Holiday Psychosis: Parts I & II

                                                                       Part I


     This morning, when I woke up, I lay in bed for awhile, trying to envision the Mary Poppins cake I'm going to make Clara for her second birthday in a few weeks.  I want to make one of Mary Poppins standing vertically with her umbrella unfurled above her.  In my mental image this morning though, the umbrella stem--which was made of cake--drooped flaccidly.
     Of course, you can't make the dang umbrella stem from cake, I told myself, getting up.  Downstairs the dining room table was covered in glitter and scraps of white paper.  I'd been making a bunch of snowflakes and decorating them with glitter for a Hanukkah party we planned for this weekend.   Which reminded me, I needed to practice making latkes.
     "Mommy, I want to doe outside," said Clara, looking up at me from under her mop of curly blond hair.  "I want to doe to the park."
     "Okay, okay, we will," I said, trying to find the measuring cup for Wilbur's breakfast.  Clara had put Wilbur's Christmas collar--the "Collar of Shame" we call it--on him, and the bells on the ends of the ruffles jingled merrily every time he moved his head.  He looked at me with deep embarrassment.
     "Sorry, Buddy, but you look pretty cute in that," I told him.
     "Mommy! 'Bur is eating my boogers!" Clara yelled ten minutes later, while I was upstairs brushing my teeth.
     He had pulled one of her dirty Kleenex from the trash and was "killing" it, viciously snapping his head back and forth, and making the Christmas collar jingle like a passel of psychotic elves. I pulled the collar off and cleaned up the shredded Kleenex.
     "Bad, bad dog!" I told Wilbur.
      Then I looked up and registered that, while I had been upstairs, the horsemen of the Apocalypse had ridden through our house on a morning reconnoiter.  Every single item had been pulled from Clara's toy box. The living room floor was littered with, among other things, tiny furniture from Clara's Calico Critters dollhouse.  The main inhabitant of this house, Bunny, was riding naked in a blue Cinderella Lego carriage nearby.  Bunny's dress was on the stairs.  Various rubber insects from a bug-themed birthday party Clara had gone to were strewn--rather tastefully, I must admit, with a definite eye for spacing--across living room furniture and shelving. Additionally, Wilbur had pulled one of Clara's urine-soaked Pull-ups from the kitchen garbage (probably when he managed to get the Kleenex) and shredded it.  Little, pee-engorged moisture beads glistened across the the expensive Turkish rug Simon got on a post-college trip to the Mediterranean.
     I put on a pot of coffee.  My husband and various of my friends have issued a decree: I shouldn't drink coffee. I am one of a cluster of ultra-sensitive, somewhat-neurotic people to whom coffee and caffeine in general can have beastly effects.  But this was an extreme situation, I reasoned.  I needed the extra energy to clean up this mess and muster up the verve for Hanukkah revelry.  My heart leapt as I realized we were D minus 48 hours.  And the house needed to be perfect.
     I drank half a cup of Starbucks dark roast and whipped through three loads of laundry and cleaned the bathroom.  I put all the furniture back in the Calico Critters playhouse and put it up on a shelf, out of reach of little hands. By early afternoon it felt like a cyclone was building inside me.  I began to fantasize of ways to attack Simon when he got home from work.  Had he picked up the dog poop in the backyard? Probably not!!! Did he remember to break down all those cardboard boxes?  I whipped open the door to the garage.  He had.  Well, but, I had to remind him like....ONCE!!!!
     "Wow, I feel so...nutty," I said, putting my hands to my head.  It felt like someone was squeezing it with a vise.  Somehow the idea I might be experiencing effects of extreme holiday/birthday stress combined with contraindicated caffeine didn't occur to me.
      There is only one thing that makes me this crazy! I thought.  I dug around under the bathroom sink until I found the pink box of pregnancy tests.  I peed on one of the sticks and waited.  Negative.
     "Come on, you dang thing!" I said, whacking it against the wall next to the toilet.  Still negative.  "Dang it!" I said and tossed it into the garbage.
     Downstairs Clara marched back and forth across the kitchen, dragging along the box her Calico Critters playhouse came in.
     "Where's my house, dang it! Dang it! Where's my house?!" she yelled.

