I almost set up a category on this blog called, “Are you kidding me?!”  I say this all the time to my life.   And with some of the things happening around here, now I wish I would’ve.  Seriously.  Because ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

Ok, so I’m that Mom that when my girls ask me if they can sleepover always goes to the same response, “no.”  No, because it’s that night and I don’t have enough warning.  No, because I don’t have enough food in the house for my own family, let alone enough extra, snacking little creatures.  No, because that means no sleep, extra noise, extra cleaning, extra, extra, extra.  And with 5 kids, we pretty much already have a sleepover happening every night anyway.

But I don’t want to be this mom.  My vision of myself is the “cool, laid-back mom” who always has all the kids over to her house.  The house is always clean, she is always ready with homemade cookies and store-bought chips and pop, and all the kids love her.  Sigh… 

So I tried to be this mom.  I told my girls they could each invite a friend over last Friday night.  We ended up with 3 girls staying over in addition to our 5 permanent resident-kiddos.  First, I forgot to get pop.  They had to settle for Kool-Aid.  Not too bad, right?  I felt they gave me some grace.  My house was clean-ISH which is pretty much the best I can do at this stage of my life.  And I baked chocolate chip cookies which seemed to go over well. 

But the body fluids ruined the night.

Yep, I said body fluids.  And if you are squeamish, you may not want to read the next few paragraphs.  It’s ugly. 

I was talking to one of the girls’ moms whom I had never met.  And my 14 year old dog Quincy decided to unleash a torrent of pee directly on the foyer carpet right next to this poor mother.  He is too old to lift his leg so he just does this squat thing and I am not kidding – when he has to pee, it’s not a cute little puddle – it’s Lake Quincy.  I ran to get a beach towel (because an average sized one simply will not do) and she explained – full of graciousness – that she understood as she was also the owner of cats and dogs. 

I – Was – Mortified.

But there is more.  After I cleaned up the first mess, and proceeded with the “cool, laid-back mom” model I was attempting, I heard massive squeals and giggles coming from upstairs.  It was my nine year old daughter and her friend (the same one whose mom just escaped being peed upon by my dog) having a tickle fight of sorts and my 3 yr. old Colt getting in on the fun.  But then the screaming sounds shifted a bit, and I heard one of the girls say,

“He just peed on us!”

Thinking that certainly I had heard her wrong (The dog was now tied up outside.), I casually walked over to them and heard the same chorus…”Colt just peed on us!”  Yes, folks, it’s true.  Apparently Colt had gotten so caught up in the excitement that he figured the appropriate action would be to pull down his pants, pull out the little *donkey* (this is what we unfortunately call the boys’ privates – another post for another time), and pee on these 2 little girls..all while laughing hysterically, and thinking this was part of the game.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

I really have no words for this event other than to repeat the aforementioned all-capitalized line over and over while pounding my head against the wooden countertop.

My daughter and her friend were pretty unfazed, laughed about it, and went to change their clothes.  I STERNLY reprimanded Colt, sat him in a chair to wait while I cleaned it up, and threw the girls’ clothes in the wash.  (Which I then promptly forgot about, and had to hurridly wash again the next morning!)

Determined still to pull off a successful sleepover, I carried on as if nothing was awry and the rest of the evening was pretty uneventful.  All the girls were actually sleeping (or sleeping-ish) by midnight.  And then came the 4 am wakeup call from my oldest daughter Sydney.  She came into my room and informed me that the dog had pooped in the basement where she and her friends were sleeping.  I sleepily told her to shut the basement door and go sleep in her bed. (Because that is what cool moms do, I think - they get any sleep they can no matter the cost.)

The girls complied but then I heard them going downstairs an hour later.  I figured rather than have them wake everyone up, I would go clean up the dog “accident” and they could go back to the basement. 

Oh – my – gosh.

What Sydney failed to mention (or I failed to hear correctly in my sleep-fog) was that the dog had pooped on her pillow and somehow in her sleeping bag.  (narrowly missing Sydney and her friends!)  He is getting old and somewhat senile, we think.  But he must have been very confused and somewhat desperate…because that basement…that mess…well, I will spare you the details, but I think I used approximately a half gallon of bleach to get it clean.

By the time the girls were all picked up, my cool mom facade was blown to smithereens.  I was in bleach-stained pj’s, mussed hair, un-brushed teeth, had a trashed house and a strange, unfamiliar, cackling laugh that I had picked up somewhere in the night. 

But I think the girls just MIGHT have had fun.  I did bake homemade chocolate chip cookies and buttermilk pancakes (the best recipe I have EVER used – another post for another time!).   And they were all smiling and laughing when they left (and not because they were leaving, I don’t think).  And one of my girls just asked if we could have another sleepover this weekend.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 5th, 2011 at 5:05 pm and is filed under just life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.