Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (17 page)

Ding-ding-ding-ding!

The gas light dinged at me. All I wanted to do was go home and finish puking until my stomach officially turned inside out, and now I had to stop to get gas.

I swung into a gas station, slammed my car in park and decided to put in just enough gas to get the needle off of “empty.” I would pay inside and buy a box of Saltine crackers and some Gatorade so I wouldn’t have to leave the house again.

I pumped gas until I had to throw up again, and leaned over the trash can by the pump. Maybe now I could make it inside, grab my stuff, pay for everything and get back
outside
the store before I need to puke again. I really, really didn’t want to throw up in the store.

I ran through the store like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep and snatched everything I needed off of the shelves. By the time I got to the checkout counter a line had formed and wonder of all wonders, the cashier had on a name tag that read “HI! I’m Tracy and I’m in training!” I sighed to myself as I mentally reviewed every cuss word I knew.

I stood in line pondering what I could have done to offend God so badly and inched forward still shivering with fever, as Tracy slowly rang up every customer in the line.

Finally
, it was my turn.

I threw my crackers and lemon-lime Gatorade on the counter and muttered, “Pump number six,” while swallowing down the bile that was rising in the back of my throat.

“I’m sorry, couldn’t hear you, dear…what was that?” Tracy asked with a cheerful smile.

“Pump SIX,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Alrighty, let's see... seven dollars on pump six, a box of crackers and a bottle of Gatorade… will that be all?”

Why
do people ask you this when you checkout? Obviously this is
all
I was going to buy — I was standing at the check-out line staring at her with nothing in my hand but a debit card.

I nodded my head very slowly.

“M'kay,” she said as she scanned everything and asked, “would you like a bag?”

Seriously?
Could she not tell I was the same color as the Gatorade? I mean, I do realize I have a bachelor’s degree in nursing, but I don’t think it takes a degree in the medical field to deduce from my purchases that I was feeling less than stellar and she should maybe… I dunno… hurry the HELL up!

“Whatever,” I replied starting to let my irritation show.

“Oops,” Tracy said with a shy little grin, “I accidentally rang your crackers up twice… let me see if I remember how to take them off…”

Sweet, sweet Jesus help me. I was sweating and shaking and about sixty seconds from spewing again.

“I DON’T CARE! I’LL PAY FOR ‘EM!” I yelled at her.

Tracy looked up, her smile fading as she realized she might have her first testy customer on her hands. “Well ma’am, if you’ll just wait one second I’ll take them off!” she huffed at me.

“Look,” I said leaning across the counter towards her bullet-proof glass, “I am sick and about to puke all over this store. I need to pay. NOW!”

“Oh!” She said, “Well, grab an extra box on your way out!”

Finally, I blissfully slid my debit card through its slot and went outside to puke beside my car again.

I got home at 6:00pm, I figured I could sleep for at least two hours before Gena would call, ready to bring Aubrey home. I stripped out of my clothes and jumped into the bed with my cell phone volume set on high. I pulled the covers over my head and fell into a deep, dreamless and feverish sleep.

I slept through roughly fifteen missed calls (Gena, Zeb, my mother, Gena, Zeb, Gena, etc.) and woke up at 2:30am in just enough time to make one very important, split-second decision — I could: a) puke all over my brand new carpet or b) puke all over my brand new bedding. Scrubbing vomit out of my carpet on my hands and knees did not sound like a good time, so I threw the comforter off of the bed and threw up all over my sheets.

Now if I hadn’t had children, I could have put a clean set of sheets on my bed, taken a shower and climbed back in the bed to sleep the rest of the day away, watching Judge Judy and Oprah whenever I woke up. But I had to get a shower, put clothes on and go get my babies.

“I tried to call you last night,” Zeb said as I walked into the hospital room. “Gena called and I didn’t know what to tell her. I couldn’t leave and we couldn’t get you.”

I apologized and explained that I had totally blacked out as soon as I got in the bed. I took Emma from him, so he could stretch. As he stood up out of the recliner I noticed his color wasn’t great and he didn’t have the same spring in his step he usually had.

“Do you feel okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah, just stiff from sleeping in this chair and I got really hungry in the middle of the night and the only thing I could find to eat that wasn’t junk food was a can of peaches in the vending machine. I think they may have been bad.”

He went to bring the car around to the patient-loading zone while I gathered all of our belongings. As we were putting Emma in the car, Zeb looked at me and said quite matter-of -factly, “I’m about to throw up.”

“What? Why are you telling me?”

“Because I’m not sure what to do about it… where am I supposed to throw up?”

I pointed to some bushes off to the side of the main entrance of the very large and very busy university hospital. I climbed in the car and started the engine, to listen to some tunes while my husband threw up in the bushes.

As Zeb stumbled into the car, the man actually said
out loud
,
“I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that can of peaches. I guess they were bad.”

I would like to state for the record that my husband is a genius. Literally. His ACT scores were nearly perfect and you should never
ever
play Trivial Pursuit with him unless a) you are on his team or b) you want to go home crying like a little girl because you feel so insignificant and stupid. But on occasion, common sense seems to elude him.

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure I understand you. Are you saying you just threw up because you ate a bad can of peaches?”

The man looked me dead in the eye and said with a straight face, “Well, what else could it be?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the same LETHAL stomach virus that your wife and daughter have… the virus that made your daughter so sick that WE ARE JUST NOW LEAVING THE HOSPITAL!”

