RANT III: though it's more of a sob, or a whimper

I gotta tell ya, I didn't see this one coming...

I guess it started OUT an o.k. day, and I wonder if I can pinpoint where it went wrong.  I did some writing this morning, and then took a good, hot and soapy shower, because it had been a few days...  That pretty much took until the kid got home from school 'cause they had a half day today, and it's Friday, so there wasn't any homework (yaay!).  Necessity drove us to the mall - tomorrow is my niece's birthday, and she's having a sleepover - to the girlie accessory shop for pink and shiny oversize rings, feathery earrings, chunky bracelets; and to the department store for Bakugan.

O.k., I think we're closing in on our first snag in the fabric of the day - the boy hadn't wanted to go to the mall in the first place, and I don't blame him - I'm not much for shopping, and it usually gets frustrating before it gets done.  Now, my kid is a sweet kid, by the standards of most of the folks he runs into, but he hasn't been minding me lately, and it's been...pissing me off.  Look back two posts for a discussion on how much I like to be pissed off.  I've threatened that if I have to tell him three times to not do what he's doing, I'm not gonna buy him the cool toy that's sitting in the cart next to him, the mind-blowingly cool toy we didn't even know existed until we saw it in the store just prior to putting it in the cart...even though it's not HIS birthday.

So he touches what he shouldn't, or runs ahead into the crowd, or what-have-you I don't even remember anymore, and I stop in my tracks, give him the, 'I can't believe you just DID the thing again' look, and swing the cart around saying, "oh, well, guess we're putting the toy back then."  He cries, I feel like the biggest asshole in the world (because there were only two on the shelf and who knew if there would be any more so we'd better get it while the getting was good), stopping my roll just short of the checkout (sans toy) to have a heart-to-heart in the girls' department.  Basically I make him swear to be the best boy ever in the whole world for the rest of his life, and I will suspend punishment of his transgression and get the toy.  The world is good, forward progression resumes, one more stop to go...

...but wait!!!  I want something, just for me.  Selfish, I know, but true.  There is a little pink building between here and there, and I've been meaning to stop in for awhile, so I hijack myself to the tattoo / piercing place.  My mom had my ears pierced when I was 8, because I guess she wanted hers pierced when she was 8 and wasn't allowed, but she didn't ask me, and I resented that.  When I was 15, she wouldn't give me permission to get a double pierce, but I went and got one anyway.  I had a cat named Delia who traveled with me for 5 years, and when she died, I fasted for a week, then put in a triple pierce for her (I dug that cat).  I hardly ever wear earrings in my first holes, which represent my mom and my dad to me, but for the past 20 years or so, I've worn a small silver ring in the double pierce, which is on the left side.  In the triple, also on the left, I've worn a stainless stud.  Today, I changed out the silver ring for a blue ring with a silver ball that is up a gauge (owie), and I changed out the stainless for a green ball, green for Delia's eyes.  I also put in a double on the right (owie), a purple ball, for Zev because his birthstone is amythest.  He just kind of sat still and looked around the whole time, the place got kind of busy.  I think he was afraid to look!  Anyway, back on track to...

...the costume shop.  My friend speculated to me recently that life would be all good if he only had a rainbow afro wig.  Done.  If that's all it takes, man, I got your back!  Right?  If someone I care about can experience happiness by way of something so simple to provide?  And if this friend was pretty down into the depressive dumps, like, all the way down?  One rainbow afro wig comin' up, man!  Now, on the ride to wigtown, I asked the kid a hundred times if he was hungry, the afternoon getting on towards evening by now, and he refused all offers of food, but named his thirst a priority.  We accomplish yet another mission, and with water bottle and wig in hand, we rolled on towards the delivery, and I called another friend who apparantly was open to having us all over tonight.  Super!

