Ideals

I've been trying to find the words to describe an experience I had yesterday. I've said it a few times over in my mind, but I haven't figured out how to begin. Oh well....

A little after three o'clock yesterday afternoon, just as I was preparing to go to the park, one of our few-blocks-away neighbors who has three little girls all around my girls' ages rang the doorbell. Her oldest daughter and Cora always like to play together when we see one another at the park, and she said that her daughter had been asking to play with Coco, and she asked if she could stay and play for about 30 minutes. I obliged. I even gave her 45 because I had some people coming to give me an estimate on trimming our trees.

She went and came back in about 40 minutes. We'd played a bit and eaten popcorn. Her daughter made a number two, so I got to take care of some extra business. All was good.

This is the part I don't know how to say exactly right. This lady is gorgeous, or like major potentially gorgeous. She has what I can only describe as meth mouth. I think she's also potentially really smart, and while she seems with-it, something is always off. She seems a little too with-it to be on something, and a little too not with-it to not be. But she's always really nice. Even if she does smoke at the park, and occasionally yell obscenities at the park when her youngest little girl gets out of the van and starts making a bee-line for the street. Or when she says the "s-word" in my house in front of my girls promptly followed by a mouth cover up gesture when describing the feeling you have when you're about to give birth.

So yes, she was telling me the stories of each of her daughters' births, which also leads me to add Amazonian to the list of words to describe her. She had her third daughter at home on the bedroom floor. Her babies come fast. In the midst of these stories, she went into the bathroom because her second daughter had a number 2 accident in her panties. This is where the extra weirdness began.

She got the poop out of her panties and threw it in the trash can next to the toilet. All right, whatever. I've thrown poop away without thinking about it once or twice when Magnolia was rockin' her cloth diapers (like little bitty poop). She puts her on the toilet to finish taking care of business and her youngest daughter has to go potty. She sits on our little training toilet. It goes off without a hitch until it comes time to pour it in the toilet. She pours it behind her other daughter and it gets on the toilet seat. Whatev again. We're just talking. Then her second daughter falls into the toilet. She pulls her out and grabs my hand towel to dry her off. The moment I saw the poopy streaks on my towel was the moment I stopped thinking "whatev," and started thinking about sanitizing my bathroom. She didn't flush the tinkle when we left the bathroom, "If it's yellow, let it mellow." right? How green...

We went back to the living room, her daughter numero dos went back into my girls' room. I was asking her what she did before becoming a mother, "I can't believe I'm going to tell you this, but I was a dancer." I didn't even ask what kind of dancer, but I quickly found out when she started talking about her moral code and stage name. I am not surprised, and I am reveling in this conversation because it is no ordinary one. I asked her if she stopped when her oldest daughter was born, and she said she took some time off, but stopped dancing for good when she was six months pregnant with her second daughter.

My world is a rockin', and I was so disappointed when our conversation was interrupted by another accident. Same daughter, major poopage. Apparently she wasn't quite finished and was too promptly taken off the pot when she fell in earlier. Her mom is working on getting her out of her clothes. There is a big piece of poop on the hand towel on the floor. I'm handing over wipes as fast as I can to get her cleaned up. The poop went in the toilet when I was getting some clean undies for the little girl. Her mom is washing her hands and says, "You know some things shouldn't embarrass you, but they still do."

This is where I feel like a Jerky McJerkerson. It wasn't about the poop, well the accident part, but all I could think about was how there was poop on a hand towel that was on my floor, and was now on my pajamas that I hadn't moved out of the bathroom from after my shower earlier that morning. I was nice. I was reassuring, I mean, hello! I'm a mom, too. I just wanted to clean my bathroom. She was sort of trying to gather children, sort of trying to talk still.

I was getting mixed messages, so I just started telling her girls that I was so glad they got to come over and hoping they could come again soon. She was running from room to room trying to gather her youngest two. I told her I was glad she came and then she sort of laughed and said something about me trying to get rid of them, and I felt extra bad because I thought she was trying to leave, and because YES, I wanted to clean my bathroom, and I wish I wouldn't have been thinking about that, but legit, now instead of just numero uno in my bowl, she'd rinsed the poo out of the panties and didn't flush that.

I was being selfish, still kind, but my mind was being impatient. They eventually left. All told from when she dropped her oldest daughter off, they'd been there for about an hour and a half. When they left, I pulled out the big guns, my big ol' jug of bleach that I never use.

Bless this woman's heart. I think she's interesting. Her girls are cute as cute can be and her oldest is really sweet. She calls ideas "ideals." She likes to share her ideals with me, and I like to listen to them. I used the first one she ever shared with me around Christmas time (let your kids pick out the wrapping paper they want Santa to wrap presents in, leave it out a few days before Christmas and his elves come and pick it up for him to use - then they get to see it on Christmas day). When she walked into my house (this was their first time inside) she said she had "ideals" like this (about some of my decorations), but just needed to get her house cleaned up to do them. I dropped her daughter off one evening after she left her with me at the park, and her house was so bad. I didn't even go in, but I could see through the windows and the smell was, whoa. It's like who could this so gorgeous, smart woman with beautiful children and so full of "ideals" be if she was living up to her full potential? If she knew what she was capable of? Why is it that I can be intrigued by all of her idiosyncrasies, but very nearly repulsed when they cross the threshold of my home, namely my bathroom? [But PTL that it was the bathroom not my girls' room.]

I don't know the answer. But I do know that I want to be friends with her.

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