Sometimes it is tiring, being me, the way I manage to make even the simplest everyday occurrence into an ordeal. Like on Friday: We have cleaning people, a fact I have yet to stop feeling guilty about. They are from a reputable service (That uses green materials! They sweep with hay and scrub with fish scales!), and we pay them well. Simone’s respiratory issues demand that we maintain a level of cleanliness that is simply not realistic for us without help from trained professionals. I’m not proud of that, but there it is. Cleaning people: we have them.
The two-person team that comes to our apartment every other Friday is made up of two sweet, older Mexican women, and just to twist the guilt knife further, one of them has a grandson who was a preemie, and I have deduced from our linguistically garbled conversations that he had NEC and lives with an ostomy. They are perfectly delightful, and I have no reason to believe they wish me ill, but I cannot STAND to be in the house while they work, because of the guilt, and because I inevitably convince myself that they are mocking me in their native tongue. As well they should, because our house is filthy, even with the pre-cleaning-people cleaning I do before they arrive.
But this last Friday, they showed up early—at nine a.m. There had been no pre-cleaning-people cleaning. And so I shoved a befuddled Simone into her snowsuit and said loudly “I’M TAKING BABY TO THE DOCTOR NOW!” while rocking a faux baby and putting my hand on my forehead as if to feel for fever. The cleaning people smiled and nodded and I bolted out the door wondering where in the HELL I was going to go. Simone, you will recall, cannot go inside stores, restaurants, or, well, anywhere because of RSV season.
There is a drive-through coffee shop near my doctor’s office, across the river in West St. Paul, and we drove there, slowly. Simone started to cry, and I gave her an old crumpled receipt to play with (she loves paper, that baby). At the drive-through, I was so busy trying to decide where to go next that I forgot to order at the little speaker and instead sat dumbly in the line of cars until I pulled up to the window where you are supposed to receive your drink, only then blithely requesting a latte. The man was very nice about the whole thing, helpfully pointing out that my baby seemed to have gotten ahold of a piece of paper and was licking it, which news I pretended to be surprised by.
We crept home. It had been 38 minutes. Even I knew that 38 minutes wasn’t enough time to maintain my sad little “doctor’s appointment” charade, so I parked a few blocks away and sat, drinking my latte. Simone tired of her receipt and began to howl. I drove down the block and back. Wow, I really had to pee. I could see four or five establishments with bathrooms from where I was parked, but could go into none of them, because of the baby. I called Scott, who was at work—back across the river and 20 minutes away. When he finished sighing at my obvious insanity, he agreed that if I drove to his office, he would come downstairs to say hello. Though another idea, he pointed out, would be for me to go home and face the two harmless 60-year-old Mexican women like a man.
I think you know which option I chose.
So that was Friday. In the early hours of Saturday, I awoke with what was either food poisoning or some sort of flu. Scott seemed to have a much milder version, though whether his sickness was caused by an actual organism or by my using the phrase “throw up” instead of his preferred, less nauseating code word (“SAY ‘LAMBADA!’ SAY ‘LAMBADA!’” he cried all day) is unclear. At any rate, by Sunday morning, when I fainted dead away on Simone’s play mat, we were in pitiful shape. My temperature, which normally runs at a chilly 97.2, was 101, and I dropped my only child onto her head because my grasp was too weak to hold her writhing body.
I have felt poorly a few times since we’ve had Simone: sniffles, stomach aches, a migraine or two. But this was the first time that I was the kind of sick where the bathroom floor seems luxurious, where even standing upright requires an effort you cannot muster. I broke into my pregnancy stash of Zofran, I had panic attacks, and just to ensure that no organ was left unmolested, I got my period. I ate nothing but saltines until Saturday evening after a nap, when I bravely sipped at some chicken soup that turned my stomach so soundly I went straight back to bed. It was bad, is what I am trying to say, and being that sick when you have a child to take care of is an experience that defies characterization. No, I lied, I can characterize it just fine: BLLLAAAAARGHH.
Single parents are obviously robots. Even with Scott semi-well for most of Saturday, we just managed to cobble together some shoddy, Elizabethan orphanage level of care.
But we are fine now, having recuperated by watching lots of television and balancing things on the baby:
And how was your weekend?
