Earlier this morning, Ben and I cruised out to our good friend’s farm. We had a crappity-crap-crappy-craptastic frog to eat, and he helped us wash it down with a little understanding and kindness. Oh, I’ll get into the whole thing soon enough, but for now it’s too raw. Raw and done… aaaaaahh.
Anyway, while Ben was finishing his last bite of bile-flavored- frog, I snatched our camera and dashed around shooting anything that didn’t move, because HOLY CRAPOLEE is this place a treasure-trove of coolness. I must have taken a hundred or so shots, and that was just the east side of the barn. I never knew his farm was so loaded with visual candy, but now I do! So our friend should know, I take my coffee with skim, because I’ll be back, and he’ll want to have something to offer me. He’s nice like that.
We made the decision to leave our cat behind with a series of foster cat families (a shout out to Steven, my Dad, Ben’s Mom, Erik and Laura) when we moved to Mexico. It was always our intent to send for her once we got settled. When we’d realized we were never going to get settled, we sent for her. Then we realized a cat cannot travel by itself. Yes, on paper it’s do-able. All you’d need is a small logistics team and a couple of spread sheets charting the necessary steps to accomplish such a “who would’ve known this was going to be such a big friggin big deal ” project. I’m not going to get into the whole rigmarole of vet appointments, customs and air travel requirements. Let’s just say that when Ben and I would discuss, “What ARE we going to do with the cat?” it usually ended with tequila and a nap.
Permanently leaving the cat back in the States was never an option. Lexi (11) LOOOVES this cat and when we finally arranged for the cat to come down, she filled our house with whoops of THE CAT IS COMING…THE CAT IS COMING…Then she raced off to change her Facebook profile picture to a photo of the cat. The cat was coming. Enter our friend Dani.
Dani got Ben and me out of the cat fix. She also saved me from my loneliness. She offered to bring down the cat. Never ask me to travel with your pet (I will leave it at my connection). Dani also makes my children more nutritious meals than I do, so Dani qualifies as having super powers. Dani also brought her gorgeous little baby – as in Dani brought her gorgeous little baby AND the cat. All this, and by herself, thereby nudging her super power status one step closer to sainthood, or hysteria, depending on how you look at it. Dani wasn’t supposed to come to Mexico, she was supposed to go with her husband to Tokyo for a marketing junket for his magazine COG. Luckily for us there was some kind of mix-up and Dani scrapped her plans for Tokyo, and she and her little baby came here to Mexico instead. Tokyo’s loss, our gain.
After the child and cat reunion, I stole Dani away and asked her how, I mean, really how, did you manage a baby, cat and stroller through two airports and a connection, all while still nursing. Turns out she managed just fine with only one incident. O.K., I agree she’s probably leaving out other smaller incidents to spare my feelings because how can you travel with a cat and a baby and only have one incident in six hours? So now I think she may also be a liar. A saintly liar. St. Liar.
st. liar and the baby
So she begins telling me about “THE” incident and I’m hanging on her every word because you know any story revolving around cats, cat urine, boobs, babies and travel will have to be told and retold. Dani tells me that during their connection, she and her entourage find a family bathroom so she can feed her little baby and let the cat use the bathroom. Wait? The cat needs to go to the bathroom while traveling? Oh yes. She tells me she’d brought along a paper plate and some cat litter so she could make a portable litter box for the cat in the bathroom. Once I processed that new image in my head, I asked her what she would have done if the cat had bolted behind the toilet. She hadn’t thought about that but had been concerned the cat would’ve tried to make a break for the bathroom door so she’d held onto the scruff of her neck while the cat peed.
I see.
The only tricky part, she said, was the baby was getting hungry and she didn’t have any water along with her in the family bathroom. Since her baby was now eating some solids, she wanted to offer her some cereal. So Dani recalls the scene inside the family bathroom:
“I’m changing the baby’s diaper on the changing table, while holding the cat by her scruff so she can pee. I have to pee too but that’s irrelevant at this point, and I’m trying to figure out what I can mix into the dry cereal that’s within arms reach. Then I realize my boobs are within arms reach and practically connected! So while leaving one hand on the cat and leaning over the changing table so the baby wouldn’t roll, I whip out a boob and begin hand expressing into the cereal bowl. This is actually working until, what I thought had been a locked door, swings open and a guy steps in and realizes what he’s looking at! Taking it in he shouts, “Oh Jesus!” and bolts out the door. In order to prevent another cat-peeing, milk-expressing-boob, baby-butt-sighting, I kick the stroller in front of the door. I’m on one foot, leaning over the changing table, one hand on the cat and expressing milk from my boob. Other than that the trip was really good. Oh yeah, but the guy accidentally comes in a second time, so I have to tell him to find the big boys bathroom. Perv.”
It took Dani a full hour after she’d arrived to finally tell her story; whereas I would have, still in the airport, walked through customs, arms flailing to the sound of the rant exploding from my mouth going on and on about my ordeal. Then again I don’t have super powers, but I do have a cat with a stamped passport.
"the cat"
Originally posted to momversation.com’s Guest Blog series on September 3, 2009.
