Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (11 page)

“ZEB!” I hissed towards the backseat. “The thingy is telling me to turn in twenty feet… what do I do?”

“Do what it says. Take a left in twenty feet.”

“Yeah, but like, what do I do right now?”

“Robin, I just woke up five seconds ago, how am I supposed to know?”

Aubrey chimed in, “Awww man! Are we lost Momma?”

“NO, we are not! I am following the map! Sort of.”

I finally guessed and ended up back on track. The magic little voice said, “Continue eight miles on North Road, then take a right.”

“Momma is shoot a bad word?” Aubrey asked.

“No,” I said.

Aubrey continued, “SHOOT! We're on North Road and we don't know how to get to Shuggie's house!”

“I’M FOLLOWING THE MAP!”

“Mommy, I’m going to sleep now,” Aubrey said.

“But, who will Mommy talk to if you go to sleep?” I asked.

“Maybe you should talk to God.”

Ya think?

After that our trip was pretty uneventful. I stopped for gas once and drove all the way to Birmingham. We really did have a fabulous time seeing our families. It was worth every inconvenience of getting there to hold my sister’s son for the first time.

But the drive home made me wonder why you don’t see more mothers hitchhiking on the side of the road, because I seriously considered it. During this family visit, Zeb also had to tend to some business. And as it turned out, his meeting wrapped up early on the day before we were supposed to leave. Even though driving through the evening had been a disaster on the way to Alabama (after our 50 stops and packing and unpacking at the gas station), we still decided to head back to South Carolina that afternoon. This would give us the following day to unpack and recover from the drive before Zeb had to be back at work. I had taken the girls to a children’s museum that morning so they were worn out and asleep when we got back to my mother’s house to pack everything up. I was moving at the speed of freaking light, trying to throw everything into a suitcase before my kids woke up in the car.

As I mentioned earlier, the power nap has the ability to take a perfectly good day and crap all over it. You go to all this trouble to pack extra clothes, snacks, juice, bottles, lunch, strollers and toys, to take your kids somewhere for the sole and specific purpose of making them tired enough to take a nap. Then you buckle them in their seats and speed like Bo and Luke Duke running from the law, to get home
before
they fall asleep. If one of my kids takes so much as a ten-minute nap in the car, nap time is over. O-V-E-R. Do you understand me? Over. They are no longer exhausted, but I am. Only now I don’t get to do anything I was planning on doing while they were asleep or rest myself. Plus, I get the added bonus of dealing with a child who got just enough sleep to have the energy to act like a total crackhead.

I was frantically packing but to no avail. The kids woke up as we were backing out of the driveway. Just in time to catch one last glimpse of their grandmother and start wailing. Aubrey cried for two hours, “I want to go back to the farm, (Zeb’s parent’s house.) I hate Carolina, Momma. I miss my cousins; I miss my cows and my horses. I miss my chickens…” and on and on she went.

Emma cried for her cousin “Ella Grapes,” and Shuggie and waffles. The waffles I could understand. Zeb’s dad, Pop Pete, makes the best freakin’ waffles you’ve ever tasted
and
they are shaped like fun farm animals. I was starting to get a little weepy just thinking about them.

At least we started the drive back with all of the car seats in the correct position. We stopped to grab dinner and kept on driving. Things were going pretty well through most of Georgia, until Sadie woke up ready to eat. Somewhere over the weekend, this child developed a deep and thorough hatred of bottles. I was primarily breastfeeding but she was used to having one or two expressed bottles a day. But conveniently, when I needed her to take a bottle the most, she began acting like I was trying to poison her by gagging on the nipple or she would play dumb and act like she didn’t know how to suck. She would just stare at me motionless while milk dribbled down her chin.

Sadie started wailing and crying real tears.

“Her wants booby milk, Momma. GIVE HER BOOBY MILK!” Aubrey and Emma begin screaming at me.

“Zeb, can you pull over somewhere so I can nurse her?” I asked with an exhausted sigh.

He grabbed the GPS and found the nearest Starbuck’s — which I highly suspect is the
real
reason he bought it in the first place.

Sadie continued to scream and I just couldn’t take it. I could not sit right beside her with what she needed and just watch her cry. I took my seat belt off and pulled up my shirt and started to breastfeed her
in
her car seat, whilst we were driving down the interstate. I must make a disclaimer here for all you moms or moms-to-be out there who think, “Well, isn’t that clever? Nursing while the baby is in the car seat! I’ll have to try that.”

This is not a task that anyone can accomplish. No freakin’ way. All you A and B cup ladies out there; you can go ahead and hang those hopes up. C and D cups, sorry chicks, you’ll never be able to fulfill this dream. This is a job for the Big Berthas. It took every bit of core strength, flexibility, balance and maternal instinct that I have to keep my boob in her mouth, especially on the exit ramp.

Once we got into traffic, I put the Big Berthas away. I do have
some
sense of decency. We made it to Starbuck’s and Zeb ran in for coffee while I took Sadie out of her seat to finish feeding her. He came back with two coffees and one hot chocolate. No offense men — but
only
a man would expect two preschoolers to
share
hot chocolate. He handed it to Aubrey and Emma immediately said, “I want hot shock-o-late too-ooo, Daddy.”

I rolled my eyes as he went back inside to grab another cup. We were only about four hours from home now, the end was in sight. We got everyone strapped back in, blankies in place, hot chocolate in hand, DVD players in their locked and upright positions.

Zeb pulled into traffic as Sadie began throwing up. Fabulous.

“Pull over!! Sadie is puking!”