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Oh.my. This post was HILARIOUS! The whole cleaning lady thing. I get it. I can’t stand to be home either. It’s so shameful! To make it worse, I have no precious baby and RSV season story to justify the need for a cleaning lady! Glad you’re feeling better and Simone should be paid for her balancing act. She just gets cuter by the minute!
Oh dear. So glad you are better. We went through something similar and I can safely say that was my worst parenting experience.
I really should get me a cleaning lady.
Curse you January and your last, deadly huzzah.
Oh, sickness (especially the LAMBADA kind) and babycare, it’s the worst thing ever. I vividly remember the first time. HOW could this be possible? Was the universe really this malign? Terrible design flaw!
It doesn’t get much better. Now they are 5 and 7 they can come and let themselves into the bathroom to prattle incessantly, jump on my cramping stomach and generally perpetrate terrible atrocities. However they do understand the concept of bribery. It’s progress of a sort.
The amazing balancing baby! Brava Simone.
How I wish I could send my cleaning lady to you. Seriously, she has some strange way of making me feel completely comfortable with the those “eek-other-person-of-lesser-means-cleans-my-house” thoughts. On top of that she has a delightful southern drawl which makes “Saxby Chambliss” sound even better.
i’m sorry you were sick but that retelling was. so. hilarious!
my weekend sounded very much like yours, except I had some head-splitting version of a sinus infection. thank God for grandparents because they saved my ass while I laid on the couch.
“The man was very nice about the whole thing, helpfully pointing out that my baby seemed to have gotten ahold of a piece of paper and was licking it, which news I pretended to be surprised by.”
That line made me laugh out loud. For like 20 minutes. This really sounds like something that would happen to me. My little one loves paper also. You’ve also given me some photo ideas. I’ve never thought to balance anything on his head, but let me tell you, that starts tomorrow!!!
So glad you are feeling better!! I couldn’t stay home either if I had someone cleaning my house I would feel guilty too, though it would be nice for someone to drop by now and then and clean it for me :)
LOVE the balancing!!
We did vaccinations, just for kicks. It’d been a while since I’d had snot, vomit AND red paracetamol all on the one shirt…
J
Oh man. Every time I hear a story about caring for a baby while sick, I get full-body flashbacks to when my now-3-year-old was 2 weeks old. My mom had returned home 2 days before, we had no family living in the same state as us, and I had a very colicky new baby on my hands. Not to mention still-healing c-section abs. I caught something flu-like, complete with 102.5 fever, and felt like I would fall apart. I handed the baby off to the husband, said “Bring her to me when she needs to nurse,” and suffered through the chills and delirium in the bedroom by myself. Not a fun intro to motherhood, to be sure.
Now, this weekend, though. This weekend was lovely, thank you. We blessed our 2-month-old in church, then had family and friends over for lunch afterwards, in our lovely new home. I wouldn’t say this because it sounds so braggy, but we’ve been living with either my mother or the in-laws for nearly a year now because of long-story “economic downturn” job ugliness. But now the new baby is here, we were able to get into our own place again (finally), and it’s lovely to boot. It was a good weekend.
Oh, I can relate to the sickness thing… I feel so very guilty about this, but I got so smashed on New Years Eve that I was hungover the ENTIRE DAY after, and even into the next day a little bit… really bad, and I had my baby to care for… she didn’t suffer for want of anything, but I felt terrible, even though I brought it on myself. Don’t judge me, please, I already judged myself. :(
Aww. I’m sorry you were feeling so uck. Glad you’re better though. LOL @ your cleaning lady situation but LMAO!!!! at BLLLAAAAARGHH. That was the most perfect sound effect I’ve ever seen typed.
Oh, I SO enjoyed this one…every bit of it sounded so familiar, probably because I’ve done or thought of doing every bit of it. Do you know that I felt bad ALL DAY today because I was nursing when the FedEx guy delivered a swingset for my oldest today, so I reached my arm out, opened the garage door, then hid inside so as not to rouse the now-slumbering baby. For the rest of the day, I imagined the FedEx guy mumbling, “That b*tch actually OPENED the garage door, then shut the house door & left me to haul that heavy-ass box into her already-cluttered garage.”
