my ‘gift’
My co-workers have always called their daughter’s their ‘gifts’. Of course in a sarcastic tone, their daughters provide them more stress and worry than anything of materialistic value. They told me that one day I would understand and refer to Cardin as my ‘gift’. This past week has given me plenty of insight into my ‘gift’.
We took a mini vacation and drove to Columbus, Ohio for a weekend getaway. Cardin did awesome on the drive down and we were able to keep her busy with crafts, toys, movies, and songs. We did stop a couple times to stretch our legs and have some food.Once we checked in to the hotel and had gotten everything settled we decided to go out to dinner.
Our first choice restaurant was closed down so we settled for a Friendly’s. Figuring we’d use the ice cream as a bribe we got Cardin to eat the spaghetti we brought. Please note that we also had to dangle going in the hotel pool in front of her to get her to eat. As we were packing up to leave I leaned over to grab a bag and Cardin decided to belch right in my face. AWESOME. This became rather hysterical and caused quite the ruckus the remainder of the ride back to the hotel.
So much ruckus in fact, that Brett began to fake burp and get the whole car laughing. And since Cardin is two and mimics EVERYTHING Internet, you can kinda take a wild guess as to where this roller coaster is going. That is when it happened…the fake burp hit the sensitive gag reflex. Mount fucking Vesuvius in the car. I’ve got nothing but my hands or my mouth to catch it. What would you choose lady?
Cardin is covered. The car-seat is covered. The seat of the car is covered. Basically all I’ve got to work with is a box of baby wipes and some leaves. MacGyver would succeed where I failed. AND THEN….if it wasn’t good enough yet….we have to prance through the hotel lobby with a puke covered child and a puke covered car-seat. We twirled, we pirouetted, we box-stepped the hell out of that lobby. Listen lady, you can’t buy memories like this.
Once we got up to the room I stripped Cardin down to her diaper by some luck there was a laundry room in the hotel that you could pay to use so I was able to at least wash the chunks off. Yummy. From there I attempted to clean the car-seat. My attempts at hand washing were futile. The puke had seeped in too far, I needed a power washer at this point.
I made an executive decision and decided my best source of water pressure was the shower head so I decided to shower the car-seat. No…I’m not kidding. I actually had to give the car-seat a shower. In desperate times, men will resort to desperate measures. All the while Cardin was running around in her diaper screaming, “POOL! MOMMY, POOL!” Listen lady, I’m knee deep in your vomit…the pool can wait.
We managed to fit in a quick swim, hopeful that the amount of chlorine would kill off the smell of vomit. Afterward, I found a 24 hour grocery store and bought upholstery cleaner and febreze. I spent a good 30 minutes in the parking lot of the hotel scrubbing the seat of the car hoping that the smell would not permeate the car forever.
The next morning we had no choice but to put the car-seat back into the car and venture on our way to the zoo. It was 91 that day and the seat festered all day. In the sun. In the closed car. I think the car almost exploded. When we got back to the car we decided that it was time to throw in the towel and buy a new car-seat. We found the closet baby store and dropped $160 on the car-seat.
When we got back to the hotel, we switched out the old for the new, except there was one minor glitch still. We needed to dispose of the old seat still. The hotel wouldn’t take it and we couldn’t just leave it. So that night, we drove around…like hoodlums….looking for a dumpster that was not on a closed circuit TV.
Brett and I may be arrested one day. The newspaper headline will likely read something like this “NY couple arrested for abandoning vile car-seat; landfill refuses to accept such waste”.