It's 10 a.m. and I've had maybe five hours of sleep. The boys are asleep and will probably sleep for several more hours. I need to write so I don't kill either one of them.
You know, the hard part is figuring out how much backstory you need. Probably none, so
Yesterday, Chris took Ant with him to work. He needed to check wiring and fix stuff, move heavy objects, etc. Ant was with him for many hours and it was past dinnertime when he was ready for the show. When I picked Ant up, Chris told me that he'd worked really hard and had been seriously rewarded. Spoiled, even. Oh, wonderful. Rewards in this family tend to be extravagant. Sure enough, Ant told me all about what he got before we turned around to go home.
He said after dinner he got this huge dessert that was also really rich. He said Chris only had one bite so he had to finish the whole thing by himself. "I almost threw up like four times!" he said. Oh, how wonderful! Then he told me Chris had paid him too, almost thirty dollars! This is the point where I was ready to drive into a tree. Unfortunately, we were downtown and there were no trees.
Maybe I'm being a cheapskate. Am I being a cheapskate? Or is $30 a lot? I feel like it's overkill. Whatever, it was done, and I tried to make peace with it. We stopped at the dog park so give the girls some exercise, then we went home. I made Mike's birthday cookies and Ant read the first page out of the U.S. Presidents workbook I bought him at Target.
"I got you something, but you're not going to like it," I said.
He was understandably wary, but upon flipping through it he said, "Oh, this won't be too bad." Aww. See, this is important because I need to see good things right now. He read the first page and told me what he already knew and what he learned. There were two puzzles on the page and we found out that George Washington was a surveyor. I had him look that up and then we looked up pictures of the damage to the Washington Monument. I was worried that I was going overboard as usual, but then he asked me if that wasn't across from the Lincoln thing is. He knew that was where Martin Luther King, Jr. "did that little speech."
"Big speech," I said. "There were tons of people there."
"Yeah," he said. "Like 7,000."
I assured him it was many more than that. "Look it up!" he said. "I'm right if it's anything between 700 to 7,000."
He wanted to look it up! Of course, he only wanted to prove he was right, or close, but he wanted to look it up! We found that it was over 200,000. He thought that was close enough to count and said he was only like 13,000 off. I led him to the whiteboard and we did the math problem.
"Oh."
So after that he went off to bed and I finished up with the cookies, cleaned the kitchen and started picking up around the house. I think it was somewhere around 1 that I heard Ant groaning. He has vocal dreams sometimes so I put the TV on mute to listen. If it was a dream it was pretty awful, so I went to check it out. He was awake and suffering from a terrible stomachache.
I got my symptoms book because even though I was reasonably sure it was the dessert talking back, I didn't want to be wrong and miss something important. I checked his temperature first and in the hallway just outside his room I saw an enormous ant. I trapped it in a cup and went to ask him where it hurt. He showed me his belly and I saw no marks but I went to look up types of ants anyway. Chris came home, we consulted with each other and gave Ant some Pepto.
Chris laid down with Ant for a while and checked his temperature again. This is where I'll admit to horrible stepmother issues. I felt supremely annoyed, not only that this was likely the result of Chris giving him some huge, rich dessert, but I worried that Chris would fall asleep in Ant's room and never come to bed. Yes, Ant was legitimately feeling horrible and he wasn't the one responsible and he's only a kid. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's how I felt. If I can host my own pity party, I go to bed by myself many nights and here I'd stayed up, he was home, and I was still going to bed alone. This is ridiculous, I know. But when people tell me that I might as well be his mom, this is where it gets into very gray areas. I responded to him immediately, I did the best I could to accurately diagnose his problem, and tried to make him more comfortable. I remembered a night when I crawled up two flights of stairs in horrible pain. When I got to Mom, she told me it was probably gas and I should go drink some Pepto. I knew that was likely Ant's problem, but I tried to look at symptoms only. It would be awful if he'd been bitten or was suffering from appendicitis and I just gave him Pepto and sent him back to bed. I am missing something instinctive here, and I'm trying to think through the problem. When Chris got home, he laid down with Ant and cuddled him, something that never occurred to me. I'm not sure it would, as his room is smelly. Sounds heartless, right? I went in with the heat sock and watched Chris remove the thermometer from Ant's mouth, read it, wipe it on Ant's pillowcase, and stick it in his own mouth to make sure it was working right. I would not do that.
