“How I Spent My Holiday”: by Tobias Lutz

or “What Were My Parents Thinking by Dragging My Butt to Oklahoma?”

Thursday morning preceding Christmas, mommy noticed her driver’s side headlight was out and given the trip we were to embark upon, she made plans to take the car into the dealership on Friday to have it replaced. No big deal, right? I hate the dealership and spending extra time there makes me cranky. Nothing to do, nothing to play with and cold, hard unforgiving floors. The service tech noticed that mommy’s airbag warning light was on and said that her sensors were not working. When she inquired as to how long this was going to take, they informed her that the sensor wasn’t an item they kept in stock. Super. After an hour and a half of waiting, they informed us that our car was ready and that we could return on Tuesday to have the sensor replaced.

When dad got home from work, mom ran out to get the dry-cleaning. Apparently in the confusion ( not that there should have been any), the dealership failed to complete the simplest of tasks and until the sun went down and mommy pulled up to a store-front window, no one noticed we spent all that time at the dealership for nothing. No new front headlight and we had to leave before sun up the next morning. I learned some new words when mom got home from the cleaners……according to mom, all the service techs at Richardson Volvo are motherfuckin’ cocksuckers who need their heads knocked together. I’m too small to lend the necessary hand she requires.

So we definitely started off our holiday in the right spirit, grumbling about the headlight on our way to the Texas/Oklahoma border. The trip seemed to start out fairly painless, we got to stop at a cool diner in southern Oklahoma, The Finish Line, and the quintessential diner-type waitresses were all gaga over me. It so pays to be cute. When this wears off, it’s so going to suck. From there we tripped on into Tulsa where we landed first, at Grandma’s. Talk about a place not set up for peoples of my size. Wheeeee, breakables at knee height and lower. What was she thinking? I personally thought knocking all of it over was a hoot and nothing is more fun than making those full-sizers run around trying to protect me from myself. Like I’m the decorator? Anyway, our time there was short-lived because daddy needed to complete mommy’s quest from Friday, getting a new headlight.

Grandma’s house isn’t just not set up to accommodate us little guys, it’s not set up to accommodate anyone. I’m not allowed to divulge the dirty laundry that is the dysfunction of my relatives so I’ll just say, we stayed at Grandpa’s house and leave it at that. Dad dropped me, mom and all of our stuff off at Grandpa’s house and went out to fix the headlight. No problem, I guess. Dad said it went real quick and all they did was look at the odometer and swap the bulbs. Why couldn’t they have done that yesterday? Dad’s right, customer service is dead.

The original plan was for me to sleep on Saturday night and they were going to go out and meet some old friends and have a parental night on the town. The soiree got cancelled and they just met up with Uncle Jon and Aunt Shannon for Pizza and…………beer (but beer doesn’t count in Oklahoma, 3.2 isn’t really beer). Mom and dad seemed a little bummed that their plans to have a “night-out” were sort of squashed. Between you and me, I think they were probably just worn out and needed some sleep.

Sunday came. The big day! This was supposed to be my Christmas dinner/celebration with all my step-cousins and step-aunt/uncles and then off to Grandma’s where I’d get gifted again and get more food. Ok, it was fun. The food was good, the company was fun and I did get loot. We hung out and got to meet relatives that none of us had ever met, joked around, I played with kids willing to play with me (way cool) and ate tons of food. About 3:30 or so, I was still so jazzed, I was unwilling to nap. Afternoon naps seem just silly to me, all this day to do and see and mom and dad think I need to sleep? Dad thinks I’m a complete nut and will rue the day when I had the luxury of rejecting sleep. Anyhow, in an effort to get me my “don’t wanna be cranky” nap, they drive around awhile before going on over to Grandma’s house for dinner. During that period, mom began complaining of nausea. Having recently gone through childbirth, I thought it awfully weenie-ish of her to be whining about an upset stomach.

Little did I know. Instantly upon pulling into Grandma’s driveway, mom began to get sick. Not that little “urpy-type” sick….. but that nasty evil blow it out both ends, unable to walk, cold chills, shakes, “my god are you going to die on us?” type sick. It was bad. Real bad. Dad was giving off bad juju vibes and we were back in the land of “can’t leave Toby alone cause he’ll shatter something”. For about 3 hours then, mom got more and more ill and dad became more and more freaked out………………me, I just got pissier and pissier. I may not have a firm grasp on this English stuff, but I ain’t stupid. Something was going down at the Circle K and I wasn’t being consulted. In my opinion, which no one asked for, we should have gotten the hell out of dodge and quick-like. Who knew?

So, while mom continued to crawl back and forth from the back room to the bathroom at Grandma’s, dad shuttled me back over to Grandpa’s to go to bed. Dad got me down (I was kind) and went in to tell Grandpa and Grandma II what had happened. The theory at that point, was food poisoning……….apparently they’d seen it before. So dad breaks a couple of laws getting back to mom and then rushes her off to the hospital. One look at her in triage, and they waste no time in carting her ass off to a room. Dad said it was due to what her hair looked like. I think he’s mean. Oh yeah, when dad pulled up to the emergency room entrance, guess what he saw in the reflection…………another headlight out. Super.