*sigh*
And to further add to my guilt, I’ll help out Carmen, who feels guilty about her hangover. A few months ago, my mother-in-law offered to watch the baby so my hubby & I could have a “date night.” I didn’t want to stray very far, so we sat in the back yard & drank several bottles of wine, leaving me with one AWFUL hangover. Once I had somewhat recovered (& pumped & dumped more than once!), my mother-in-law returned the baby to me & went on her merry way. It was during the next feeding that I coughed, turned green, then promptly VOMITED into the baby’s burp cloth.
Yes, I almost vomited on my child. MOTHER OF THE YEAR, PEOPLE! MOTHER OF THE YEAR!
I can’t believe I just confessed that here in “public.” I need your cleaning people to wipe away my shame.
Oh…yeah. Getting a wrenching involuntary cough while sleeping in the same room as The Baby That Must Sleep and having to get up in the night a bajillion times while your whole head feels like it’s been hit by a mallet (a really big one) and your body aches and you wish you were fucking dead? I remember that.
It was AWESOME. Plus Sam couldn’t help because he was taking care of the other baby. I prayed for death’s sweet release on a minute-by-minute basis.
So, yeah, I’m with you.
You are hilarious. This is my first time posting – just wanted to let you know that I was hunched over my keyboard laughing at LAMBADA. So funny – I really needed the laugh today, so thank you.
Well I was sick all weekend. I’m one of those legendary Single Mother Robots. I coped by propping my offspring in front of the television, and crying.
Oh my god. I read that whole thing biting my hand, so as not to laugh and wake the baby. Oh my. LAMBADA would go over better with me, too. I will tell Wifey to use that one. Oh the receipt. You are too great. And the orphanage, and the baby with head toppings. Good god.
OMG, even when you’re sick you’re still hilarious!
All 4 of us were sick over the holidays (so much for the “Perfect-family-Christmas-to-make-up-for-the-crappy-Christmas-spent-in-the-NICU-the-year-before”. Better luck next time…) and it sucked big time!!
Must try the balancing act here… Those pictures are worth a million bucks! Simone is the cutest baby EVER (sssst, don’t tell my own kids…) How would it look on twins? Must make pictures fast, before they start wacking everything off the head of their twin…
How it is that you manage to make the flu sound hilarious…truly impressive.
That being said, I’m sorry you guys had to deal with such a pukey (I mean lambada) weekend. It sounds awful!
Loved the pictures! Ms. Simone has a definite future in Cirque de Soleil!
BTW – very long time lurker (feel free to read as stalker – but I’m harmless). I read your blog from start to current over a single weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Your ability to express your ideas, thoughts, and emotions in such an honest (and so often hilarious) way is a true gift.
We had the exact same experience last week. The kids had a stomach virus Friday night and Saturday, and my husband and I had it Wednesday (mine started Wednesday night). Wednesday and Thursday were just … awful. If not for Goldfish and nick jr., my toddler would have been in serious trouble.
I’m so, so sorry you had such a horrible
weekend, but you made me laugh until I
spewed (lambadad?) coffee on my keyboard!
I have 4 kids so I know just how miserable
it is to be sick and still have care
for the childrend. Or, lay on the couch
with a wash cloth over your eyes and chuck
saltines at them every now and then….
Yeah that is one of the reasons being a stay at home mom is so hard, we dont seem to get any FLIPPING sick days…. When my son was 10 months old (and toddling around) I created a playpen of sorts out of my living room, blocked every exit, only put baby approved toys etc…..I was so sick, I decided to lay down on the couch and watch him walk around this “playpen”….yeah I FELL ASLEEP…….. nothing like leaving the 10 month old to look after himself! Yep Mother of the year 2005 right here!
Sorry for the horrors chez flotsam, but I just want to salute Miss Grace. How you do it I don’t know, though you clearly deserve the plaudit heroine rather than the word robot. I hope you are much better now. You have all my admiration.
Avoiding cleaning ladies is totally normal in my book. I try to leave BEFORE they even arrive. There something about 60 year old Mexican ladies cleaning my house that makes feel really ashamed.
For some reason, this topic made me stop lurking and post a comment.
I would have done the exact same thing. Paying someone, even if it’s totally legit, just squicks me out sometimes. Being sick with a baby sounds like purgatory. Glad you made it out in one piece.
