Thursday, April 09, 2009

Making Friends

Just got back from Mexico, which was lovely, though the trip was a tad short because CERTAIN PEOPLE need to have their Saturdays free so as to take part in bike races. I shouldn’t complain, though, because I am probably the worst packer on earth and it took me almost the entire day Saturday to do it. Seriously, I’m outrageously bad at packing. I once left home on a long car trip and remembered everything except my birth control pills (ha! remember those?) and my wallet. I do now have a system: I have everything I could ever possibly want to pack on a list that I customize for each trip, and I am not allowed to tick off an item until it is actually resting inside the suitcase. Since I have to check off every solitary thing (e.g., “toiletries bag” doesn’t cut it: toothbrush, q-tips, brush—everything has its own little check box), the process is rather time-consuming. Also I tend to go off on hours-long tangents—no quart-size ziplocks for the plane? Target trip!

HB is becoming more and more tolerable on these trips. The main tantrum-inducing problem was that I neglected to pack tights (I didn’t forget—I just foolishly assumed that shorts alone would suffice in 85 degree weather), so when the one pair that he’d worn on the plane finally had to be washed before they wandered down to the beach under their own power he had NO TIGHTS TO WEAR TO DINNER, my god, you incompetent idiot. At least I remembered the nail polish so that I could give him touchups as needed.

At one point during our stay when HB wanted me to play in the pool with him but I preferred to drink another Dirty Monkey, I said, “Why don’t you make some friends?” (I’m not ordinarily prone to asking such asinine questions but reference Dirty Monkeys #1 and #2.) Next day, he spent three solid hours playing with a seriously drunk-plus-something-else-that looked-awfully-fun young woman from Manitoba who was sporting multiple homemade tattoos including a prominent “RIP” for her last boyfriend, severally equally homemade piercings, and a much older gentleman who was probably not her father. It was really very nice of her to lavish such attention on him, though we had to keep a rather close eye on them on account of the drowning risk (mainly hers). Afterwards HB said, “See, Mom, I did make a friend!” and spent the next day pretending to smoke cigarettes and demanding that I point out every “No Smoking” sign so that he could smile and insolently continue puffing away.

This wasn’t the post I started out to write—I meant to discuss jogging strollers—but now I’m out of time, so if you have any advice re that subject, get it ready for next time.

20 comments:

L. said...

Ooh! This was a hilarious post, so I'm glad you put it up, but I will be looking forward very much to your wisdom on jogging strollers. I just decided on a BOB double for a baby expected in May and am still second-guessing myself. Especially because my 2-year-old seems to loathe our current single jogger right now. (It's very old and in it he slumps down, so I'm hoping he'll come to feel differently about the new one.)

Rachel said...

That is just hilarious!
I have a BOB Sport Utility Stroller and I love it. They are pricey but worth every penny.

Dawn said...

Hey! I'm from Manitoba! Unfortunately, I was not in Mexico, nor do I have any tattoos. I do have two kids who probably would have loved HB though. What a great post!

Jul said...

Glad you had a lovely Mexi-cation. And if it makes you feel any better, I once finished pitching my tent for a multi-day camping trip before I discovered that I hadn't packed any clothes. At all. Hatchet? S'more fixings? Vodka? Check. Underwear? Uh... whoops.

"Drunk child-amuser" needs to be an actual job! You can pay a doula a few hundred bucks to rub your back and play Pure Moods CDs during labor, right? Why shouldn't you be able to pay someone a bottle of Mad Dog to play "horsie" until their spine snaps or retrieve a small foam rocket from behind the sofa 10,000 times?

E. said...

I hope you'll post the post you meant to post, but I love this one. HB is hilarious. I love the "make a friend" story, and the continuing commitment to tights is delightful. Long may his little freak flag fly.

I also love the "everything but my birth control pills and wallet" anecdote. I'm such a catastrophic packer because I need 8 million little things to be happy on any given trip (used to be 5 million, then I had a kid, so I needed a million and a half new things for him, and now that I have two, well...) But I'm sort of naturally disorganized and forgetful. So I have to spend a week making the list, a day packing, then at least a couple hours checking the list twice and thrice.

Hope your vacation was wonderful.

DrSpouse said...

That is hilarious - I think you should buy him some of those candy cigarettes we used to have as kids!

Paula said...

Hey! I think we may be sharing the same kid, although mine is a couple of years older and doesn't wear tights...I suspect he would if he knew they were an option;-) BUT, he is forever making friends with unique people both old and young!

Mines current obsession is headbands! His current favorite is pink, brown and blue with crystals. He looks very pretty in them if he may say so himself! Would you like us to send you a few in different colors? I'm sure they'd look lovey with tights!

winecat said...

