suck by suck west

i wanted to enter a submission for the domestic enemies series on rants from mommyland-dot-com - "the domestic enemies of a lawyer mom." but those are all numbered lists and i only got this far:

The Domestic Enemies of a Lawyer Mom 

1. The Law*

*Including, but not limited to, lawyers, and also every other part of the legal profession.

it's been a rough week. or month. or year. i've lost track. last week colby's daycare gal ended up in the hospital for three days, which required a lot of juggling and covering and testing the outer limits of our respective employers' patience. it also required the grace of my dear, wonderful sister, who saved our asses yet again (and again, and again). i am so far in the karmic hole i can't even see the light of day.

march has been a doozy so far, with birthdays (colby's, mine), holidays (persian new year, steak and BJ day), and travel (a destination birthday party last weekend in loverly sack-o-tomatoes, califor-ni-A). meanwhile the shit is hitting the proverbial fan at work for both DM and me, so we tried to hit the ground running on monday morning, in an increasingly futile attempt to keep our heads above water in this raging river called Life. naturally, Life laughed in our fat faces. about 33 minutes after DM drops colby off i get a call from daycare for the fourth time in six days. now colby is sick. possibly pink eye. she also has a fever so she has to stay out tomorrow regardless. SUPER!

while we were at my dad's house over the weekend, his girlfriend ("fiancée," ew, that word hurts my teeth) told me that kaiser (her employer) has a policy that you don't get any "unexcused absences," which includes sick days. after three absences, you get a verbal warning. three more, a written warning. three more, a suspension. three more and you are terminated. she said the policy encourages people to come to work sick, which is not ideal, seeing as it's a hospital, but on the other hand it's kind of a necessary evil because people "take advantage" of the system and ask for, like, a day off a month. gasp! ummmm, yeaaaaah. i've needed to take all or part of a day off PER DAY lately. i'm almost serious. it's INSANE. and that is with regular child care, a sister who is a saint, a husband who picks half the sick-baby short-straws, and fairly flexible employers. what's your average joe (or joe-anne) supposed to do? i just don't get it. i've said it before. being a lawyer mom sucks. dealing with sick kids sucks. but you know what sucks even worse? when you CAN'T be there for your little snot rods because your lawyerness gets in the way. it seriously hurts my heart.

of course it doesn't help that most of the people i work with don't have kids, or else they have full-time supermom wives and/or live-in nannies so when their kids are sick it's really not their problem. the notion of not putting work first? not even on their radar. my old boss used to say "the law is a jealous mistress," but eff that man. The Law is a First Wife and she ain't havin' none of this shit.

also the part about how working bangladeshi sweatshop hours is par for the course. last night my supervising attorney said to me, "you don't have to stay up all night doing this or anything." ummm, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind but thanks!

then the part about how we have "regularly scheduled" meetings every week that go forward as planned approximately 13% of the time. the other ... 87(?)% of the time, they are rescheduled to literally the most inconvenient time you could possibly find on my calendar. also, all work emergencies are seven times more likely to occur at 4:59 pm than any other minute of the day.

oh, and what about the pathophysiology of the common cold:

day 1 (most likely a monday to ensure maximum career fuck-up-ery): Thing 1 is infected. slight chance of extra snuggles which makes it worth it, but moderate possibility that husband will contract the dreaded Man Cold which will ruin life for 5-7 business days.
day 2: Thing 1 feels well enough to use your stomach as a trampoline, but had a fever 23 hours ago so has to stay home again. decides to utilize the time during which you are on a conference call to practice the art of plate spinning with your grandmother's china. you can only engage in an insane display of semaphore and watch in silent horror.
day 3: Thing 1 is right as rain. (or not. 1/3 chance s/he is infected with some sort of feces-based disease that is highly contagious for 7-10 days. good luck with that.) Thing 2 seems fine at drop-off, but displays sudden-onset flu-like symptoms at the exact moment that you settle in with a hot cup of coffee 29 miles away.
day 4: repeat day 1 with Thing 2.
day 5: repeat day 2 with Thing 2.
day 6: saturday ruined by resurgence of snot faucets and/or man cold.
day 7: buying a new house seems easier than doing all that laundry and disinfecting current abode.
day 8: monday again? are you $@#%&*#$ kidding me?

