Over The River And Up S&%$'s Creek

It's 6am on Sunday morning at Manager Grandmother's house.

Sunrise is touching the grey (factory smoke-filled) New Jersey skies; dewdrops are beginning to glisten on the (overmanicured suburban environmental nightmare of a) front lawn; and the sleepy-looking (registered sex offender) next door neighbor has just meandered down his driveway to pick up his Sunday newspaper.

I'm trying to write quickly, before the tranquility is shattered by the arousal of child and childlike (I refer to The Boy, The Girl, and yes, The Grandmother) and the subsequent elevation of the household noise level to DEFCON 5.

While I, of course, love my mother dearly, a visit to the MG means 48 hours of unending family togetherness. This has been known to induce a heightened state of stress, caused by a hat trick of physiological deficiencies: sleep deprivation, emotional defensiveness, and mental exhaustion, all rolled up into one messy burrito.

The Boy and The Girl feel no such ambivalence. When MG is in the house, we are shunted aside like so much dirty underwear. She showers them with presents and praise, and generous helping of junk foods somehow rationalized as good for you ("Well, ice cream with chocolate chips does have calcium, you know.") She laughs and tickles and teases and unabashedly burps out loud whenever the feeling strikes. She is their own personal walking, talking, one-woman Kids Choice Awards, and they utterly adore her.

Our visit this weekend was fraught with purpose: MG had gotten tickets to for the final weekend of the Star Wars exhibit at the Franklin Institute as a special treat for The Boy's birthday. He got so excited when I told him that I thought that his brain might actually melt. He implemented a minute-to-minute "how long until we leave?" countdown and insisted on packing his suitcase more than a week prior to our departure.

I must have been distracted by shiny things, because I forgot to double-check his packing job. Upon arrival, we discovered that aside from some action figures, Transformers comics, and random scraps of paper, The Boy had brought twelve pairs of mismatched socks, five pairs of pants, and his pajamas, but only a single pair of underwear and a lone t-shirt (Empire Strikes Back, to be worn at the exhibit). Plus the clothes on his back which emerged from the three-hour car ride stained with juice, covered in crumbs, and crusted with mucus from the occasional sneeze-n-wipe.

That's OK, I thought. It's only a two day visit, so I'll just wash his car outfit and he can wear it again on Sunday.

Cue the Irony Gods, who thought it might be funny to make The Boy have an enormous accident in the middle of the night. Said accident set in motion a chain of sponge baths and laundry, with the end result of him waking up the next morning with pretty much everything (clothes AND pajamas) either still damp with pee, or soaking wet in the washing machine. And it was 8am, with us looking at a half hour drive to try to make our a strict 9am admission time slot.

I searched for inspiration in the immortal words of the wise philosopher Tim Gunn: it was truly 'make it work time'. Seizing the only two pieces of available clean clothing, we got everyone dressed and the whole family piled into the car, where my shirtless-under-his-spring-jacket, commando-under-camouflage shorts son patiently endured ten minutes of chafing while I ran into Old Navy to buy him some clean underpants and a t-shirt.

We beat our cutoff time with nearly three full minutes to spare.

And so, although I look forward to these visits, I'm ready to go back to work and play at being a grownup, and enjoy some much-needed peace and quiet in the office. Damn... I forgot. There is no peace and quiet in the office anymore.