You...knotheads!

When I was a kid, my sister and I did something to make my dad really angry.  I don't recall what we said or did, but I remember vividly his reaction.  He stood there, face getting red, struggling to come up with the correct words, and exploded with "You...knotheads!"  After the moment passed, we all found his reaction hilarious and have joked about it ever since.

Today, I had my own knothead moment.

Before I explain about the day, I want you to know the honest truth.  I want to be married and I want to be a mother.  Badly.  I really do.  It hasn't worked out for me yet, and accepting that it may never happen hasn't been easy, but I absolutely love being with children and look forward to having a family of my own someday.  I also have a completely wonderful nephew.  He's incredible.  He's funny, he's sweet, he's well behaved, and I adore every moment I spend with him.  The former baby has been such a great blessing to my life and has helped my family get through some really tough times this year.

But, he's also two.  And I'm also human and impatient.  Plus, we didn't get to go to the pool today, so that makes me extra cranky!

The day started off normally.  The formal baby was a little bit emotional today and clingy.  We cuddled a lot today.  He ate an early lunch, I put him down for a nap and he only laid in his bed for 15 minutes, singing his three favorite songs ("Twinkle, Twinkle," "Ba Ba Black Sheep" and the alphabet song) Broadway style (I'm so proud!  I taught him that!).  When he woke up we went for a long walk and he stopped at every car and yelled hello.

We came back to the house and I had to scan a bunch of pictures for a project I am working on.  I had to install the printer, and it took a long time, and kind of irritated me.  The scanner is a tad on the slow side.  I could, for example, take the dog hair out of the Dyson and weave the fur into a fabric and make a sweater in the time that it takes to scan one picture.  If you scan them all at once and then transfer them to the computer it is much faster than doing it one picture at a time.  So I scanned, and scanned, and scanned.  I scanned a whole, WHOLE lot of pictures.

In the process, my mother's farty anxious dog came to see me.  You see, my father passed away recently and now that my mother is gone on a trip, the dog is beside herself.  She thinks my mom is not coming back, I believe.  She constantly follows me around panting.  So, here comes the smelly, farty dog and she trips over the cord to the scanner and unplugs the thing.  I lost all the work I had done.  All of it.

I started to lose control.  I started to yell at the dog, who doesn't understand what she did, and I started to use words that rhyme with "buck" and "hit."  I recalled, however, that the former baby is like a myna bird right now, repeating everything.  So, I took a deep breath and kicked that smelly dog outside.  Fart on your own space, smelly dog, and stay away from my scanner!!

I resumed scanning, pulling out the pictures I had already done, and the former baby heard the scanner make a noise.  The former baby is drawn to anything electronic like a moth to a flame.  He came sprinting over as fast as his little chubby legs would take him, and turned off the freaking scanner!!  I lost my work, AGAIN.

I tried to use his swear words.  I yelled "WAFFLE!  VACUUM!"  But it didn't help me feel better.

I aborted the scanning mission and decided that I needed to find something else to do.  Meanwhile, the former baby, who lives, eats and breathes all things "vacuum" managed to get out the vacuum.  I look over and he is plugging the vacuum into the wall socket.  Not only is he NOT allowed to do this, I recalled a conversation I once had with my sister.  I asked her if I could drive the former baby to a party store to pick up supplies for my mother's birthday.  Her response to me was:

Well, I guess you could.  But I want you to understand that the baby is the most important thing in my life.  If something ever happened to him, I would forgive you, but it would forever be a stumbling block in our relationship.

Well, crap.  If she doesn't want me to drive around with him, she most definitely doesn't want me to let him electrocute himself.  So I swiftly corrected the situation.  This made the former baby very, very angry.  He knows he can't hit, so he turned around, found my digital camera, and threw it across the room.  I put him in the corner and listened to him wail as I put the vacuum away.  I was clearly ruining his entire life by putting it in the closet.  When he threw the camera, my memory card fell out and is still MIA.

Soon, my sister would be here to pick up the former baby.  I was rapidly losing patience with the little knothead.  So I took the former baby to a room where he played with a toy school bus.  He secretly put my camera batteries in the bus and was playing with them.  When I took the batteries away from him he was furious.  So then I put him at the piano and he played "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" about 45 times in a row.  I'm not even kidding.

I laid in the middle of the floor, trying to find my zen place, and made up my own words to the song.

Twinkle, twinkle little star

Where is your mother in her car?

You are cranky, and edgy

You're driving your aunt over the ledge-y

Twinkle, twinkle little star

Mommy I wonder where you are?

Thankfully, the child, who I truly do love, left soon after, but NOT before getting angry and head butting me like a goat.

All of this got me thinking.  Why am I happy to be a non-mommy?  What am I missing out on by not being a mother yet?  Here are some of my thoughts.

• When I am at the pool, the former baby has a certain panache for pulling my swimsuit top off.  He has exposed my white, white boob to the sun more times this summer than it has ever been exposed to in the past.  Perhaps this will help me find Mr. Right?  (Oh, wait.  I'm in a pool full of children, carrying a child that looks just like me, and I am so pigmentally challenged that I look like I'm half-albino.  There is no hope.)
• Tomorrow morning, I will get to sleep in.  All you mothers out there won't really be able to.  Non-mommyhood rocks!  Well, except for the fart machine dog that I'll have to get up and let out.
• I don't have to feel guilty if I want to go out for an evening, or have to find a sitter.  But to be honest, since I'm the only single woman left on the planet, I still have to deal with this issue because all of my friends have kids.  Boo.
• When I shop, I don't have to use the forty foot long carts that are made for children to sit in.  I'm a really bad driver when it comes to those carts!
• Yesterday I had to sit in a humid, dirty play area at Chick-Fil-A with my nephew.  I could feel the germs multiplying by the second.  Thankfully, I don't have to do this on a regular basis.
• I can eat cereal for every meal if I want to.  Who cares about nutrition once you hit the "Old Maid" mark?
• I do have to say, though, that the unconditional love and trust that I get from the former baby is pretty awesome, and it's sad that is not a part of my everyday life.

So, it wasn't a stellar day, but I wouldn't trade all the drama for anything.  The former baby is pretty darn awesome.  My sister asked me if, after a day like today, I had changed my mind about someday wanting to be a stay at home mom.

Nope!

However, next week I need to make sure that I have plenty of dark chocolate and a bottle of wine ready (for AFTER he leaves!) in case I have another crazy day!