Remember that old Simpsons’ episode where Apu went without sleep for several days and then thought he was a hummingbird? I feel like that, except for the no-sleep thing. I mean, I haven’t been sleeping that well but I have been sleeping; during the daylight hours I have been flitting around exactly like a hummingbird, going from task to task in a frantic kind of way. I have lists everywhere and every time I cross something off I do not get my usual feeling of accomplishment; instead I feel like I need to add five items.
The boys are sick with colds; Jake has a massive headcold and is currently lying on the couch watching Looney Tunes. Mark has a cough and any time he has a cough I get something like post-traumatic stress disorder from that time he had pneumonia. He coughs and my heart starts pounding, my entire body gets tense. Last night I heard him cough, ran into his room – nearly passing out in the process, due to the excellent combination of my super-low blood pressure and jumping out of bed – and asked if he needed his emergency inhaler. He was sound asleep. I stood there in the doorway, my heart pounding, feeling like a ridiculous hypochondriac of a mother.
In an interview prior to the Super Bowl, Ray Lewis said “I’m too blessed to be stressed” and I decided to adopt that as a motto for my life. I thought I should work that thought, in a zen-like way, into my everyday life. Which means I was practically screaming “I’M TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED! SERENITY NOW! NAMASTE MOTHERFUCKER!” today, for reasons too ridiculous to go into.
Oh well, they are sick, they’ll get better. The other day the boys were at a make-up karate class, on a different day than usual. On their usual day, all the kids get dropped off and picked up later, but for me, it’s too far to drive home and back, so I normally sit in the waiting area by myself. At the make-up class, the kids were younger and so there were a number of moms also waiting.
Here I must interject. I am the chatty, small-talky mom you might meet in a waiting area. Chances are if we just met I will find out your kids’ names, ages, activities, and favourite movies. But on this day, in this waiting room, there were three moms that obviously knew each other and settled in for what I assumed was their weekly chat, and I smiled at them and then, not wanting to interrupt them, continued writing in my notebook.
It turns out that I couldn’t have interrupted if I had wanted to. One of the moms started talking at 4:15 and didn’t stop for the next forty five minutes. It was something to behold. I looked up at one point, and noticed one of the moms she was talking at was busily crocheting, and the other was simply nodding and murmuring “Um hmmm. Hmmm.” at intervals. I guessed this was business as usual for this group. The woman talked nonstop about the following topics: her son’s hockey practice and the schedule they keep, her hairdresser, the frequency with which she speaks to her mother-in-law, the frequency with which her mother-in-law visits or with which she visits her mother-in-law, her Italian lessons and the expense incurred, the Kiwanis music festival at which she was accompanied by someone not musically talented, her son’s field trip to the Calgary Opera and how she was the single greatest chaperone on the trip, her own vast musical talent, fondue, and the weekend hockey tournament that took place at a wonderful venue in Edmonton and the cost of their hotel room. She told the other women what she posted as her statuses on Facebook for the past week, and how her family liked to spend their time in a relaxed manner at Disneyland. One of the other moms, at this point, began to talk about her own recent trip to Disneyland, and was instantly cut off when she said she liked to get to the gates early and then stay until close. “That must be because you’re Asian!” the woman said. I looked up, startled and horrified. The crocheting woman was still crocheting madly. The Asian woman, with what I thought was extreme self-control, nodded politely.
With the boys being too sick to go to their karate lesson today, I am not particularly looking forward to taking them to the make up class and being subjected to this kind of asinine one-sided conversation again. Although I’m kind of curious: will this obnoxiousness be a Groundhog Day-like occurrence? Does this verbal spewage happen every Tuesday from 4:15 to 5:00? If I flit around the waiting room like Apu the hummingbird, will it be noticed, or will everyone be too busy listening to “And then I posted on Facebook that happiness is a family marshmallow fight.”?
Oh my God, what a piece of work. Good thing you hadn’t joined in on the “conversation” (cough) monologue (cough).
Hope the kids are better SOON.
Today I learned: I must be Asian, because of how I am at Disneyland.
I had no idea.