“Nah. I’m pretty sure it was the peaches. I feel fine, now.”

I shut my mouth as he pulled out of the hospital parking lot to drive us home. Peaches indeed! This brought to mind a similar incident when I had made a huge vat of vegetable soup with veggies from our very own garden and after eating one bowl of soup and almost an entire chocolate chocolate-chip pound cake, he told his
Mother
my soup made him sick. Peaches, my right foot! We’d see about that when he was still puking in twelve hours.

He deposited me at home with the baby and I unfolded our sofa bed to prepare for an intense day of watching movies on the couch with the kids. Zeb went to pick up Aubrey from Gena’s house before she had a chance to call Child Protective Services and have us charged with neglect and took Aubrey to preschool.

He staggered in the door about an hour later and collapsed beside me on the sofa bed where I was weakly entertaining Emma.

“So, are you still feeling better?” I asked snidely.

“I was fine until I got to Aubrey’s school. I was trying to unbuckle her car seat and I realized I wasn’t finished throwing up.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran to the front of the car and I puked all over the church parking lot, in front of all the parents. I’m pretty sure the grandparents in the car next to me thought I was hung over and bringing my kid to school.”

“What was Aubrey doing?”

“Laughing so hard she was wheezing.”

“Man,” I said without taking my eyes off of Emma, “I bet you’re really sorry you ate those peaches.”

G
rowing up I only knew there was one type of grandmother and that was the kind that I had. But once my friends and I starting having kids and turning our mothers into grandmothers — I realized that all grandmothers are
not
created equal. As far as I can tell, there are three basic types of grandmothers: Grandmothers, MeeMaws and Mimis. You might know them by different names, but I’d be willing to bet you can fit every grandmother you know into one of these three categories.

Grandmothers are the most formal of the three. They complain when you open the refrigerator and let the cold air out — although I’m not sure there’s another way to get food out of the refrigerator without opening the door. Their formal living room is just that… very formal and not only are you banned from sitting on the furniture, which may or may not be covered in plastic but if you so much as walk across the carpet they will
know
. Grandmothers wear pantyhose and pumps, get perms once a month and always have a purse to match their shoes. They do important things like play bridge and don’t ever miss Sunday school.

MeeMaws don’t care much about their shoes or their hair, unless it’s Sunday morning. And their uniform of choice is an old house dress with a well-used apron tied around their necks to keep grease from staining their clothes when frying okra for your dinner along with four or five other vegetables and a pot roast so tender you could eat it with a spoon. MeeMaws don’t care about you letting the cold air out of the fridge. They expect you to eat when you come to their house because, “You ain’t nothin’ but skin and bones!”

Mimis are a newer breed of grandmother. They are still working, to pay for their next round of plastic surgery and only want to keep the grandkids overnight if it’s not going to interfere with their bikini wax. Mimis get their nails done once a week and are constantly reminding their daughters and (gasp) their daughters-in-law not to “let yourself go,” by saying helpful things such as, “You look so pretty when you have your hair highlighted. It makes you look less mousy.” Or, “You’re going to look so good when you lose all that baby weight.” Mimis are trendy and stylish, they never
ever
go gray and most likely have a tiny obnoxious little dog a la’ Paris Hilton. When their children call with the latest anecdote about what Junior has done, you can be sure Mimi will follow up with Muffy’s latest adventure.

Mimis liked to be called Mimi and other such names because it sounds much less grandmotherly than MeeMaw, Nana or the Mimi equivalent of kryptonite... Granny. If you want to really piss these women off just go ahead and call them the G-word. Not that you’ll be able to tell they are pissed, their faces have been frozen in time by the miracle known as Botox since their eleventh twenty-ninth birthday.

I am triple blessed in that my Momma, my sweet mother-in-law, and my kid’s pseudo-grandmother, our next door neighbor, Nana — all fall into the rarest of all categories. One that is quite hard to classify but I refer to them collectively as “Shuggies” because this is what my children have dubbed my mother. These women have mastered the fine art of being grandmothers, they know exactly where the line is between being a blessing and spoiling your kids rotten. They are so loving and so much fun if you were to give your kids the choice between going to Grandmama’s house or the circus, the kids will pick Grandmama every time.

I went ahead and provided Webster’s definition of a Shuggie for your convenience…

Shuggie-
n
.
slang,
derivative of the Latin meaning Sugar Momma. A grandmother or older woman who gives tirelessly of her time, money, energy and love to anyone and everyone. She expects nothing in return. She can sleep in any climate or environment, regardless of temperature and/or sleeping conditions, including but not limited to: sleeping on a pool float, a mattress in a garage, or in a double bed with two squirming and sweaty preschoolers. A Shuggie's diet may vary depending on her surroundings and how many other hungry mouths need to be fed. It is common for a Shuggie to wait for small children and young, exhausted mothers to eat before ever even considering her own hunger. A Shuggie is also known for driving great distances in order to put other's needs ahead of her own. To find a Shuggie of your very own, you'll have to pray; only God knows how to make something this good.

Being a grandmother, from what I hear from these women, is even better than being a mother. I can totally see how you get all the joys, half the heartache,
none
of the discipline and at the end of a long day you get to call their parents and tell them to “Come get
your
kids.” Sounds like good times to me, unless you are one of those unfortunate grandmothers who never told your own children “no” and now
you
are raising your grandbabies.