Oh, I get it, I get it, I get it!!! I feel so ashamed to pay someone to clean for me, so guilty and lazy and same thing with the mocking in Portuguese. I have a regular getting-out-of-the-house routine, but sometimes she stays later than others, and so if I see her car in my driveway still(thank God I can see it from the end of our street so I don’t have to get busted doing drive-bys) I will force my children to loop around the neighborhood with me once, twice, three times – until she leaves. SO GLAD to not be alone in my weirdness.
“Elizabethan orphanage level of care” – you SLAY me!
Glad that you’re feeling better. Simone looks adorable!
Remarkably similar, actually. Except I was the semi-well one, the baby was also sick (intermittently, happy in between, and worse yesterday again), AND it was the second anniversary of the death/birth of A, our first son.
But I still think you win, on account of the whole RSV thing.
Only you could make vomiting hilarious.
I live in fear of gastrointestinal illness. Don’t know how I would care for the toddler were it to strike. I still remember the nine months of puking that were pregnancy; how anyone combines illness with childrearing, I hope I’ll never know.
i just came by to wish you happy february. seems i am too late.
or maybe, if all goes well, too early.
As I had the flu two weeks ago, you have my complete and utter sympathy. It’s hard to believe you can catch the flu from driving around in a car though. Especially your own. Interesting.
I can relate to your post in so many ways. We have a couple Brazilians come to clean our house and I always feel guilty about how messy and dirty it is. I must admit though, that I don’t feel guilty about having cleaners in general. Working full-time with a toddler and two more on the way does not leave much time for cleaning or much else. I tend to hide in our office when they are there. I don’t have them clean that room because it is just WAY too cluttered.
On being sick and taking care of a child…I can relate to that as well. I had one day where I felt so weak that I could barely carry my daughter up the stairs to put her down for her nap. In the end my brother had to come over and help me as I lay listless on the couch. My husband was at work and didn’t realize just how sick I was. It’s really hard!
I neve knew cleaning ladies and a weekend of being ill could be so hilarious. How have I not seen those things as knee-slapping before is beyond me. A gift, woman. You have a gift.
This weekend, I started my very first blog. I’d call it a good weekend.
Yes–being sick WITH kids is a whole new level of torture.
Our weekend was fine, but yesterday we got not one but two cars stuck on our hill in the snow, and had to walk home carrying the (highly amused) toddler.
I’m sorry you’re feeling poorly, and hope it turns around soon! I don’t get sick often, and I will often flirt with a cold that never materializes, or just manage to hang on while the stomach bug lays waste to the rest of my house. But I remember the one bug that took all three of us down: after being up all night and spending most of the day taking care of the vomiting toddler, I made it to early evening before turning to my husband and saying, “I think he’s through the worst of it, and you’re going have to take over for a while because BLARRRGHGH.” I went into my cave for a while, and eventually staggered out in time to take over for my husband on his way to the porcelain shrine. Thank heaven for incubation periods, allowing us each to fall over in a nice staggered way…and my hat is off to single parents everywhere.
Hey at least u have an excuse. Me, I’m just lazy and I don’t want to clean my house!! Also, really, if I didn’t have to do pre-cleaning lady cleaning before she got there my house would slowly begin to fill up with junk until I could no longer find the floors or the counters. She motivates me…
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!!
LAMBADA!! HAHAHAHA! I read that part out loud to Sarge, it had me in such hysterics. I am totally adding that to my stash of internet words and using it from now on. “Sarge, get me some phenergan! I feel like I’m going to lambada!” AWESOME!
We had cleaning people once and we too had a language barrier. I was always thankfully at work when they came. We told hardly anyone that we had employed them, such was my guilt. I miss them dearly. My bathrooms have not been the same since they left.
Also, balancing stuff on Simone? I am monumentally, overwhelmingly impressed that she will hold still for that long. Even diapering Sam is a challenge these days because he’s so wiggly.
I would’ve driven to my husband’s office too if I had cleaning people. Is it a Minnesota/Scandanavian thing?
Glad you’re on the mend.
you are so hilarious! my favorite part being: “The man was very nice about the whole thing, helpfully pointing out that my baby seemed to have gotten a hold of a piece of paper and was licking it, which news I pretended to be surprised by.” i would be the same way about a cleaning lady – cleaning before they got there because i wouldn’t want them to think i was a slob.