The afro was a hit.  I'm that good, because it's that easy!  The kid waited in the car.  Now he really wanted to go home.  I said we should stop for some food and  go check out another friend for a bit, then head home.  He insisted he still wasn't hungry.  About 10 minutes up the road, just a few hundred yards from my buddy's driveway, the poor little guy says "my belly hurts" and promptly pukes all over himself.  Oh, goodness..."just hang on buddy, we're almost there!  Hang on, we'll get to the house, get you in, and get you all cleaned up, don't worry, it's o.k., here we are..."

My boy doesn't really like getting wet all that much, let alone sitting in a puddle of his own puke, and the shreiking that ensued while I had to half-drag him into the house as he clenched his shaking little fists into balls wrenched my heart.  We beelined straight for the bathroom, got him naked, wiped off, and tucked in under a blanket on the couch, and I ran back out to the car for my bag o' tricks.  These two bags packed for the apocolypse that I've kept in my trunk now for 6 years, and had recently considered not needing anymore, made me proud to be equipped for the incident.  The small boy was soon reclothed in dry and comfy gear, and tucked back in with a movie.  He drank a few gulps of water.  Crisis averted.  About 20 minutes later, he puked again.

By now, I had  just finished pulling out the carseat, toweling the puke off the backseat and the floor of the car, and disassembling the carseat for washing.  I took the boy in the bathroom, stripped him down and toweled him off AGAIN, tucked him back in on the opposite end of the couch (in his underpants and socks this time), toweled off the couch, and added a SECOND pile of his clothes along with the blankets to the growing pile of wash.  Lucky my friend has a washer and dryer!  He takes another few gulps of water, and after about ten more minutes, he pukes again.  Now I call the doctor.  He has me check my son's abdomen for pain, in case of appendicitis, but he seems clear of that danger, and to have just succumbed to the stomach bug of the month.  He's six, and this is the second time he's ever puked (other than spitting up as a baby, which he did in abundance), so it's no biggie, really.  I wrap him in a comfy shirt of mine from out of the bag, and tuck him in once more...

Here's the second snag - my friend who's house it is starts in with his half-drunk proselytising on what he considers to be an over-reaction on my part to the kid's well-being.  I argue with him for a bit, about how he doesn't understand the urgency with which parenting can sometimes require you to be present in, but all he does by way of helping to keep me reassured is to loudly proclaim , "Wow, you REALLY need a man in your life!" repeatedly.  Fine, I say after a bit, I need a man's opinion?  I'll call the kid's father, if I'm not to be trusted with my own opinion in this situation.  The father is called, and I hand the phone over for the men to discuss business that is obviously outside my real of understanding.  Once they have consulted and it's MY turn to discuss our child with the other parent,  I am vindicated by the words, "well, HE'S wasted...", followed by a thoughtfully concerned inquiry into the state of the boy, and calming conjecture and conference with me about the course of action.  He is a good friend...

Then, things seem to calm down.  My muffin's stomach appeared to settle itself a bit, and he valiantly tried to fall asleep among the too loud voices, the noise of the laundry, and the t.v. (I'd have taken him home in a NY minute, but his carseat and coat were spinning in the laundry).  I turned off the t.v. and the lights in the living room, tucked him in with a fresh blanket, sat with him and helped him slow his breath and integrate the noises around him into a lullaby.  As he drifted off, I slowly withdrew myself from his bubble of tenuous sleep, rejoined my friends in the kitchen for a cigarette break, and began shuffing some cards to further soothe the high-alert out of my nerves.  I took a few deep breaths.  I had a tall glass of water, and a snack.  I was tired, but I was happy to be almost over this small incident with a few friends nearby to enjoy a game of cards with while the laundry turned...as the boy slept, and things got cleaned, an air of playfulness gently poked it's way through the loud punctuations of the frequent drinkers, while I indulged my preference for smoke (yay!).  Ahh.