                                               
                                                          Part II


      "I think I might be pregnant," I told the girls at work later that day.
      "Congratulations! How far along do you think you are?" asked Mallory.
     I quickly calculated in my head.
     "Three days."
      "What?! You can't even get an accurate test until, like, two weeks from now, right?"
     "Yes.  But I just feel like something is different...I feel so weird."
     "It's a very weird time of year.  Very stressful," someone else said.
     "Anyway, even if you were pregnant, you're not supposed to tell anyone until you hit fourteen weeks," said Shelly.
     "Bah!" I waved her off with my hand.  "You know me.  I can never keep my big mouth shut."
     There followed a discreet, suspiciously long pause.  Yes, this is true, everyone seemed to be thinking.
     Later Brian knocked into my chair.
     "Stop it!  The fetus!" I hissed.
     "Are you kidding me?  You are not pregnant.  You're just doing this so people will feel sorry for you."  Brian was around when I was pregnant with Clara, and bears the battle scars.  And I have to admit, he had a point.  The thought of being coddled through the holiday season was infinitely comforting.
     Back home, I told Simon my pregnancy suspicions.
     "But the test was negative," I finished sadly.
     "Of course it was," Simon said. "You can't defy the laws of physics and biology.  Even if you were pregnant, it would still be really, really early for a test."
     "You don't understand! When I get pregnant, I get really, really pregnant!"
     Simon's eyes widened and the pupils twitched imperceptibly. Since getting married to me, Simon has learned to roll his eyes so subtly and quickly, if you don't know what you're looking for, you might miss it.
     "Why don't we just hire someone to clean the house before the Hanukkah party?" he said.  "And we don't have to have Clara's party here.  We could do it somewhere where they provide the cake and everything and all you have to do is show up."
     "No, that is too expensive," I said firmly.  I envisioned myself industriously baking and cleaning for the parties, a veritable June Cleaver.
     You should see all the crap Cinderella does in one day, I thought.  Then, Yes, but she is half your age.
     The next day, I had our handyman, Ezra, come haul away some furniture so I could better organize the playroom.
     "I'm going to help you move the furniture to your truck," I told him. "Don't worry, I'm very muscular."
     Halfway up the stairs with an overstuffed recliner, the footrest popped out, yanking me forward and severely testing my abdominal stability.  I sensed, not pain, but a weird release in my low back.  By the time we'd finished loading the old love seat, I was walking stooped over.
     "I have never ever had this happen before," I assured Ezra.
     After he left, I affixed a bag of frozen peas to my lower back, winding duct tape around my middle to keep it in place.  I couldn't stand long enough to cook, so I ordered a pizza.
     "Niiiiccce," the pizza deliveryman said when I opened the door. "Rockin' the duct-tape back brace."
     That evening we went to our neighbor's for a Hanukkah meal (on a side note, our neighbor, who is a Latter-Day Saint, makes rugelach as delicious as any I've tasted in any Jewish deli in Brooklyn).  Clara wept because she wanted me to carry her across the lawn. Simon had to explain to her that I had an ouchie on my back, a concept that really alarmed her.  Finally, I discovered if I walked bow-legged, with my feet wide, and leaned over a bit, like a praying mantis, I could hold her for brief spurts.
     Simon looked on with grave disapproval.
     When we got home that night, I said to Clara, "Honey, I can't give you standing huggies before I put you in your crib, but I will sit on the floor and give you as many huggies as you like."
     I cradled her in my lap as I haven't done since she was just an infant, and kissed her on her firm, peachy cheeks, and kissed her blond eyelashes.  I even kissed her little white teethies.
     "Okay," I told Simon after we'd put her down. "We can hire a housecleaner before the party."