Poor you – impressive that your sense of humour is undimmed I would have lost mine !
I’m still laughing. That was great!
After my mom died, my dad hired a cleaning lady and I would hide in the computer room when she came. My friends thought we were rich, but really, we had no clue how to clean.
Here’s hoping next weekend is better for you!
I had a migraine during the middle of the day once when Myles was about a year old. It sucked so much donkey balls that I have literally willed myself to never, ever be sick again.
I too always felt very uncomfortable when the cleaning ladies came to my house. I would generally leave when they arrived, till I started up with some new ones, and one of my dogs would bark non-stop at one of them, so I decided to stay while we were there. Well, I will have to say I trusted my dog’s instincts about the one cleaning lady, because a bottle of Xanax went missing, still not to be found. I suspect the one took it, and maybe my dog sensed something bad about her, and that is why he always barked at her, and only her.
Sorry you guys were ill….we have had it too many times where both hubby and I were sick, and we have 3 kids.
Well, odd, I don’t really mind being here when my cleaning person is here. I suppose it helps that she brings European chocolates for Bella on a regular basis. I do try and get out of her way, more for her than me really, so usually I’m holed up somewhere.
And ZOMFG, what is up with getting sick AND hemorrhaging at the same time?! Happened to me at Christmas and I swear I haven’t felt that bad since . . . probably after giving birth to Bella 4.5 years ago. Out flat for 48 hours. Terrible.
I think you should check this out maybe..
http://thepreemiexperiment.blogspot.com.
It seems like they are blaming prematurity on infertility and something about infertile women have a lot of money to donate to the march of dimes or something.
It seems that everyone I know has a lambada-style illness during their child’s first year. I’ve come to believe that it’s some terrible joke of the universe to render us horrifically incapable of caring for our infant in an attempt to humble us just when we think “we’ve got this whole parenting thing down.”
It’s especially alarming for those of us without close family nearby. When the Hubster and I were stricken, 6-month-old Monkeyboy somehow was not. Luckily it was a weekday and Hub bravely drove the baby to daycare (without befouling himself in any manner – yay!). I, meanwhile, laid on the wondrously cold tile in our bathroom, using a pile of towels from a nearby laundry basket as bedding as I was too weary to try to crawl back to bed. I knew it would be mere minutes until I had to return, anyway.
The awfulness of the experience has never left me — more the inability to care for our child than the please-kill-me-now-and-put-me-out-of-my-misery-ness of the illness — and it’s a tale the Hubster and I recount like veterans speak of Vietnam.
Ack! I remember that happening to Hubby & I when we just had Eldest. Both of us got the stomach bug (regurgitating at both ends) and OF COURSE his parents were out of town that weekend.
We pretty much just threw Cheerios on the floor and played Elmo videos on repeat while the 2 of us moaned on the couch.
I’ve never experienced agony like the torment of having three sick kids at the same time while being sick myself. I thought I wouldn’t make it. Really. You are a one baby amateur right now.
We decided to hire cleaners just before our second child was born. When I first met our cleaner I was telling her how great it would be to have her as it’ll help me out since being a mom to a toddler and a newborn will be tiring and hectic. She then informed me she has 7 kids ages 1 yr to 19 yrs (including 2 yr old twins). I felt like such a tool complaining about how on earth am I going to find the time and the energy to clean when I have 2 kids to someone who has 7. Needless we leave as soon as she and her husband(!) gets here clean.
On cleaning-lady guilt: I stayed in Brazil for about a month and the people I stayed with told me that it was considered horribly selfish and rude NOT to have a cleaning lady if you could possibly afford to have one. The thinking is that if you can employ someone else, it is your duty to do so.
I don’t know if this is true for the whole country, it may have been a regional thing.
If you really think about it, that reasoning makes sense. You are giving two women a job, and that’s a good thing. Most of the people I know who clean houses do so because it gives them the flexibility they need for the other aspects of their life. They rely on being needed. Many of them are hurting right now because it’s one of the first things people cut back on when the economy falters. It really should be one of the things we hang on to the longest because we’re helping keep someone employed.
Anyway, instead of feeling guilty maybe you can feel glad that you are able to employ another person and reap the benefits of a clean house.
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