Mom’s done the whole IV drip thing before and she and dad both told the nurses that they’d have trouble due to her small veins. They didn’t listen. The EMT guy got all cocky and after two punches into her right forearm, gave up and handed it over to someone apparently more qualified. You should see her arms, even now. So they hook her up to the monster drip after taking blood samples and run the lines so they’ll flow faster. When they checked her in, her blood pressure was 96 over 48. Needless to say, she passed out twice while being poked for the IV. Dad says the attending doctor was pretty cool and straightforward. After getting mom’s cultures back from the lab, he commented that she had the *worst* case of food poisoning he had ever seen. Merry Christmas! This news came complete with a prescription for Cipro and an anti-nausea drug I can’t spell or pronounce. The best news of all “Don’t Breast Feed For Two Weeks”! Whaaaaaaaaaa???? I don’t get to eat my favorite meal?

So after being released from the hospital at 1am, mom and dad had to drive around to the all-night drug store and to the grocery store. Bran cereal and soy milk for mom and formula and a bottle for me. This got them home at about 2am. Guess what time I got hungry? Yep, 4am. Imagine my surprise when dad hauls out this plastic piece of crap with a stinky nipple and dumps formula into it. I went from cranky to pissed in about 4.5 seconds. I don’t like bottles, haven’t used them nor, do I ever plan to. Dad managed to get the message, removed the lid and let me drink from the bottle like they would. Worked fairly well (despite their obvious lack of sleep) and I got my food plus a major case of the belches. Too much air when I’m gulping.

I went back to sleep for a couple of hours and then it was up up up for me. Mom and dad’s lack of sleep has no bearing on my needs. Tough nouggies. I guess I sensed the frustration and issues they were having cause I was one cranky mutha all morning long. I screamed through breakfast and just wasn’t happy with my toys, being held, watching Teletubbies or anything. That and it was raining cats and dogs outside……we couldn’t take a break from being indoors either.

Remember the headlight? It still needed to be fixed and more so now as the weatherman was predicting that the rain would soon turn to snow. Dad is a pretty talented driver and was ready to take on the trip back home with a cranky kid and sick wife as he thought he’d be better able to care for them in the comfort of home. He was right, but Mother Nature saw it differently. Dad headed out to get the light fixed, go by Grandma’s and drop some stuff off and pick up some stuff from his sister’s so we could pack up the car and scoot.

Oh and the one piece of good news was dad’s best friend got a contact at the La Leche and after a lengthy conversation, got some current data regarding the impacts of Cipro on breast milk determined it to be safe to feed if timed correctly. Made my day.

Dad took off at about 11:30am to get 30 minutes of errands ran in advance of the inclement weather. He got to the dealership at about noon due to the mass traffic jams and Tulsa’s inability to keep up street sizings based on their growth. While he’s getting the headlight fixed, the snow starts. Big flakes, the massive kind that require the wipers run at full speed. When he leaves there, it’s already getting slushy. There’s no direct route from South Tulsa to Grandma’s house and so he takes what he believes to be the quickest route. Might have been, hard to say. By the time he gets to Grandma’s, about 5 inches of thick wet snow is covering *everything*. The roads have gone from slushy to packed slush/ice and are becoming almost impossible to navigate. To make a long story short, he got all of his errands done, but was unable to get back to us until after 3pm.

Given dad’s lack of sleep, mom’s condition, my attitude and the state of the roads, the decision was made to stay one more night and try again in the morning in the hopes that the highways at least, would be clear. That afternoon and evening were the worst ever. I forgot to tell you, Grandpa was hit with mommy’s gift too. Dad got him a prescription for Cipro too; nothing says loving like drugs for the holidays. So, after bouncing off the walls all day, I finally settled down for bed that night. Dad, he went to bed hungry as he was unwilling to eat *anything* at Grandpa’s for fear of getting sick and not having access to a hospital, what with the weather and all.

Tuesday morning saw continued light snow and one driven man outside scraping it from the car. My dad rocks. Once he’s had enough, he’ll move heaven and earth to change a situation. We were on the road by 10am. Dad got his first meal since Sunday afternoon at a truck stop in Muskogee Oklahoma. The look on his face was something between a grimace and absolute pleasure as he chowed down his micro-waved burrito. We ran out of the majority of the snow and real bad weather not too much further on down the road and man, you should have seen dad cruise. We made it home by mid-afternoon and adults can be funny……..dad kissing the living room floor was a hoot.

The next morning, Christmas met us with a bang. Mommy was feeling much better and you could tell, dad had gotten some of his sleep back. I learned how to rip presents open with gusto and life was alright again. Unless you have to go somewhere else folks, the best place to spend the holidays, is at home.