Snag three, the BIG one.  I don't even know how far into this I have the emotional strength to go - it's taken me twice as long to write about as it did to live it already, and I would like to start dealing with being in the aftermath of it now.  How do I even approach it?  My friend has this other friend...I can't stand her.  She rubs me the wrong way.  Every instance in which I've had to deal with her leaves me incredulous, and crawling with disdain.  Let's just say I've made it clear that I will not share space with this woman, and yet she continues to show up at my friend's when she knows I'm there.  He's not going to disassociate with her entirely just because I don't like her, but he does a pretty good job of keeping the two of us seperate.  She shows up, I leave.  Period.  But tonight, I got a sick kid sleeping on the couch, whose clothes and carseat are still spinning in the dryer - the MOMENT this bitch sets foot in the house, I am in kill mode.  My eyes get big, my heart starts pounding , and I start telling the person sitting next to me in very hushed tones that 'she needs to go'.  This is imperitive.  The intruder must leave the premises immediately.  My friend whose house it is, instead of stopping her at the door and explaining that she can't play tonight, actually leads her in - to the room my kid is sleeping in!!!  I'm an adrenaline fountain.  I realize that she's not leaving.  He's not asking her to leave.  He's talking quietly with her in the other room...the bitch comes sauntering into the kitchen where the other dude and I are sitting, and says in a mocking tone, "hel-lo!" making it clear to me that she has no plans of leaving.  I am up out of my chair.  My other friend is standing there doing nothing, so I'm out.  I'm putting on my shoes, and I am leaving.  I shout once that "she has to GO!" before I  get on my boots, which takes way longer than I want it to, because now my less than friendly friend is yelling at me and telling me I need to chill, while he is still making no attempt to remove this person from his house.  I grab my poor sleeping kid from under the blankets, half naked, and carry him out into the chilly night, where his bare bottom must have loved sliding onto the cold leather seat, ran back in for my keys, and drove off into midnight -

I thought it was over once we were home and I had the boy safely tucked in to my bed next to me, but the phone rang several times in the night, which of course, I didn't answer.  I checked the messages this morning though, and it was my (thinking he's not really a) friend whose house it was calling on the cell phone of the other dude who was there, to tell me what a fucking cunt I was, and because of the drama I had stirred up, he now had no contacts and no prospects of work as a result of his cell phone getting smashed.  I dunno.  I didn't call him back.  He called later in the day from his own number, though, to tell me I left some stuff at his house - frankly, I wasn't planning on going back for it, I was just gonna give it up for dead...

Anyway, that's the story, from my MY perspective at least.  I am so. completely. humiliated and beside myself with greif that my two friends did nothing to back me up, and ask this person to leave.  I've known these guys a long time, and I thought my comfort level meant a bit more to them than that, but I was wrong again.  Who the HELL can you count on, anymore?  And to be called awful words and accused of causing the destruction of property because the fact that this woman whom I hate so much once brought over a pizza when we were down and out - when I have been there time and again for 20 years?  There's plenty of goddamned people in the world who've fed us when we were down and out who he wouldn't give a second thought about tossing out of his house on my account or anyone else's!  Given these particular circumstances, I am beyond heartbreak.  I've been so lonely in my life, having lost more relationships than I've gained, and now I realize that I must be even lonlier still before I see this transition through.  It's enough to send me through a whole bar of dark chocolate, and losing the fight against a fierce hankering for some soda.

I guess I've put down all I need to say about this right now, and I'm hoping I'm sufficiently purged, because I'm ready to be free of this 'place'.  All this upheaval, all this change.  Not just here with me, I've seen it a couple of other places as well, in others.  I'm feeling sadly Zen, if that's a possible way to feel.  And I think I've come to the end of it.  It's now night of the following day, having kept myself and the boy in bed throughout as much of it as possible, because we're both relatively exhausted and drained.  He didn't make it to his cousin's party, and I didn't get my night out.  I can't even guess what I may need right now, but I'm gonna go cast about and see if I can't find something that might nourish and revive me, soothe me, and help me see my way through.

The kid nailed it - he wanted chicken soup, and I had made some brown rice...earthy goodness,

THE END