisced about the innumerable times I yelled at my kids for bringing food into the living room and recalled continually being mad at myself because I can’t seem to keep my coffee inside my cup.

Once I finished my trip down memory lane, I drove to a local hardware store, bought a bunch of chemicals, and rented a beast of a machine named Eileen. Yes, its name was really Eileen and I know this because it was decaled across the front. When I hear that name, I can’t help but think about the 72 year old waitress who worked the graveyard shift at the Clock Restaurant about twenty years ago. She was as tough as nails and everyone was a little scared of her, so I figured this mechanical version of Eileen would easily meet my expectations.

I purchased enough cleaning agents to shampoo a 1500 square foot house and, since I only had about 700 square feet of carpet to clean, I figured I was set to go. I began by liberally spraying several of the most stubborn blemishes in the living room with spot remover while completely neglecting to follow the instructions on the side of the bottle cautioning me to test a small, inconspicuous area before going all nuts.

Once that was done, Eileen and I made our way to my son’s room. I loaded her with two gallons of soapy water and got busy. After thoroughly soaking about five square feet of rug, I ran out of the sudsy mixture. Fearing I would have no soap left at that rate, I took a quick glance back at the directions and revised my strategy.

The first time I emptied the foul water, I felt ill as I witnessed the murky, debris-filled gunk pour into my kitchen sink. By the looks of it, my family is living above something akin to the La Brea tar pits. If only we could unearth an intact mammoth skeleton, we’d sell it for big bucks and pay someone else to deal with our grime-crusted rug.

By the time I made it back to the living room, the spot remover had really gone to town. I now had several super-clean carpet freckles sprinkled across the floor. I pondered why the company didn’t make the cleaner out of the spot remover since it seemed to work so well.

When I finally finished, my floor had gone from looking like a calico cat to resembling a slightly dirty camel, so I suppose I experienced some degree of success. I hosed off Eileen, thanked her, and took her back to the store. Maybe next year, I’ll go ahead and get that laminate floor installed.

One size does not fit all

Any time I have a little extra money burning a hole in my pocket, I love to go shoe shopping. I know that I am perpetuating a female stereotype, but I really don’t care too much about that because I have a real fetish for footwear.

Having said that, here is the Romeo and Juliet “star-crossed lover” aspect of my situation: I have size eleven feet. I know this may seem a substantial size for a woman and I hope no one actually gasped out loud, but I am six feet tall so it really isn’t too outrageous.

Before I had children, I wore a size ten and never really thought too much about it one way or the other because there were still plenty of cute shoe choices available to me. What I discovered after my feet grew that extra bit was that, in addition to the world not being ergonomically designed for people taller than five eight, the realm of footwear is also severely lacking once you advance into the double digits.

According to the Internet, the average shoe size for women is an eight. I tend to believe this figure based on the vast selection of size eights I’ve seen at every shoe retailer I have ever frequented in my life. My sister wears a size eight which annoys me to no end because all those women just do not realize how lucky they are.

I have never been able to find my size at a department store and every time I’ve inquired, I am directed to the catalog department as if I have freakishly large clown feet and don’t deserve to sport designer styles. I don’t like to order things I can’t try on because I’m too impatient to wait and I don’t like returning merchandise.

I experience more success at shoe stores and places like Walmart where they at least entertain the idea that women who wear my size actually exist. If anyone is curious to know what shoe shopping is like for someone like me, go into one of these stores and pause to admire the variety presented in sizes eight and nine. Next, take a cursory glance at the slightly smaller selection of tens, but don’t blink before you get to the beginning of the men’s section next to the store room because you’ll miss the designated area for size eleven which is mixed in with the even more unfortunate size twelve.

Somewhere along the way, shoe makers decided that mass-producing a sandal larger than a size ten was an indecent abomination. This results in some depressive moods for me when spring comes around and I see the adorable new styles that are not attainable for women like me.

It isn’t like I have ugly feet or anything. In my opinion, they have a perfectly normal shape and lack any deformities like bunions and extra-long second toes. My husband says I have monkey toes, but I believe he’s just a little envious because I am able to pinch and pick things up with my dexterous digits.

The Internet also informs me that Paris Hilton wears a size eleven. Even though, in my judgmental opinion, Paris is a spoiled rich girl who doesn’t deserve a fraction of the fame she has attained, I often daydream about writing Miss Hilton a heart-felt letter pleading with her to generously donate to me any of her discarded, out-of-style footwear.

Maybe it is time for us grande-sized ladies to make our presence known and band together to demand pedal recognition. In case that day never comes, anyone who knows someone that may have ties to the Hilton family, please give them my email address.

Tactical maneuvers for preschool children

My four year old daughter is the world’s best manipulator. I don’t remember ever acting like her and, from what my parents say, I really was a good kid so I know this isn’t some kind of parent/karma deal.

I’m not saying she is incapable of being good. Some of her more positive activities include standard adorable child behaviors. For instance, she cuddles with me at least twice a day and picks me flowers. She draws pictures of her and mommy smiling and holding hands under a rainbow. She kisses me goodbye and usually squeals with joy when I pick her up from school. She sprinkles the day with spoken love darts like “I love you so much, mommy.” She even makes up cute little songs and, when she finishes, she’ll ask, “Do you like that song, mommy?” How can I not love it when my heart has just melted away in my chest?

One of her funny little quirks is what I like to call the “baby migration.” This is when she innocuously brings a baby doll from her room to watch television with her. If you turn your back for two seconds, the baby situation gets out of hand and, before you know it, there is a pile of baby dolls staring at you with dozens of creepy, lifeless eyes. Many a tear has been shed by our little girl when the time comes to corral the babies back to her room.

My husband and I are both hopelessly wrapped around her little finger which is why we act so surprised every time she turns on us.

Because her screaming is so hurtful to our ears, we frequently have to banish her to her bedroom and close the door. We do this for our own sake, but it is no easy task. She has mastered the art of passive resistance with a move we have termed the “limp baby” maneuver. The limpness itself is one challenge, but she is also somehow able to become 20 pounds heavier and, when you try to pick her up, she can dislocate her arms to become something akin to a greased hot dog.

When that tactic doesn’t work and we are able to awkwardly lift her, she desperately changes gears to “cat-in-a-bathtub,” where she grabs onto anything within her reach which usually ends up being a doorway. Her finger-clinging powers are comparable to those of Spider Man and would be quite impressive if it weren’t so annoyingly effective.

Keep in mind that her sonic siren scream is engaged the entire time which can make a perfectly sane person, such as myself, very confused and disoriented.

Once she is safely in her room with the door closed, she kicks things up a notch and goes into “Linda Blair” mode. I’m convinced the neighbors believe I beat her, but in reality, the child is all alone in her dispersion of pure hellfire and brimstone.

This past Sunday at church, she once again displayed her recalcitrance by refusing to sing with her peers. She stood with arms crossed while our son tried to engage her in the song’s directions which included shaking hands, patting the back, and giving a hug. She kept a bead on me the entire time all because she wanted to sit on my lap, but I made her go with the kids instead. That child can execute a mean stink-eye at will.

My hope is that her tenacity will take her far in life. She’d make a great drill sergeant if the military is up for the challenge. Until then, our daughter, the puppet master, will practice and hone her techniques on those who love her most.