Now, Chris will share my toothbrush if he can't find his. I would not. I am weird about sharing anyway, and with Chris I have come a long way. He and I share a lot, but it wasn't always that way. I really have to acknowledge this because it makes me feel bad that I can't do this stuff with Ant, but I have never really been able to share with anybody. I want my own pillowcase, not one someone else has slept on. I don't want to share my drink. It is not okay for you to take a bite of my sandwich. It's not that I don't like to share; I just don't want your cooties. With Chris, I have grown to not be bothered by these things. We always share drinks and he'll take bites of my sandwiches and it doesn't bother me, but it used to. When he uses my toothbrush I almost curl my lip but then I don't find myself grossed out so I move on. I don't know how many other people suffer from this problem, but I can't stand using a phone that someone else has been on and the earpiece is all warm. I can't stand using a mouse that's warm from someone else's hand. Maybe I'm related to Howard Hughes, but the point I'm trying to make to myself is that I actually can't stand this stuff with anybody, it just looks especially bad because I can share so much with Chris. Compared to him, I'm a germophobe with anyone else. More importantly, I feel obligated to be that physically close to Ant because I'm in that role. I should be able to get past the smell of his room, I should be able to smell his breath like Chris can. And I can't.
So the Pepto didn't seem to help and Ant threw up. He continued moaning and visiting the bathroom. I don't know how often, but it continued periodically until 5 a.m. Chris did come to bed only to leave again and again, but he did eventually stay. I expressed displeasure a few times last night and he took it pretty well. He told me that Ant hadn't finished his dinner but had ordered dessert and was already eating it before Chris could stop him. I can promise you that we have no strict clean plate policy-- if he says Ant didn't finish his dinner it means he barely touched it.
If I had been there, Ant would not have asked for dessert because he would know I would refer to his dinner. He wouldn't have dared to order it anyway because he would be in trouble and I would just take it away. Chris has a very hard time saying no to anyone, especially his kid. He decided that Ant would pay the price later, and boy did he. Chris often wants to encourage that result, a cause and effect approach, but is Ant really going to get that? I don't know, but it hardly seems like the best strategy. It doesn't help anyone to be up all night. None of us slept, and I'll admit it was not the most kindhearted moment at 3 when I suggested to Chris that Ant needed a tranquilizer dart. That earned me a hard look, but Chris did take the blame and got up to tend to Ant throughout the night until he went to sleep.
All of this is intended to get the anger out so I can get through the day. We're supposed to go spend it at Topaz to celebrate Mike's birthday and I'm so annoyed at the lack of consideration. Or maybe more accurately, the lack of foresight. The lack of assertiveness. There is a reason why Ant behaves so differently with Chris, and a reason why we can't go anywhere together. Today is going to need a lot of patience and tolerance because Elaine can't say no either. Even Mike spoils Ant, or tries to. It's hard to find room to spoil him sometimes. Today I'm going to give Ant a breakfast of toast and water and I'll be standing guard against any sweets or sodas, caffeinated or not. That's if I can even get them up and out the door. It's almost noon now. Elaine called at 10 and thought it might be a stomach bug that's going around. I think not. It's certainly possible, but the combination of a giant dessert and all afternoon in the heat is too likely to ignore. Plus, the upchucking eventually stopped. His body tried to get rid of it immediately, but he fought it down. It just came back later on when he was defenseless.
I am going to have to work hard to be kind today when I really want to throttle them both. Chris, of course, for letting him have that much and Ant for being so damn greedy. And both of them if they argue against going to Topaz. Ant can lay low, but Chris and I can certainly help Mike out with whatever he needs and bring him some goodies and good cheer for his birthday- something he certainly does for all of us. Wish me some strength to deter Elaine's excuses for her son and grandson and some patience and love to deal with the ones I love that I have no patience with.