okay, then there's "backup childcare." so. jack is in preschool and colby's in an in-home daycare. USUALLY, barring freak ER visits like last week or pre-arranged vacation and inservice days, the only reason the kids need to stay home is because they are sick. this occurs with little to no warning, and with alarming frequency between the months of november and ... october. so the conversation with our short-list of backups goes something like this: "are you available to sit for the kids?" "possibly, when?" "well... sort of... right now? also, i hope it's not a problem that they are sticky cesspools of contagion?" needless to say, our backups are often otherwise engaged. enter saintly sister from stage left. thank you dear lord. but she is starting nursing school in may and THEN WHAT?!

oh yeah and blogging. i had no idea. this shit takes serious WORK, man. like, you have to pimp out your blog and play the game and learn the politics and... ain't nobody got time for dat! at least, i don't. i am expected to actually work at work, and when i get home for second-shift, the little slave-drivers do NOT take kindly to their mama giving them anything other than her undivided attention. and rightly so. but it just doesn't leave a lot of time to talk at length at people who may or may not be listening. i am recalibrating my expectations to be content with two followers as opposed to instant literary fame and world domination. #firstworldproblems. seriously though. life is hard.

i was whining to a girlfriend about how one is supposed to survive and she said: "don't have kids." thanks for the pearls of wisdom, friend! just one slight snag. make that two. and make that greater than slight.

oh. THEN. last night i go to pick J up from school? LICE INFESTATION. F. M. L. seriously. if he gets lice, i am going to fake my own death and disappear to mexico. shhhhh. don't tell. i just can't. that has to be somebody else's problem.

update - march 27, 2014: drop Jack off at school and, while they were checking for lice, undergo intense scrutiny for a little scab on his face that he keeps messing with. another kid was sent home the day before for impetigo. i am admonished that if it does not look better by tomorrow morning we will have to take him to the doctor. (honestly, they should have those punch cards so you can get your tenth visit free.) then, when i pick Colby up from daycare (after her first full day in a week) i am informed that they sent another little girl home earlier with hand, foot and mouth disease. (ps what in the EFF is that?! every time i hear it i think of that foot-and-mouth disease that kills livestock.) i could not make this shit up. praying to the gods of infections disease that we will dodge these bullets.

for want of a barf bag

sunday night, DM and i were discussing the fact that our littles were active snot-faucets again and how i wasn't ready for another cold and flu season because last year it lasted for five months. seriously. from november 2012 through march 2013, a minimum of two of us and an average of four of us were sick with some sort of nasty crud, including the week where i was possibly dying from the flu even though i got a flu shot (i'm not one of those crazy anti-vaccine people. just stating the facts. i actually got a flu shot again this year. an hour later i could barely move my left arm and i said as much to DM with a follow up message, "but don't worry, it's not my drinkin' hand." :))

anyway. during said conversation about sickness and snot (was that part of our wedding vows?) DM reminded me of this one time during that extended snot saga when Jack randomly projectile vomited twice. but we think that was just rapid over-consumption of mango juice because he was perfectly fine afterwards. then DM says, "we've actually been really lucky in the barf arena.... knock on wood."

now. let me take this opportunity to inform you that DM is the KING of jinx. like, if there is a Jedi-mind-trick-master, he is the opposite. he is the master of making sh*t that you do not want to happen, happen, by saying "oh that'll never happen" out loud. so, after he said the thing about our generally barf-free lives, i knew with complete certainty that at least one of my children would be puking within 24 hours.

i sealed our fate by making a joke to a girlfriend (who is due any moment with her first child, and who had likened pre-labor ministrations to primping for senior prom) about how birthing a child is sort of like senior prom in that you become completely disoriented and wake up in bed with a stranger, covered in bodily fluids (yours and others'). (so i've heard. i assure you nothing so exciting happened at my prom, being the staunch anti-drug-and-alcohol a$$hole ambassador that i was.)

