Unhappy and the awful, no good, very bad, terrible day

So, I totally meant to be funny with that Dear Town Resident post. I swear it wasn’t an SOS, just seeing the humor in what is the theatre of absurd that is our life.  And if that wasn’t funny enough, catch how our day went down today:   

As an aside, the crud has been diagnosed as a sinus infection and ear infection.  When I called the doctor and asked for an appointment, the receptionist said, “And why are you coming in?”  I told her “Because I have the crud.”  She was not amused.  Okay, back to today.  The morning started well enough except I awoke with no hearing in my ear infection ear.  Zero.  It’s like cotton balls have taken residence in the canal.  I’m assuming that’ll go away, but I tell you this just to let you know that I did go through the whole day at a significantly louder octave than I normally go through the day.  And I am fairly loud on a quiet day. 

Anyway, I loaded the baby in his stroller and we walked to the grocery store.  We had not been gone more than 5 minutes before Happy’s sock and shoes were off.  We just rolled on like that because I wasn’t going to cause a fight and wake people up at the crack over socks.  Back home, I unloaded the groceries and then Happy and I went to the back yard to plant spinach, strawberries and Bibb lettuce.  Except he unplanted everything I planted and then stepped in dog poop.  Dog poop undoes me.  Meanwhile, I get an email from a friend who tells me that I hip called her during that ordeal.  Isn’t that just what you want to hear when you pick up your cell phone?  She said she was laughing her tail off.  I can only imagine (imagine this all in a very loud octave since I can’t hear):  “Baby is that what I think it is?  Oh, yep, yep it is.  Oh, gross.  Baby, seriously?  Lola, seriously?  Seriously, you had to walk in that?  Seriously, Lola, you had to do that?  Okay, Baby, no, don’t touch me.  No, don’t touch it.  Baby, no!” 

I wrangled the baby’s shoes off (I had wrangled them back on when it came time to play in the backyard), stuffed them in a grocery bag and left them for BF (because that is how I roll.  Since I have been poop scooping lately– clearly not all that well– I figured he needed to know what he was missing).  Then Happy had a breakdown because we had to go back inside to get more socks and shoes and he didn’t want to go back inside (he never does).  The breakdown continued until his speech therapist arrived (we’ll talk speech therapy in another post).   Then, for an hour, Happy figured out how to interact with the speech therapist without saying a word.  It was really quite clever and even when she left he only waved goodbye rather than saying his very favorite words “Bye Bye.”  Dude, he even says bye bye to me when he comes and closes the bathroom door while I am in there.  But he sure as heck wasn’t going to say those words to the speech therapist.  Parenting the strong willed child, anyone?  Anyway,  as you can tell, that was time and money well spent. 

When the speech therapist left, Happy immediately wanted to get back outside.  So I had the brilliant idea of walking to town to meet BF for lunch.  I called BF, he said he’d meet us at a little cafe we love and so baby and I were on the way.  Except baby saw the park on the way into town and proceeded to throw himself on the ground and tantrum because we were walking past it.  I eventually picked him up and tried to walk with him and he tantrummed against my body the whole way.  Of course, it’s lunch time, and the downtown was packed and so I smiled at folks who I knew had older kids than Happy and just said, “Aren’t you glad this isn’t your life anymore?”  Everyone nodded sympathetically and got the heck out of our way.  We had a VERY wide berth walking down the road.  Saw BF which I thought would make everything sunshine and roses and nope.  So we decided there was no way we could go in a restaurant, and, instead, we loaded up in BF’s car and headed home where Happy promptly went to sleep and took half the nap he should have taken.  He woke up just as devastated and so we worked our way through another 45 minute breakdown until I finally calmed Unhappy down enough to eat lunch.  After lunch, I thought, “We could both use a break.”  So I loaded him in the stroller and pointed us  towards the YMCA where I could get a workout in while Happy played with kids his own age (I had foregone my morning workout for speech therapy).  When we got to the YMCA, I was wowed by the empty parking lot– I always go to the Y when it is jam packed in the morning and actually had the thought, “Maybe we should start coming every day after Happy wakes up.”  I wheeled Happy down the hall to Childwatch where it was silent.  The director looked at me like I was a wild woman and said, “Ah, we’re closed from 12:30 to 3:30 every day.”  I almost grabbed her and said, “For the love of all that is good and holy, you can’t do that to us.  Have mercy on me.”  Instead, I looked at my watch.  2 pm. I will not omit the fact that I called my sister at this time and said, “I want a do over.”  And by do over I meant a whole new day.     

So, Happy and I walked to the park instead where he was about to get worn out of me and my stroller pushing antics for the day when a cute 3 year old girl showed up.  And that was it.  I no longer existed, and all he wanted was for her to hold his hand at all times.  Even down the very narrow slide and up the ladder.  There was one more colossal meltdown to end the day but there was that glimmer of sweetness at the playground and I am banking on that to get me through the next dark moment and the replanting of the spinach.