My Real Life

We’re redoing our “master bathroom.” 

I put “master bathroom” in quotes because it isn’t the bathroom off of the master bedroom, but instead, it’s attached to Monkey Girl’s room because we switched everyone’s bedrooms around last year.

Long story.

Anyway, this past weekend, we all piled in the car and headed for the Home Depot to pick out the tub, toilet, sink and accessories.

Now, I think stores like Home Depot and Lowes are awesome.  So much to see…so much to do.

As we pull into the parking lot, we hear a three year old call out from the backseat, “Home Depot is boring!”

Huh?

I thought I must have heard that wrong, so I said, “What did you say, sweetie?”

Baby Monkey said, again, “Home Depot is boring.”

Boring is his new favorite word. 

Dinner is boring.  School is boring.  Blue’s Clues is boring.  Football is boring.  Sitting on the potty is boring.  Mommy is boring.  Yes, that’s right.  He said Mommy was boring.

He’s three.  I’ll forgive him.

However, this time, I wish he had been right.

So, we go into Home Depot and head for the bathroom accoutrements.  (Funny…when you speak French, talking about anything sounds sophisticated, even if you really just mean a toilet paper holder.)

The kids were instantly magnetized toward something sitting in the aisle. 

Was it a toy?  A cool plaything?  A rolling cart?  A ladder?

No.

Yes, my children were drawn to the toilet.

The irony is that Baby Monkey was the most attracted to the porcelain throne, however, he refuses to even consider getting potty trained.  Tragic irony.

So, the kids are playing with the toilet (I can’t believe I just wrote those words) and Real Man and I are looking at everything, taking notes on upc numbers and prices.

Suddenly, there is this bloodcurdling scream.  We freeze and look around, because we just know it’s one of the monkeys.

Monkey in the Middle comes running up to us, holding his right hand in his left, yelling, “I’m bleeding!  I’m bleeding!”

We race to him and Real Man pries his hand open and sees that, yes, in fact he is bleeding, however, he hasn’t lost a finger.  He’s just bleeding a tiny bit.  Seriously…a teeny, tiny bit.

However, the tears are tantamount to someone who has to be rushed to the ER because a cast iron tub just fell off of the top shelf, directly onto their head.

So, he’s screaming that he must have a band-aid NOW, and I’m trying to explain that I don’t have a band-aid.  I look over my shoulder and see Baby Monkey and Monkey Girl, completely oblivious to what is going on with Monkey in the Middle, taking turns sitting on the toilet in the aisle.  Their empathy for his plight was overwhelming.

I pull out a tissue from my purse, and Real Man wraps it around Monkey in the Middle’s finger, who is continuing to cry like nobody’s business.  I pick him up, in the hopes that he can muffle the cries in my hair, because we aren’t done yet and I’m not leaving until we get all the info we need so we can order this “stuff” because I want that bathroom done, stat.  Also, he wasn’t actually really hurt.  He scraped his finger on some cardboard.  Drama queen much, Monkey in the Middle?

We finally get all the info we need, but I realize I forgot to record the numbers on the first two items on our list, so I put Monkey in the Middle down and start walking back to the other aisle and I suddenly hear Real Man say, “Really?  Right now?” and then he rushes off, scooping Monkey in the Middle along with him.

I look over my shoulder at Baby Monkey and Monkey Girl who are now singing and dancing in the aisle and say, “What’s that about?”  They stop long enough to shrug their shoulders, and then continue with their Home Depot merriment.

I don’t see Real Man and Monkey in the Middle anywhere, so I take the other two and go get those numbers.  They come back and I ask what happened, and it turned out that Monkey in the Middle had to throw up.  (He’s not sick…this is actually a recurring problem that has been going on for almost two years now…for a while, he threw up every single day.  He’s honestly not sick…he’s been tested out the wazoo.  However, I’m convinced it has something to do with mucus drainage because he does it more often when he has a cold or when he cries a lot, so I guess I should have expected it.)

But I digress.

Real Man couldn’t find a bathroom quickly enough, so he found a garbage can instead.  I guess we were lucky that Monkey in the Middle actually told Real Man and didn’t just avail himself of the toilet in the aisle.

At that point, I said, “Let’s go” and no one was arguing.

As we walked into the parking lot, Baby Monkey turned to me and said, “See?  Home Depot is boring.”

Nothing is ever boring with these monkeys.