cue monday morning. got "the call" from daycare. do you know what i'm talking about? i am talking about the "your child got sick at daycare and is now too sick to be at daycare oh and ps she can't come back tomorrow either so good luck with that" call. do you know there is a special ring tone for this call? it rings to the dulcet tones of my career taking a flying leap out of an 18th story window to it's death on the concrete sidewalk below. but oh well. what're you gonna do?! so i went to go pick up my snotty little snuggle muffin. she had a slight fever and a lot of yellow goo but was generally in good spirits. i planned to take her home and leave J at preschool until later in the afternoon, but apparently she was scarred by their short separation this weekend because when i told her we weren't going to go get brother until later, she looked at me like i had just personally massacred her favorite pet. she was utterly heartbroken, and started wailing "brudderrrrrrrrrr, brudderrrrrrrrrr, brudderrrrrrrrrrrr, brudderrrrrrrrrrr, go geen 'um [go get him]" all the way home. so i called an audible, swung by the preschool, and snatched up big bro. they were mostly fine and DM came home a tad early and we got them to bed by 7:30 which never happens, ever.

all was well until the little miss woke up in the middle of the night. DM went in to get her, but then he called to me over the monitor that she had a fever and chills. i went in and her whole body was violently shuddering. aside from the body quakes, though, she was a pretty happy camper. she was chattin' away but we couldn't understand her because she was shaking so hard. i'm not really a wimp about sick kids... we've had scrapes and cuts and bloody noses and enormous eggs on the dome etc. without too much fuss, but when she was about 3.5 months old, my one-kidneyed daughter had a kidney infection and it got gnarly and all the doctors kept referring to it as a "life threatening event" and it scared the bejesus outta me so now anytime she has a fever or other unexplained symptoms i freak the frack out.

so. DM called the always helpful nurse triage hotline while i tried to keep the girl warm. (they always ask a litany of completely irrelevant questions. they even start their spiel by basically warning you that they are about to ask you a bunch of random a$$ sh*t. "can she walk in a straight line while reciting the ABCs backwards? does she prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream? who is her favorite sesame street character?") i will mention, in a stroke of seemingly unrelated foreshadowing, that lately Colby Jean has been obsessed with putting things down shirts. mostly my shirt. also her shirt. she loves to collect dead leaves and flowers from the patio, or hot wheels, or legos, or crayons, or used tissues, and stuff them down my shirt so that they're nested in my cleavage. she gets really upset if/when i try to "take out the garbage," so to speak. she also becomes perplexed/distressed when she puts things down her own shirt and they just fall right through, rather than getting lodged in the boobular region. anyway. maybe, if you were an english major or something, you can guess where this is headed...

Colby had been quietly snuggling and shuddering when suddenly she reared back with this confused look on her face. then i hear the pre-barf-warning-sounds. every parent and pet-owner knows what i'm talking about. still. neither she nor i had time to react. she had never thrown up (like, legitimately vomited) before, and it caught us both by surprise. the first one went all down her front, but then, before the second round began, her eyes locked onto her favorite receptacle as of late - a.k.a., my boobs. she grabbed the collar of my shirt (luckily, or, unluckily, a v-neck) and bent over like a verdrunken sorority girl prayin' to the porcelain gods. so deft were her movements then that i have to assume she was tapping some sort of innate knowledge. at that point i was paralyzed... i didn't want to move for fear of leaking or jostling the contents of my cleavage... so i called, as loudly as i could without waking the other child, for a bowl, and backup, both of which were delivered in short order. of course, by then, it was too late. my C-cups runneth over. with barf.

with some assistance, i was able to get myself, and the girl, cleaned up, and Super Dad took the next shift, which, unfortunately for him, ended up lasting until 3:30am. unfortunately for me, as soon as i was de-barfed and climbing back in between my clean warm sheets, J woke up for who knows what reason (an evil ax-weilding ghost? a gnat?) and i was too tired to battle so i just climbed in bed next to him and spent the next 3 hours attempting to sleep with heels and toes jammed up in my ribs and nose.

so yeah. that was my monday. how's your week going?!

i don't know why, but the "pre-barf-warning sounds" remind me of this:
Buttercup: We'll never succeed. We may as well die here.
Westley: No, no. We have already succeeded. I mean, what are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp? One, the flame spurt - no problem. There's a popping sound preceding each; we can avoid that. Two, the lightning sand, which you were clever enough to discover what that looks like, so in the future we can avoid that too.
Buttercup: Westley, what about the R.O.U.S.'s?
Westley: Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist.