Panic!

You know when the perfect time is to tackle a major project, such as cleaning out a huge drawer full of 5 years worth of "I have no idea where to put this so I'm throwing it into this huge drawer" crap? Well, in my mind it's the day before friggin' Thanksgiving when you have a 15 pound turkey thawing in the meat drawer and 15 different side dishes to chop stuff up for and a bathroom in desperate need of a cleaning. What the hell...I'm going to clean out the drawer full of shit I've been avoiding for FIVE YEARS!

Tony tried to help me at one point but he didn't like my system. I was taking things out one at a time, assessing it carefully and then placing it in a pile of like items or throwing it away. For example, I had a bunch of "Pirates of the Caribbean" stickers and I had to decide whether they were worth keeping. Honestly, I only really wanted the ones of Johnny Depp, but each sheet of stickers had some of Kiera Knightly (Who really bugs me...I think it's her teeth. She looks like a piranha. So does Sigorney Weaver. She bugs me too.)and Orlando Bloom who I could care less about.

Okay, so were there enough stickers of Johnny Depp to make it worth my while to keep them? Also, what in the world am I going to do with a bunch of Johnny Depp stickers? Not being a 12 year old, I don't have a notebook to put them on. Brenna wouldn't ever stick them on her notebooks because, "Mom...he's so, so, so old!" So what exactly is their perceived value? This is my process.

Tony just wanted to chuck them in the sticker pile with nary a thought. Oh no, you drawer sorting novice! It has to take a maddeningly long time to decide what to do with each item! Then you have to arrange all your piles in order of importance! Then you have to tire of the project and have a beautifully empty drawer, but a bunch of stupid-ass piles all over the couch. That's the way to sort, dammit!

Anyway, there were a ton of photos in the drawer as well and, as any good sorter knows, you have to spend a really long time looking at each one and talking about when it was taken and then argue about when it was taken and then decide you really can't remember when it was taken, etc. Well, I came across a couple of pictures and they reminded me of a really, really great story. Actually, it makes me look like a lunatic, but I'm willing to expose my crazy side.

Okay, first of all, let me concede this point: I am NOT a morning person. Everyone who knows me understands that. However, my children still like to push the envelope once in a while on the occasional morning. Unfortunately, they always seem to pick a morning that we are out of half and half for my coffee, the dogs come in with muddy paws and I have my period. It's like they just like to live on the edge.

So, this particular morning (a few years ago) Brenna decided that she hated all her clothes. Her bus was going to come in 15 minutes and she was sitting on her bedroom floor in her underwear with her arms around her legs and rocking back and forth. I went in her room to see why she wasn't brushing her teeth yet and found her like that just rocking and staring at her armoire. I asked her what she was doing and she told me she had nothing to wear. Keep in mind that this child had an armoire filled with everything the Gap Kids had in her size. I decided to take the high road rather than lose my cool and give her the "Look at all these clothes! You have more clothes than your father and I do combined! Pick something out you ungrateful brat!" speech.

So I started to pull out clothes and show them to her saying, "How about this? You look great in this!" and she would look at the clothes and then at me like, "What are you talking about you idiot?" I finally pulled out a pair of pants and tossed them to her with a "Just put these on, you're going to be late," and she just calmly said, "I hate those pants and I will never wear them." I knew that wasn't true...she was just trying to get a rise out me. Well, guess what? That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I picked up the pants held them with one leg in each hand and said, "Oh yea? Well, then you won't mind if I do this?!?" and I pulled the legs as hard as I could in an attempt to rip them.

Let me tell you, denim is a tough fabric to tear and no matter how hard I tried to rip those stupid jeans I couldn't do it. She yelled, "Don't!" but I was so determined to rip those damn jeans at this point I was red in the face. I think I finally ripped off a belt loop when Brenna finally grabbed them out of my hands. She started to put them on and I left her room saying, "You better brush your teeth because if you don't hurry you are going to miss the bus and I am NOT driving you to school; you can walk."

I went in the bedroom to calm down and heard her walk in the bathroom. I went out in the hall and looked in the open bathroom door. She was getting ready to brush her teeth and I heard her mutter something like, "I hate these stupid jeans..." I asked, "What did you say?" and she just sighed and didn't look at me while she began to brush her teeth. As I stood there, silent (again, deciding to take the high road) she did the one thing I cannot tolerate. She slammed the bathroom door. In my face. Okay, you might as well just say, "Screw you, bitch!" because that is what you really mean when you slam a door on someone, right? I turned around and screamed, "Don't you EVER slam a door on me!" and I lifted up my leg and prepared to kick the fucking door down because I was so pissed off.
As I'm readying my best "Cagney and Lacey gonna bust down the door" kick, my darling Tony came walking out of the kitchen, glanced up the stairs and yelled, "Don't do it! I can't fix that!!" (He is not a handyman under the best of circumstances...what would he have done with a door, off the hinges and with a big foot-sized hole in it? We would have had to move.)