You can have some of my mood. I’m… whatever the opposite of a hummingbird is. A sloth? A manatee? Maybe we could blend our powers & meet somewhere cute & reasonably useful in the middle like… A pony. A Shetland. They have marvelous hair.
Good luck at the next make up lesson.
Oh. my. god.
I just.
I can’t.
I commiserate though, with the coughing child pTSD. My younger has lung issues and also we just finished a week of barfing so every single cough OMG IS IT BARF IS IT ASTHMA IS IT BARF ASTHMA THAT DOESN’T EXIST OR DOES IT. I’m like that big dumb dog whenever anyone goes by the house ARFARFARFARF Jesus. Go to sleep.
Sorry. Asians? I hate people. But I want you to go back again and write down every single thing she says and then write more about her, okay, because it’s funny. Thaaaanks.
(Er..I don’t hate Asians. I hate people sometimes, I meant to say. My punctuation was off, there.)
I had a “friend” like that once. Yes, every day will be verbal diarrhea day.
Thanks to all the cold meds, the Asian comment had me mentally exclaiming “what the f@$&, buttercup” and marveling at the woman’s composure.
Hoping the colds ease up soon for the boys. Flying with a cold kinda sucks.
We’re going to Disneyland next week at which point we will pretend we are all Asian. I’ll be sure to take lots of photos to make that stereotype complete. This woman is obviously a total idiot. I think you should skip the make-up class to prevent your brain from exploding…or would that just be me?
Also! Yay! Disney! The kids have stopped sleeping two days ago.
I hope I can reassure you and Asian-hating Clara by saying that Angus had the worst lung issues ever when he was younger – every cold was an issue, there were inhalers, there were humidifiers, there was barf, it was horrendous – and now he’s twelve and it hasn’t happened for years.
There. I’ll be over here sloth-ing on the couch with Eryn.
“you and Asian-hating Clara” — HAHAHAHA!
Guess I’m not Asian, since the time we took the kids to Disneyland, we showed up at about 10ish and left at 4 pm. Since I’m also not a hummingbird, I’ll have to chose another animal. Maybe a cat since I alternate naps with bursts of frenetic energy. It’s a grand way to live.
You need to go back to that make up class and either record or transcribe the conversation/monologue.
“NAMASTE MOTHERFUCKERS!!” is going to be silk-screened on a T-shirt at my very earliest opportunity. I will then wear it to the farmers’ market because bah, hippies, take your patchouli-smell and your fair-trade coffee in your reusable mug made of hemp that was harvested by unicorns and GET OUT OF MY WAY, THE PORK CHOP GUY ALWAYS RUNS OUT OF PORK CHOPS BY 9AM.
4yo had terrible lung problems for the first three years of his life -inhalers and ER visits and humidifiers and the whole thing. He’s just about five now and we’re two years incident-free… but now the baby is showing many of the same signs and already has an inhaler. Every time someone in the house coughs, I jump three feet in the air and then sob quietly.
There is a woman like that at the boys’ soccer night. She sits with the same two women every week. Her 3yo daughter is an out-of-control menace who terrorizes everyone while she holds forth on effective parenting (!!!!!) and how ‘gifted’ said out-of-control menace is. Long exposure has made her easier to ignore.
See, I was going to ask you to shake up the routine and get the other two women talking about themselves for a change. Upset the status quo! But thanks to your other commenters, I do see that her monologue could be blogging. gold.
Also, Hannah’s comment made me laugh so hard. We totally go to the famer’s market for the pork guy.
Ha, I’ve encountered women that love to talk and talk. I tend to just be the “mmhmm” person as they prattle on about everything and anything.
I too am a master of chit chat! Just imagine the marvelous conversation we could end up having!
I feel like this woman’s sister might be a mom at my boys’ nursery school. Honestly, why do people feel that everyone wants to listen to them? Perhaps you should cough on her!
Good luck with Karate and hope the boys feel better soon!
And she didn’t poke the woman in the throat box for that comment?
I would have liked to have seen that actually.
We have been hit with a stomach tsunami. I feel ya.