It’s that time of year again: The time of my husband, Justin’s, annual trip to watch Spring Training for baseball in Arizona while I stay home with the kids on a supposed “Staycation,” managing things,
doling out warmly welcomed life-lessons, as is a mom’s way.
Back when I thought him going away with his friend from work to watch baseball training camp on repeat was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I made the mistake of telling him he deserved it, “His dreams were worth it;”
But he took that and ran with it, and now we are on year 5 of him booking a flight to sunny alone-time while I just stay here and call out asking where all my silverware is, and why there are so many cups, and suddenly I’m back to thinking maybe his dreams can wait.
It’s not that I don’t want him to have fun doing things that interest him.
It’s just that time has made it so that the cute little girls I used to have that staycation here with in the beginning of this tradition are also gone, and now, suddenly, there are two teenagers and a pre-teen girl in their place, and, frankly, they kind of scare me.
We used to spend this girls’ weekend holed up watching movies, and paiting nails,
but now they just come lurching out from their rooms to grumble like a trio of Bridge Trolls, and to roll their eyes at me.
To make matters worse, the night before Justin was to leave, one of our cats came in from outside with a giant wound on it’s neck that required I take him to the emergency vet at 9pm while Justin tried to get some pre-travel sleep.
The emergency vet sits on a strip the next town over that is normally reserved for the type of people that cook things on Hibachi grills on the sidewalk with 4 foot flames, prosititues, and meth junkies.
This vet is still requiring people to use Covid protocols, and, therefore, we spent three hours sitting in our car while we waited for the cat to be seen, watching a smattering of interesting characters parade down the street.
One lady who looked to be wearing no pants searched the bushes of an entire city block with a flashlight. Perhaps she was looking for said pants, or something to grill.
I pressed the lock button twice, praying the sound of me doing it was discreet.
After the vet visit, there was an issue with the card I was attempting to use, because it had only Justin’s name on it. The front desk lady insised I call him at midnight and have him process the payment for me.
This required me calling three times in order to wake him up, and when I did, he conducted that entire phone call, clearly only half-awake, talking to me and her on speaker phone with his CPAP mask still on and running.
If you have never heard someone talk through a CPAP mask, consider yourself among the chosen.
No sound from your spouse will ever more quickly make you wish for a time machine to go back to your wedding day and re-think things.
Once the payment was processed, I told him to have a nice trip, and go back to sleep while I was finally allowed to recieve my cat back, who now had a 4” band around his entire neck shaved, causing him to look like someone had attached a cat head to the end of a plucked chicken neck.
Along with the receipt I recieved instructions to do five minute long hot compresses on him every night, and I wanted to cry, but I was scared the sound would alert the Walkers in the bushes.
All I wanted was to go home and finally begin this supposed “Staycation” week.
The cat yowled the entire way home and then, just a few miles from home, a fox ran directly in front of my car in the street.
I had to swerve violently to try to miss it, and miss it I did, miraculously, as that thing somehow ducked and went directly under our car and ran off while I tried stop my car from rocking, and to once again join my spirit and body.
I reentered my house at 1am with my heart still racing, covered in mystery cat emergency substances, having seen some things.
Start of Staycation – Take Two!
Now I could sleep.
Only, I hadn’t planned well, and on my calendar for the next day I was to take my youngest to have braces put on first thing in the morning.
The sensitive-to-all-things preteen.
Justin made it safely to his destination, in spite of the multiple articles he read aloud this last week with shifty eyes about airplane rides that passengers narrowly escaped from.
I don’t know if he was expecting some kind of sympathy, or what, but I’m just going to ask him if he’s ever heard of a little thing called attempting to hold a cat still while you flush an open wound and give it antibiotics, or applying braces wax to a highly sensitive kid that is sure to be Gordon Ramsey of All Food That is Blended.
He needs to be careful at this point who he airs things to.
I would have taken just about any plane that was given.
I mean, they all have parachutes is all I’m saying.
I spent all of Supposed Staycation Day One answering questions about braces.
The questions ranged from if anyone in our family line has ever had something called a “Power Chain” to if she would still be allowed to eat Funions:
A question that confused me greatly, as she has never once in her life ever eaten a Funion.
I wondered where she was getting her bizarre list of questions until I realized she was watching Braces YouTube channels on her phone underneath a blanket like a true Information Addict.
She is immersed in the culture now.
Orthodontics is all she knows anymore.
She is deep in the Underground of Teeth, and she doens’t care who knows about it.
Add to this I am pretty sure the othet two are PMSing.
I won’t dare ask them, though, because I am here alone, and, with the preteen under the blanket, there is no one here to miss me.
Anyone with teenage girls knows you don’t ask about PMS unless you have a death wish.
So, I have just been tiptoeing, talking about enamel staining, and washing dishes.
I have already had to clip a loose braces wire with my phone light and toenail clippers.
A truly glamorous life!
Just me and my cucumber slices.
I’ve still got more days to go, too.
I’m only half-way through the excitement.
Awhile ago, Justin messaged his annual selfie in the Arizona sun with the caption
“Sun’s out, guns out,” and asked how things were going.
I don’t think he was expecting me to answer that next year that solo vacation is mine,
and, the way things are going so far, it might just be to join Witness Protection.
I have dreams, too, you guys, and not one of them involves a cat neck infection.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