He pulled into a gas station and I got her out of her seat and cleaned as much as I could with baby wipes. After getting her soothed and somewhat happy again, we buckled up and got back on the road.

Everything was fine, for about an hour, about the time we ended up back in rural South Carolina.
Apparently
, Emma gets car sick. This would have been truly valuable information to have before we gave her sixteen ounces of hot high fructose corn syrup and started driving on winding back roads. She threw up everywhere, in her car seat, all over her clothes, in her DVD player, on her suitcase…
everywhere
.

Zeb pulled over on the side of the road; there were only cow pastures as far as the eye could see. He jerked her out of her car seat and let her finish puking on the side of the road. Then he hollered at me to hand him a towel. Now was probably not the best time to remind him that a towel wasn’t on my list of “things we
really
needed,” so I didn’t.

“Ask me for anything else, but I don’t have a towel.”

He ripped his t-shirt off in a super sexy Daddy’s Gone Wild move and started cleaning Emma up. Her clothes were covered in vomit, so we took them off. Her car seat was at least an inch deep in it. Zeb took the cover off of her seat and wadded it into a bag, but there was no way she could get back in her car seat.

At this point, my dearly beloved was standing on the side of the road, shirtless, Emma was wearing nothing but a pull-up and a frown, and I had whipped the Big Berthas out once again to feed Sadie. I could feel a great redneck joke brewing, but he doesn’t normally enjoy my humor in times of crisis, so I kept my mouth shut. Zeb put Emma’s coat on her (the only thing she hadn’t thrown up on) and buckled her into a seat belt.

Now we were approximately two hours from home. Zeb was still shirtless; Emma was wearing only her jacket with the hood on, in a seatbelt and crying for me to hold her hand, while Aubrey started crying, “MOMMA, I hate Emma’s frow up! Emma’s frow up stinks! Momma, I HATE it!”

Sadie was latched onto one of the Big Berthas in the way back, and I had once again contorted my body so that I could breastfeed in the backseat while holding Emma’s hand in the middle. (By the by, this was
great
for my tendonitis, and probably exactly what my doctor had in mind when he told me to rest my arm.) I was praying fervently we wouldn’t get pulled over because I had a strong feeling that Zeb and I would be going to jail and the kids were going to end up in foster care.

Aubrey started gagging and her eyes began to water — you
know
what I’m talking about. “Momma, (gag) I (gag) fink (gag) I (gag) gonna be (gag) sick!”

“No you are not! Don’t you
dare
throw up!! You want some gum or some candy?” Zeb rolled down all the windows while I started singing kid songs and digging through my purse with my one unoccupied hand to try to distract the only kid in the car who had yet to vomit. I gave Aubrey gum one piece at a time until it lost its flavor then she would get a new one. I have never been so glad to pull in my driveway in my entire life. And I decided, like I do every time we go anywhere, that I would never,
ever
leave my house again.

I
was awake at 5:00am breastfeeding Sadie, still groggy with sleep and wondering if I could possibly breastfeed and make a pot of coffee at the same time. When Aubrey, walked into the den fresh out of the bed and yelled, “Fire the ho!!!”

“What?”

“FIRE THE HO!” she screamed again, this time sounding a whole lot like Yosemite Sam and bringing to mind the classic Looney Tunes cartoons we had rented only a few days before.

“OH! Fire in the hole, you mean?”

“NO, FIRE THE HO!” she said adamantly and for the third time.

I just shrugged and hoped she wasn't talking about me.

Since that day I have had many opportunities to wish she had been talking about me, to wish with all my heart that she would look at me and say in her best little Donald Trump voice, “You’re firahed!” Oh, the inconveniences I could have been saved from, the hours of sleep I could have gotten, the judgmental glances I would have missed when shopping at Wal-Mart with all three kids. Even if my child
had
called me a whore, it would have been worth it to skip out on certain humiliating episodes.

One particular Wal-Mart trip stands out. I was pregnant with Sadie and waddling through the store with Emma and Aubrey, my two-year old and four-year old. I normally try to minimize the number of children I take with me to run errands, but on this day we were out of everything crucial we needed at home and both girls were out of pre-school.

I was talking to one of my best friends, Amy, on my Bluetooth earpiece as I pulled into a parking space.

“We’re at the store. Let me call you back later,” I said as I climbed out of the car and stuck the earpiece in the front pocket of my sweatshirt. I began unloading my kids and attempting to convince Emma that riding in the front of the shopping cart
really
was cool. She wasn’t buying it and straightened her legs and bowed her back as I tried to force her into the seat.

“I WANNA WALK!” she screamed.

“Do you promise to stay with me and not touch anything?”

“I pwo-mise Mommy, I not touch nuffin’.”

Of course as soon as we walked through the big double doors, both girls decided they needed to use the bathroom. Aubrey was in the “I-want-to-pee-in-every-potty-in-this-town” stage and Emma would not be outdone. Although I highly suspected neither of them really had to pee, I couldn’t risk it and we made our way to the bathroom… where they both touched every square inch of the bathroom stall, the floor and the feminine hygiene mini-trash can. (Would it
kill
someone to put these things up a bit higher so my kids can’t reach them?) I had heart palpitations as I repeated the Mommy’s Public Restroom Mantra, “Stop touching that! STOP touching that! STOP TOUCHING THAT!” After scrubbing their hands as though they were prepping for surgery we finally made our way out of the bathroom and into the store to shop.

They did really well. Emma lagged behind a little and I occasionally had to remind her to keep her hands to herself, but we slowly made our way through the pharmacy to house wares and the entire grocery section from the frozen foods to produce.