Saturday, October 18, 2014

A Ho-Bath Gone Wrong

Warning: The following blog post is for the ladies; it will make you laugh and cry and probably pee your pants a little. Depends are advised past this point. To my readers of the male variety, this blog post will contain references to personal hygiene products and tender lady parts; continue reading at your own discretion.

This is the story of a mom; a miserable mom; a miserable mom, with miserable kids; a miserable mom, with miserable kids, in a hurry; a miserable mom, with miserable kids, in a hurry, in desperate need of a shower.  This is the story of "The Ho-Bath Gone Wrong".
This is the OPPOSITE of a Ho-Bath
It was a beautiful June morning in north Texas........Okay that's a lie.  It was a hot, humid. sticky, miserable morning in north Texas.  At nine am the temperature was already 99 degrees and it was climbing fast.  Normally, I am the freak that  LOVES this kind of weather but two major things were wrong with this particular day: 1) It was unusually humid.  I love heat; I revel in heat but I hate humidity.  I can't breathe, my joints ache and worse of all my hair looks like a pile of writhing snakes, it's all kinds of curly hair drama.
2) More importantly, our air conditioner was broken.  By broken, I mean it had turned my entryway into a swimming pool with large bits of ceiling plaster floating in it (our AC unit is upstairs, above said entryway).     Gallons of water had come spewing from the ceiling.  My husband (bless his heart) determined that he and Google were up to this particular repair challenge.  I love my husband; he can do magical things with a computer, he can make them stand up and dance.  He however, is not a plumber or an A/C repair type guy.  Knowing this, I called for an estimate on what the repair was going to cost, despite his well intention-ed assertions that he "would fix this".  The quote wasn't pretty, in fact it was bleak.   I decided that maybe he and Google were up to this challenge after all; mistake 1.

 So the house was a cozy 105, swampy degrees. This was day five of  no A/C in the north Texas summer (also known as Satan's Thermostat).
If I was miserable, the boys were more miserable.  If I was cranky (and I was), the boys were MORE cranky.  We had done every single day trip I could think of in the past five days; lake trips, water park trips, wild life refuge trips, ice cream trips.  The house was trashed because we were only home long enough to eat dinner, shower and sleep on the mattresses we had scattered around the living room downstairs; heat rises, you know.  Suddenly an inspiration struck, I would bring the boys to the movies! Movie theaters are cool, movie theaters are quiet,  movie theaters entertain the boys so I don't have to.
" Dear God in Heaven, Thank you for creating movie theaters. AMEN."  I sent a quick prayer of thanksgiving for this sanity saving miracle, as I feverishly looked up movie times on my phone.  I needed the first showing of any appropriate movie I could find. I didn't care if it was The Smurfs 2 on an endless loop (I was  that desperate!).  I found a movie that the boys wanted to see and it started in exactly 50 minutes.  Now 50 minutes doesn't sound like a time crunch. However,when you factor the movie theater is twenty minutes away on a good traffic day but good traffic days had ceased to exist since they decided to do construction on every single highway, byway and side road between our house and the theater, it meant we would be lucky to make it in time if we left immediately.  This presented a true crisis.  Remember, how I mentioned it was a swampy 105 degrees in our house?  It was in the best interest of the general public that I have a shower but there was no time for even a quick shower.  But if I skipped a shower I may be considered a bio-hazard and put into bio-hazard unit for detoxification......I would have to make time for a Ho-Bath, not ideal, but a functional compromise between public safety and my sanity.  I ran up stairs where the temperature is a blistering 115 degrees, or something close to it.  I rushed through my bedroom, taking time only to grab the essentials: clean clothes, deodorant, perfume, body spray.  I purposely ignore the thousand loud "MooooooM!!!!!!!!"'s I  hear.  I try to ignore the thumps and the crashes and pray "Dear God, let them survive five minutes while I get ready!  PLEASE"   I hear my bedroom door open as I am turning on the water in my bathroom sink and stripping down for my less than ideal toilette.  "DO NOT COME IN HERE!!! I"M NAKED!! GET DRESSED, put shoes on and get along for five freaking minutes!!"  Nice mom, pleasant mom, somewhat together mom, has been replaced by a naked, raving lunatic with snakey hair and smelly arm pits.  This is not the day to mess with me!  I splash water on all the important parts, keeping an eye on the bathroom door (the lock hasn't worked in ages, we really need to fix that).  Still keeping a wary eye on the bathroom door I reach for the feminine hygiene wipes I keep under the bathroom sink. " Thank you God for inventing these public shaming savers." I whisper as I rip open the package, still looking at the door.
Then I set about my task at hand, hurriedly but thoroughly cleansing the most offending areas.  The arm pits and under boob area complete with no issue I reach for a second wipe and go to work on my lady parts, thoroughly cleaning with no real thought to finesse.  Then all the sudden it hit, this terrible burning.  My hoo-ha was suddenly being burned alive by the fires of hell.  I let out a scream, that was heard all the way down in the Devil's lair.  My ears were ringing, my eyes were stinging, I stumble over to the bathtub and turn on the cold water and sit down.  It is to no avail, Satan and all his demons were still burning the living daylights out of my tender flower.   I confessed all my sins, I pleaded with God to make it stop, I promised to live a perfect life, to never swear again, to never, yell at my precious, hellion, children again, just please GOD MAKE THE BURNING STOP!!!!!!!!
I hop out of the bathtub and dry my tears with a towel, then I see it, laying on top of the first hygiene wipe package was a second, much smaller package, one that under normal circumstances I would never confuse for a ho-bath wipe.  There sitting on my sink, plain as a day, was an open alcohol swab.  I had just thoroughly scrubbed my sweet lady parts with an alcohol swab!!!!!!
I toweled off, applied all my deodorant, body spray and perfume,all the while ignoring the hell fires that persisted in my nether regions. I quickly dressed, loaded the boys into the truck and headed to the movies, the burning slowly, so slowly, fading away.  The boys enjoyed the movie and the rest of the world continued on as if nothing had happened.  But my world had changed, never again would I be able to look at a feminine hygiene cleansing wipe without feeling the echoes of the flames of hell licking at my lady parts.

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Kristine Meier-Skiff. Powered by Blogger.