Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The A+D Incident

At midnight I woke up and wearily took myself upstairs to bed. I had fallen asleep on the floor watching a movie. As I reached the landing that unusual fishy smell of A&D ointment wafted heavily in air. Though not fully awake I still registered trouble. I flicked on the lights to find an entire 10 by 19 bedroom decorated with the likes of Vaseline from a full tube of toothpaste. That frightful ointment was smeared on the floor, and on the bedsheets and on a number of stuffed animals and dolls and even on the hair and clothes of one of the sleeping occupants. I was stunned. Emily must have travelled into Jane's room, discovered the hidden diaper rash ointment, returned to her brothers' room, flipped the cap and proceeded to squeeze the tube emptier than even her thrifty mother eventually would have. My toes were feeling moisturized while my heart was cracked and dry of love for the little troublemaker. How could she do this?

As you may know, A+D ointment is not water soluble so I had my doubts whether the glistening yellow swirls and smears would ever come out. And in fact they didn't. Some things were tossed in the trash and others were cleaned as best as possible. Fortunately, the wood floors saved an expensive re-carpeting job. Well, the bedsheets once looked better, but a week later I can almost laugh at the A+D incident. FYI, "A" stands for angel and "D" stands for devil. And E is my little A+D.

4 comments:

WigintonFamily said...

oh anna, i feel your pain. i hope you work all emily's quirks out before she hits the teenage years. i hope your heart gets re-moisturized. i love your flowerly writing. and i love the pictures in the last post. can fritz swim? i put samuel in swim lessons a few weeks ago, but he can't swim yet. i'll try again next year. i have started almost every sentence in this comment with i. i am cool.

pbandj7 said...

anna

i havent yet experienced this, but i know i will. i hope that i will be able to respond with the love and grace that you did.

pb

nita said...

sometimes you just have to laugh - to keep from crying...
but sometimes a good cry does the trick, too!

Unknown said...

Ooh, that sounds almost as fun as cleaning up dog poop at midnight! I can relate all too well. Whey can't the little A+D's choose something water soluble???