Oh I love the tights incident. What a pity going to the pool with bare legs but I bet his toes looked just fine.

Great Post

Anonymous said...

LOL! I love the image of a small HB puffing indolently away. You have the most interesting life.

I have a Jeep jogging stroller for all the (cough) times that I jog. It has an iPod hookup and a minispeaker for the time when you want to blast your tunes to the neighborhood (and HB.) Actually, since I am seriously considering becoming a maggot (stop laughing!) I was hoping you'd have some advice for those of us out there jogging with strollers.

xo
Flicka

Hee! my word verification is "foeker."

Ozma said...

This thing about the drunken woman friends is seriously one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Oh God, my kid makes friends like that. One time she made friends with a schizophrenic woman in front of the store. We thought she was just homeless. She was very sweet to our kid and then these people chased us down and told us how she mutters these terrifying things. And of course, I know a little bit about mental illness (a very little bit) and muttering scary things does not necessarily make someone dangerous. But they were looking at us like 'you horrible parents you let your kid hug a psycho!' Which was ridiculous. Also, she made that woman happy. Of course, I probably wouldn't let her hug her now...I dunno.

But anyway, I just love that story!!! LOVE IT.

HB wears tights?

I was wondering because my HG also wears tights and throws fits about them but also throws fits when we don't bring the boy clothes so that she can be a boy when she wants. So she is a he sometimes and a she and sometimes in mid-day I've had to switch??? I'm all mixed up. Does HB do that? I'm discovering it is not uncommon but we keep hearing about people whose kids do a little bit of gender-defiance but never actually meet such kids.

Anonymous said...

Ha, that is awesome about HB's friend. Let him get it out of his system now and then he'll choose more appropriate significant others later? :)

Re: jogging strollers, we just got a used double bob revolution. We'd had a used double right start something or other, but it was a total pain in the a**. It handled poorly, was hard to fold, hard to access stuff, etc. So we got a second mortgage to by the used bob, and it is so wonderful! For running, the front wheel locks and actually stays locked! For walking or very slow jogging, it handles brilliantly with the front wheel unlocked so that it can turn. Kids love it. It handles as easily with 50 pounds of kids inside as when it is empty. It folds easily. The brake is easy to use and actually holds the stroller still. I could go on even more, but let's just say that my love for this stroller is such that it involves breaking several commandments. Before breakfast.

Orange said...

OK, so I already knew we were twins when it comes to perusing menus and ruling out all but a few suitable dishes. And now we are packing-list twins too. My cousin laughed when I said I was printing out my updated packing list, but I gotta have my list. I don't itemize everything in the toiletry cases—just some of that stuff. The travel shampoo and soap dish and Q-tips live in the larger toiletry bag year-round, and a stash of OTC meds live in the smaller one.

Interesting fact: Q-tips were originally called "Baby Gays."

Anonymous said...

Oh my! I love this post. Way to funny!!! I so wish you lived next door so HB could play with my kids.

Marta said...

thakns for the laugh! wonderful post.

SO said...

I love the Chariot. I love only having one chassis that works for biking, running, skiing, etc. I like that it is big enough that my three year old (the size of a four year old) hasn't totally outgrown it yet. Its heavier than some, but much more off roady than others I have used. Plus, did I already mention...ONLY one big piece of equiptment to store?

Mignon said...

We went to a Mexican resort with no kids. It was fun for the first ten minutes, after which there was nothing to look at and nobody to pity. It reminded me of the very end of Finding Nemo where all the fishtank fish travel across the busy street in their plastic bags and land in the harbor and the blowfish is all, "Now what?"

I totally could have been that tatted-up Manitoba drunk.

Val said...

My boy seemed to outgrow the Strolling Phase very rapidly - by the time he was 18 mos old, you could forget it! But I had a very nice model (can't remember the brand name; my boy is 10 now & Mommy Brain is in full flower - but it was the all-terrain model w/the big bike-type wheels) - I used to wheel him around the block every day on my lunch hour when I'd take him his lunch (nursing break) ;-)

B.E.C.K. said...

" and spent the next day pretending to smoke cigarettes and demanding that I point out every 'No Smoking' sign so that he could smile and insolently continue puffing away."

This is so much better than a post about jogging strollers. Priceless. ;^)

Kim said...

We went to NZ at xmas with our nearly 4 yr old (then - 4 now) so went from winter (Europe) to summer. He also didn't want to part with his tights for over a week, even though the temps were late 20's to mid 30's. I've been told that tights are not cool at 5 years of age - its long johns with socks apparently.

L. said...

Oh, and once I packed a very complete suitcase for holiday trip to our parents' (4-hr drive to Boston), but we forgot to actually bring the suitcase with us.