The baby exploded at Oscar's, the rib place in Los Feliz. It must be nice to just take a crap while standing up in a restaurant. What's great about being a baby is that you can fully experience your human body without worry about affecting your neighbors. When was the last time I got to stand on someone's leg and make terrified faces while my stomach contorted, laying out a juicy fart, exploding in a diaper and then laughing from relief? I didn't know how bad the diaper was until I got to the bathroom. Seriously, the baby had pooped upwards, up the sides of her diaper, in a flamboyant pattern, like the end of a tremendous fireworks display. If fireworks were tan, and smeary. I was really stumped at how to get it all off, because the proper "soiling area" for babies was the changing table way back in the handicrapped stall, and the table had spilled soda on it. Plus this baby was not going to be cleaned gently on a table with wipes. This baby needed the fire department. So luckily Oscar's has barely any customers because of the overpriced ribs and the bad economy. I tried half-stripping her and cleaning her off with the coarse gas station paper towels thay had, but it wasn't enough. I finally just took everything off and stuck her in the sink, wondering if someday she'd come to this restaurant as a grown up and smirk that she once bathed here. I actually really enjoyed wiping down the black granite counters as she sat in the hot water, because they had needed a wipe down anyway, and they shined up in a deeply satisfying way. At least I left the world spiffier than the way I found it. I wrapped the haz mat clothes with the shit sequestered deep inside like a clothing shit fortune cookie. Then I put the baby in the only extra clothes I had from the car - shorts overalls (perfect for winter)and a too-big red shirt that clashed with the pink. Barefoot.
I thought about this whole Christmas vacation, how everyone's been sick. That's what we got for Christmas. Barry's got the consumption, and would've died if we were in a Jane Austen novel. Emma's teeth all decided to fall out, and she ranged between having crippling stomach cramps and being starving. Nathan and I had bad cold. Lilly learned how to throw up as revenge for post nasal drip. Poor baby. When little kids throw up they have no idea what's going on. It's just sad - they sit there motionless, and then suddenly you hear a wave of water, and then you have a zillion sheets to wash.
Lilly and went back to the table at Oscar's, and Barry had packed up all the food, and the kids are looking long and lanky these days -- and I feel lucky. Lucky we got to go to restaurant on a Wednesday, all together, sneezing, crapping, happy. Lucky I belong somewhere, to some people, who care about me. They're good kids. Can you believe it? We're doing allright. Even as we leave, clutching my take-out ball of clothing poo, I think, this may be the greatest life ever. Look at these three bobbing blonde heads. Maybe we'll even leave the world a little better than how we found it.
