Leap Day

If you decide to have kids, there will come a day when one of them throws up all over you.

This is a fact.  I wish it wasn’t so.  You should know this before you have children so you can change your mind and get something a little less high maintenance.  Say, a newt.

And while you, stunned, step back and assess the damage done to your shirt, pants, and yes, even socks, the dog will attack you with a hungry look in her eyes, as if you were made of bacon and not soggy clothing covered with regurgitated oatmeal.  In that moment you will think to yourself, I do not understand dog culture.

Your child will cry, of course, the same way you can’t help but cry when you throw up, albeit in the toilet where you’re supposed to throw up, and you will feel compelled to comfort him, even though there is not once ounce of throw up on his clothing and his socks are not wet and he is going to have a lazy day of sitting in front of the television and cuddling with his stuffed doggie, who smells like cheese but who are you to judge.  The stuffed doggie will probably get thrown up on, even though you have given your child a bowl, your large silver mixing bowl you made chocolate chip cookies in last week and probably will again next week, too.

But you won’t think about that right now.

While your child lounges and demands gingerale, you, of course, will be doing laundry and complaining about your predicament to your husband, who got out of a meeting to answer your 911 phone call.

“You did this!” you will yell.  “I wanted a newt.”

And he will have the audacity to suggest this isn’t the way it went at all.

You will strip down to you underwear right there in the kitchen, then scoop up your child like a sack of potatoes and get him out of ground zero territory.  Unfortunately, you will turn to view your dog- who is a complete and total idiot, by the way- licking vomit from the kitchen floor with delight.  And in a moment of shame, you think you’ll let her finish, because then you will not have to scoop up barf with cheap paper towels.  You bought cheap paper towels because it seemed prudent at the time.

It does not seem prudent now.

Of course, you are not that person, so you drag your very disappointed dog and put her outside, where she runs in circles in the snow over and over and over again, happily, seemingly nourished.

After setting your child up with bowl, blanket, doggie, and television show, you will clean up ground zero, wash yourself off with wipies, and put on a bathrobe with the intention of taking the world’s fastest shower.  Of course the doorbell rings., and you can’t ignore it because your precocious daughter has opened the door despite multiple warnings about monsters occasionally ringing doorbells in order to feast on silly little girls stupid enough to answer.  Your daughter laughs at this story.  I’m serious!  You insist.  Silly mommy, she says. 

It’s a teenage girl.  She says, “I’m collecting money.  My youth group is going to fast for 48 hours to, you know, see what it’s like?  And we’re raising money.”  So you will fling a $10 bill her way and tell her she’s ridiculous- there are some people in the world who love to eat only to puke once the food reaches their gut, but fine.  Go be hungry for a while. 

You won’t really say that.  You will be pleasant and hospitable, in your husband’s Hugh Hefner bathrobe.

You will wonder why she’s not in school.

The shower won't happen because you are afraid the minute you turn the shower head on will be the moment your small child chokes on his own vomit, so you curl up on the sofa next to him, stroking his cheek until he falls into a blissful slumber.  And even though your daughter is no longer watching the television, you don’t turn it off.  You are quite certain that The Fresh Beat Band is as good as any pop group out there.  Better than Katy Perry, for sure.

Your will child begin to snore, loudly.  So loud, in fact, that he will wake himself up, start choking, eventually puking all over his doggie, who now smells less like cheese and more like vomit.

And you will remember that it’s Leap Day, which is really rather fantastic.  A year from now, you can look back and say to yourself, “this day never happened.  It never happened at all.”