We moved a few months ago and like any relocation it’s hard: new house, new school, new grocery store, and the glaring absence of any social life. However, what I miss more than anything, are my girlfriends. So, when my girlfriend Danielle promised to come down for a couple weeks, I nearly stumbled into my monitor at her Skype’d head. Hanging out with someone other than my husband, or kids, is a rarity since our move, like checking my email without the usual cover of: “Mommy has to use the bathroom, I’ll be right back”.
This exclusive one-on-one time with my husband and kids had finally reached fever pitch the other morning while in the kitchen I looked up over my coffee and watched as my husband, my soul mate, closed the bread bag with the twisty tie thing in the MOST STUPID way possible, that I had to fight the urge to Google “divorce attorney” immediately thereafter. Gasp! Could we have exceeded the “normal” amount of time any marriage license allows for a couple to spend together before life and limb stand in harm’s way?
Could my urge to runaway and drink chilled wine with other grown-ups be traced back to our nightly discussions of Things on Ben’s Mind; those “things” usually having something to do with programming software, Fark.com and my personal favorite ‘where this cigar was made, and what type of wrapper it is’? Our recent move to Mexico, where we know absolutely no one, can’t speak the language and work from home, undoubtedly has its draw-backs. Our current life-style shouts, like the shouting through a megaphone kind of shout: Ben plus Meredith equals EVERY LIVING, BREATHING MOMENT TOGETHER. We’re doing everything together and occasionally, when the mood strikes, we even do some mattress calisthenics together. So much together time, I can’t even do THAT alone.
It’s never one-sided though. I know it hasn’t been all giggles and balloons for him either. Like when he picks me up after my haircuts (yes, I just wrote that my husband drives me to and from my haircuts) and spends the drive home hearing all about ‘the advantages and disadvantageous of my new hair cut, and why the front was intentionally left longer, or how the back will now require less maintenance’. Then there was the time I told him to ‘man-up’ and help me pick-out nail polish at the mall – ‘a low moment for all male kind’ I think is how he referred to it.
Hold onto your gag reflexes now, I’m about to get all mushy and syrupy. But jeez, it’s taken a move to a foreign nation to realize how much I miss going out with my girlfriends for lunch or a glass of wine. And when I say I’d grab lunch or a glass of wine, I mean like I’d do this with as much frequency as cleaning the trunk of my car. Totally pitiful. So, I pledge from here forward to prioritize my friendships more, no matter the number of flight connections separating us. I will email, Skype, Tweet and post away on Facebook until we’re back together in the same zip code, because my friendships make me a better wife and mom. And by God, when I live near them again, I’m going to be such an involved nuisance of a friend it’s going to bug the bleepity-bleep out of them!
There, you can unclench your stomach. I’m done with the corny, mushy stuff.
*WARNING: FEMINIST RANT TO FOLLOW*
Have I recently mentioned our friends from the states were visiting? Yes, I think I may have mentioned this already, like in every other sentence I’ve written lately like here and here and here. Well, they have visited and since left, and brought along with them months worth of gossip zines like Us Weekly and People. I read them all at once. Instead of slowing sipping in the celebrity gossip, I slurp deeply and rapidly, as I do with a frozen margarita, and then I get the equivalent of an ice cream headache and need to hold my temples and squeeze the arm of whoever’s sitting nearest me until the thumping pain of the cold drink subsides. I overindulged and read all the People and Us Weekly magazines at once, and then any of the remaining brains cells I’d managed to retain since my last episode of childbirth, drained out of the orifices of my head. For the next several weeks, I will then talk in simple sentences and cannot incorporate words bigger than “emancipation” or “cosmically” into my daily vocabulary.
Anyway, even when I’m totally sucked into one of those reading binges and have little awareness for anything, or one else around me, other then where Brad and Ang will adopt next, I’m still jarred by one of the regular sections in Us Weekly magazine called “Who Wore it Best”. In the past, I usually just skipped over the column. That was until my impressionable young preteen daughter started flipping through my picked over Us Weekly magazines and asked me, “Mama, who do you think wore it best?”, and I’m thinking well the skinny bitch of course. Did that sound offensive? Well, of course it did! 2009 ladies – jeesh – and they’re pitting two women together in identical dresses and asking who fills the thing out best! And the consistent winner of these polls? Oh yeah, that’s right, the gal with the biggest boobies and lipoed thighs. So here’s what I think they should start calling this column:
“Who has the Bigger Tittys and the Thinnest Thighs?”
We’re all grown-ups, we can handle it. But do you think it’s MORE offensive than the actual content of the column itself? Too harsh? Not marketable enough? How bout “Who Has the Biggest Boobies and Longest Legs?” My three year old refers to her nipples as her “boobies” so I think that title would be safe enough.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve got all this feminist crap my mom tried instilling in me. Maybe I just need to relax. Maybe it’s all in good fun and someone needs to knock some sense into me, or maybe the pregnancy mag like Fit Pregnancy could a run similar column. They could call it: “Who Wore Their Bump Best?” Because what pregnant women, and all women, really need is another voice telling them they’re probably too fat.
Remember, you were warned.
