The Princess and the Pea
Ruby called my name at 3 o’clock this morning. She didn’t sound too distressed but I went to her anyway because she was longing and because I’m trained like that. I shuffled down the hall to her room without opening my eyes since keeping them closed for as long as possible when meeting her late-night needs is mandatory if I’m going to fall back to sleep.
“Here, mama,” she said. I opened one of my eyes, I can’t remember which, and took from her hand an olive, which was peculiar. Hmmmm, I thought. Why in the hell does she have an olive in bed? Did Sam give her an olive as a bedtime snack? But as I rolled the olive between my thumb and first two fingers, it felt less like an olive than like Playdough. I held the olive/playdough beneath the light of the bedside lamp and started to put things together. At this point, both eyes were now open.
The haze of sleep dissipated at nearly the same moment it occurred to me that Ruby doesn’t have any dark green playdough. And to confirm my worst suspicion, I totally did not bring the olive-esque, doughy substance within centimeters of my nostrils and take a sniff. No. I did not. But had I done so, the effect would have been akin to smelling salts waved beneath the flattened nose of a TKO’d boxer.
Apparently, there was a disturbance in the force, the force being my daughter’s Pull Up and the disturbance being a pellet poo. And the girl does not sleep with pellet poo, so she removed the object and handed it to moi as if she were a feline delivering a captured mouse as a peace offering. Then she stuck her thumb in her mouth, stuck her butt in the air and headed back to dreamland. I did my run-as-quickly-as-I-can-to-the-bathroom-while-gagging routine, and Sam dragged Ruby out of bed for clean-up. I didn’t go back to sleep after that.
If anyone had told me three years ago of the hideous things I would endure as a parent, I would have told them to put down the crack pipe.
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