Well, thank GOD for the voice of reason. I didn't kick down the door (Which would have been stupid anyway. It wasn't even locked.) I just violently opened the door to find Brenna cowering on the floor because she knew she was in big-ass trouble. I don't even know what I yelled at her at this point. I just went downstairs and looked at Tony and said, "You are going to be late for work because I am going for a walk," and I left. I walked all the way down to the baseball field at the end of our street and I sat on the bench shaking. I was so mad at Brenna, but I was mostly mad at myself. I had lost my temper with a child. Yes, she was being unreasonable, but I was the grown-up and I loved her so much. I couldn't believe I had left her crying on the bathroom floor. So, I got up, crying, and I started home. As I got closer I could see her bus pulling up. I started to run and got to the house just in time to see her tear streaked face staring at me out the back window of the bus. Seriously. I felt like such a shitty, bitchy mother.

So, I grabbed Bronte (who was a toddler at the time) and I got in the car and drove to my friend B's house. She has 4 kids and once, notoriously, got so mad at one of them she duct taped him to the wall. I knew she would make me feel better. I rang her bell and I took one look at her and started to cry. I sobbed, "I'm the worst mom, EVER!" She just put her arm around me and took me to the most comfortable room in the house...the screened-in porch with the full bar. She poured me a 7-up and vodka (it was about 9 a.m.) and I told her the whole story. I stayed there for a couple of hours and then I went home, feeling much better.

Ok...so here is the funny part. At about 10:30 that night Tony was getting ready to leave and go to the homeless shelter where he volunteered once a month. I was sitting downstairs watching t.v. and I heard Tony say (from upstairs) "Holy shit."

"What?" I asked.

Tony said, "You better come up and see."

Well, the front room of our house has a bank of 6 big windows which look out on our front yard. In our front yard is a tree and in that tree looking back at me was a 10-12 foot long, HUGE, red and yellow striped stuffed gecko. I looked at Tony and said, "What the hell is that?" Tony was kind of laughing and said, "I have no idea."

Well, I did NOT see the humor in this because it was about a year after 9/11 and terrorists were everywhere. I panicked. I looked at him and said, "Don't go out there! It's probably full of anthrax!" Tony was like, "Carolyn, really..." and I said, "Call the police! Maybe it's a bomb!" Tony said, "Calm down! It's a joke!" I countered with, "Terrorists flew airplanes into buildings! Who knows what this is?" There was a BIG pause and Tony said, "Right. Terrorists have the time to stuff a giant lizard with anthrax. AND I know we'd be a huge target. In Palatine, Illinois."

Okay, now I was feeling a little foolish...so I went outside and Tony took my picture in front of the tree with the gecko in it.
(Incidentally, we left it in the tree so the kids could see it in the morning. Bronte, who wasn't quite 2 years old at the time, took one look at it and said, "Holy crap!" Brenna had Tony take the thing out of the tree and she and Bronte carried it up and down the street laughing. Apparently it didn't cross their minds that it could have a bomb in it.)

So, how did the gecko get in my tree? Well, my friend B knew I was feeling really bad and she wanted to do something to cheer me up. So, she was driving around later that day with her 4 kids and she saw this 10 foot stuffed lizard in some one's garbage. Immediately she thought, "That's just the thing to cheer up Carolyn!" So she got her 4 kids (who were 2, 4, 7 and 8 years old at the time) out of the car and had them grab the gecko and shove it in the back of their Suburban. When it was just starting to get dark she put all 4 kids back in the car and drove to my house and they artfully arranged the gecko in my tree. Honestly, who the hell does something like that? And, she had all her kids with her. It was brilliant! It sounds crazy, but this is the same woman who asked me and Brenna to come over and help her toilet paper her own house to celebrate and surprise her son before his first football game when he was 8 years old.
In any case, when I found out that she had done this I waited an appropriate amount of time (I think it was almost a year) and we went and put the gecko in HER tree one evening. I think the gecko has been in about 5 trees around town since then.