Pure Fantasy
Getting a babysitter for the kids, having dinner at a nice restaurant, then watching a romantic DVD at home after the kids are in bed, then perhaps some naughty fun...Perceived Plans
Eat heart-shaped pizza with kids, then sit back for a fun, relaxing evening as a family and watch a family type DVD.The Horrid Reality Of It All
Ate heart-shaped pizza with kids, started The Legend of Zorro* DVD, 6-yr old daughter complains that her stomach hurts, and then proceeds to throw up all over the place (Not once, not twice, but three times during the show). The baby had unbelievable diarrhea up his back and everything, The two year old trips and tries to take out a wall with her head (nice goose-egg now), the 8-yr old is feeling really left out and emotional, and the dog - also feeling left out - starts getting really, really obnoxious.DVD ends (finally), and we get the 8-yr old, 2-yr old and baby to bed. I keep the 6-yr old in the family room where I can watch her, because she'll wake up occasionally, not know where she is, and then start screaming from the stomach pain. Oh, and did I mention the shaking?
It is now midnight, and I start to worry about the 2-yr old, who is increasingly whimpering in her sleep. I go upstairs, scoop her up and bring her down to the family room, where I can keep an eye on her, in case she starts throwing up as well. During the next 5 hours, the 6-yr old throws up another 8 to 9 times. Each time, I get up, wash the bowl out, spray lysol into it and return it to her.
Around 4:00am, the 2-yr old wakes up, announces she wants to sleep with Mommy, not next to Daddy on the family room floor. So I carry her upstairs, and ask my wife not to wake me up at 5:30. I notice it is snowing outside. Snowing alot.
By the time I finally make it out the door this morning, the roads are just pure crap! I get on to the freeway, and within the first two miles I see 8 accidents, including a semi truck rollover, several collisions, and even more cars off the side of the road. Black ice, did I mention black ice?
Yours truly came very close to becoming a statistic on his way to work. I hit a patch of black ice on the freeway, and the car started sliding sideways. I spun the steering wheel the other direction, and the car went into a wicked fishtail.
Thanks to divine providence, and certain driving skills developed from growing up in Park City, Utah, I pulled the car out of the fishtail and got off the freeway at the next exit. And yes, my underwear was still clean!
I continued on to work, taking the alternate highways and finally arriving after two hours on the road. Then the weather report... did I mention the weather report? It says that things are going to get worse...
*The Legend of Zorro... The best thing that I can say about the DVD was that it was a free rental. Honestly. I doubt I have seen a more cliché, more predictable film in my life. Catherine Zeta-Jones spends a lot of time looking sultry, and wistfully staring off into space, Antonio Banderas spends a lot of time being moody and doing gymnastics that would put Mary-Lou Retton to shame, the kid spends a lot of time being a brat, the bad guys spend a lot of time being bad... actors. Funny that the federal agents figure out who Zorro is in just a matter of minutes, and yet the people who have lived with Zorro for years have no clue. And then there's the improbability of so many things... It's like an alternate reality opened up in the Hollywood studio, and the writers & producers said "Yeah, that would be believable..." Things like declaring California's statehood in the middle of a desert somewhere, a miraculous extra set of rails to divert the speeding train onto... in the middle of said desert, and so many other things that I can't even count. My apologies to those of you who really, really enjoyed this show. I didn't. But that could be entirely due to the fountain of vomit spewing from my daughter every 30 minutes...
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