Crazy Pitched a Tent in My Backyard

I like to pretend that there’s a long distance between me and Crazy. Like Crazy is a few states away, reachable by a car fueled on daily frustrations, down a long and twisty interstate, but with so many diversions and rest stops along the way that the odds are if I don’t tire of the journey, I’ll find some new distraction to consume me or I’ll have to stop for a bathroom break long before I reach the final destination (at which point I will retreat to the clean seats of home so as to avoid having to execute the public-toilet hover).

But that’s just pretend. Sometimes it’s a day trip, but usually Crazy is even closer, hanging out in my shadow, dancing a funky little number when it thinks I’m not looking, like the top-hat-wearing, cane-toting cartoon frog. Oh, but every now and then I catch the shadow movements in my peripheral vision just in time to whip around, thinking, “Crazy! Knock it off!” Whereupon Crazy cools its heels for a little while, croaking, seemingly nothing more than a simple frog.

Like this morning. Crazy had to have heard the 2 a.m. throwdown between the 15-month-old and The Second and Third Molars. Even if Crazy didn’t get up for it, like the snoring lump of a man next to me in the bed, Crazy must have heard the fracas on some subconscious level.

There’s nothing quite like reffing one of those middle-of-the-night molar melees. Especially when the only way a truce can be brokered is by bouncing about the room with a little monkey clinging to me, her own personal midnight kangaroo. It is almost possible to fall back to sleep while bouncing in this manner. Not quite, but almost. It all depends on how many nights in a row you have practiced this maneuver and how consequently sleep-deprived you are.

By the time I finally made it back into bed last night I could hear the first sounds of a storm moving overhead. Soothing. Perfect complement to the extended morning in bed that I was sure I had earned from all the bouncing.

The Molars sent word through the monitor around 7:30 that they were ready to get back to work. After some down and dirty negotiating with their union reps, though, we agreed on a rain-delay of at least 3 hours, and the monkey superglued herself to me for the trip back to my bed. And all was well and right again. For about ten minutes.

Then? Ollie, the more mischievous of the schnauzers, mistook the thunder as a signal for him to begin digging his way through the master bathroom door. (There is a House Rule that anyone who makes gagging noises in the middle of the night sleeps on the tile and not the carpet. House Rule.) Every ten seconds a frantic scratching. Every ten seconds me mentally begging him not to wake The Molars, to please, please, please, please, puhleeeeeeeez let me sleep. Every ten seconds him pretending he couldn’t feel the heat of my burgeoning rage through the door and again: scratch, scratch, scratch.

Finally I snaked my arm out from under The Child, wiggled my way out of the covers and rushed to throw open (as quietly as possible) the bathroom door. Using my best “shame on you” whisper I ordered the offender back to his pillow, waited for compliance, and stumbled back to bed. Before my feet were off the floor: scratch, scratch, scratch. And from beside me, the grumblings of The Molars, something about if we were getting up anyway they’d go ahead and start back to work cutting through those gums. No!

With more silent speed than I had in my pre-mommy days and with fleeting images of the few calf ropings television has exposed me to, I found a collar and leash and roped the errant Ollie to an interior bathroom doorknob far enough away from the scratching post to end the offensive noise-making. And just after I threw my hands in the air like those cowboys do to proclaim their victory, I turned back to toss his pillow under the doorknob and pat myself on the back for the gesture of unearned kindness in the face of his insensitivity. That’s when I caught a glimpse of Crazy peeping at me through the crack between the curtain and the window pane. Sigh. Don’t you get judgy on me now, Crazy.

That’s where Crazy really lives. Not several states away, but just outside the window, in an awkwardly pitched tent in the backyard. Waiting expectantly for an opportunity to encourage a neurotic reaction to an obsessively-scratching dog. Or the laundry basket that someone has inexplicably stored in the garage. Or the GALLON OF CANOLA OIL that The Husband brought home last week in response to a short grocery list that included “canola oil” but which he, with good it’s-a-better-value intentions, took to mean “CANOLA OIL.”

A gallon of oil is not something Crazy and I would ordinarily discuss over coffee. However, when you live in a house with an abundance of open space but which suffers from a kitchen-storage drought, the difference between 48 ounces and a gallon is much more than 80 ounces. It’s the difference between having a stash of extra necessities, like espresso and caramel and vanilla, and having a HUGE BOTTLE OF OIL in the cabinet instead. And when you’ve lived here for over 5 years, you assume that the other person who has lived here is aware of the storage-shortage. And then you remember that saying about “don’t assume” and next thing you know, you’ve invited Crazy in from the rain and you’re hashing it all out over a quadruple-shot iced caramel macchiato because you might as well share the coffee since you need to use it up to make room for the oil. “And what’s with not rinsing cheese and food particles on down the sink so they don’t get a chance to harden overnight?” Crazy asks as you scrub, scrub, scrub away on the sink. And you’re like, “Crazy! Knock it off!” as you pause in your scrubbing for a long draw on that macchiato . . . . Ribbit, ribbit, rib-bit.

And then I realize the whole conversation is in the second and third person AND I AM THE ONLY ONE HERE. (Not counting The Child, who now that I’m good and awake is sleeping off her molar hangover.) And it’s ridiculous. Because it’s just a laundry basket. Or canola oil. Or food crumbs. And? It’s not even raining. So I shoo Crazy and the dogs outside for the morning so I can get back to the cleaning and the feeding and the laundry and the planning and the organizing that is running a household – from all of which I take regular breaks for blogging and reading and texting (and venting) and sewing and facebooking and baking and emailing and photographing and writing and whatever other sanity-saving outlets capture my attention.

I have to believe that I am not the only woman (not even in a two-mile radius) who gets a little nuts about things like a gallon of canola oil. I am not the lone noisy-dog wrangler, right? Mine cannot be the only backyard in which Crazy has pitched a tent. I am not the only one who has to take a step back, slowly sip that iced caramel macchiato, and remind myself that first and foremost we are healthy/loved/blessed and the rest is just “other such.” Other such happiness, other such madness, other such reasons to laugh and cry, other such responsibilities, other such random ways to fill the time in days that are rushing by faster than it seems in the moment.

I mean – you’re doing this too, right? Right. Thank you for your honesty, for your unity in the face of the crazy-makers, for your admission that not only has Crazy set up a campsite in your backyard but it has invited all the banjo-playing, deep-south kin over for a barbecue and you’ve volunteered to make your great-grandmother’s award-winning potato salad. And thank you for overlooking my propensity to slip in and out of various grammatical persons, all within one paragraph and, perhaps if I get really distracted, within one sentence.

Now that we’ve recognized each other for who we really are and we have (hopefully) laid the foundation for some real bonding in a forum that is not dedicated to praising the every breath that escapes our child’s body or the heroic gestures of the best-spouse-ever but that can be used to talk more candidly, vent a little (I said a little), and, more importantly, laugh at ourselves, we can get back to our caricatures of those perfect women we aim to be. And all the other such.