Flushed.

As with many mom-blogs, I have to begin this entry with the disclaimer that yes, despite the following evidence, I really do love my children.

That said, my story begins in with a two year old who likes to play with Mommy's cell phone. The fun, as many of you may know, is in imitation. She'll greet the non-existent recipient of her pretend call politely, usually order a cheeseburger, with "fren-fries," close with a gentle "bye-bye," then announce to the room at large the substance of the call. "It was Grandpa. I got da burger. Wit cheese." She'll proclaim before repeating the call to Grandma, Nana, Gandad, Daddy (even if Daddy is in the room), Owen, and whatever daycare friends she can remember. This, in itself, is not really worth mentioning. However, once her audience (=me) gets bored with this scenario, she'll often drift into a bit of a trance (sometimes sesame street induced) and start, well, drooling or licking the phone. While I try to curb this behavior, it seems I was not diligent in the matter.

At one point, my phone announced "Car Kit." This, I learned after a brief Internet search, was verizon speak for "your phone got sucked on by your toddler." Really. I'm not kidding. Someone else had the exact same problem when her 18 month old got her little mits (and mouth) on her phone. Solution, take out battery and wipe off the battery connections.

Well, as time went on, I started getting complaints about my phone. "Hello. Are you on the moon?" became a regular greeting from my callers. Irritating thought it was, I wasn't annoyed enough with the problem to talk to the cell phone people. That is, until "Car Kit" again announced the presence of my daughter's drool... or so I thought.

When "Car Kit" appears on the cell screen, the sounds don't work. Everything else appears to function as normal. It looks like you're dialing an emergency call, but no, you won't hear them, they won't hear you. Sooo, it is imperative that the phone is taken to a technician for assistance. So I went to the Verizon store -- a place that requires all employees to look like young business students. It's like they are prepared at any point for a camera crew to come in for their next brochures. These people are pretty. I guess they save the dorks for the mall outlets. Anyway. Cute as they are, they don't always deliver good news. Upon seeing the "car kit" error message, decent-looking technician 1 took the phone from me and punched a lot of buttons. "Let me see if I can help you with this so you won't have to wait for the the (guy-who-knows-what-he's-doing)." No dice. DLT-1 is very confused at why he can't hear the prompts -- even though I told him he wouldn't be able to.

Anyway, once I got to DLT-2 (who was hired, I think, because he flirts with all the housewives) took one look at it and said, I'm paraphrasing here, "you're screwed, don't let your kid suck on your phone you moron." Damn. "But we can give you a replacement for $50." So I took the replacement, vowing to keep this phone away from the little people in our household (easy, now is not the time for short jokes).

Two days after the replacement order, we arrived home to find a "Sorry we missed you" note from FedEx. This note is usually helpful as the first line tells you when you can go to the store and pick up your urgent package. Unfortunately, our FedEx delivery person filled that blank ("you may pick up you package after (blank) today") with "not today." So, after calling FedEx to double check that the package was indeed our requested phone, I signed the paper to have it left on our doorstep.

It arrived on Day 3. That evening, I took the phone to the Verison store to have my information transfered and the new phone activated. "You know," DLT-3 says, "We could have fixed the car kit message. Why did you decide to get a whole new phone?"

Come again?

So I wait while DLT-3 tries to fix the phone only to find out that it was, in fact, sucked to death.

Info transfered. And now I have a new phone (well, not "now" now, but "now" as it "at this point in the story.")

Two days go by while I happily use my new phone. Then comes Monday. Ah Monday. You know why you get a bad wrap Monday? It's because shitty (foreshadowing pun intended) things happen on Mondays and then you just have the rest of the week to look forward to.

Mid-Monday-morning, I get a call. After scrambling to figure out why there is a choo-choo sound following me for a few minutes, I realize my new phone is "ringing" in my back pocket. I make a mental note to change the ringer and answer the call. Work needs me to come in. Ok, no problem. I sit on the couch for another ten minutes while watching the end of the show I was watching. While I'm sitting there, I am mindlessly rubbing the fingerprints off the little camera on my precious new phone. Show ends and I announce to my little "cherubs" that it's time to go to Mommy's work. I send Rhianna to go potty while I go get Owen's shoes. Rhianna announces she's all done and I go in, help her wipe, and then take my turn. Owen follows me in and is hanging by my left side (this will be important later).

Ready to go checklist: juice for toddlers, check; snacks for emergencies, check; diapers, check; wipes, check; wallet, check; phone (reaching into LEFT sweatshirt pocket), missing. Huh, WHERE could it have gone? After searching for about 20 minutes, I email Dave to call me thinking I'll hear it ring. I've now turned the entire downstairs upside down and can't find the phone. Getting nervous about the amount of time that has passed since the request from work came in, I figure that I've gone nowhere, it must be here somewhere so I'll find it later. (Which I will.)

Off to work. At every chance I get, I ransack the diaper bag thinking I must have put it in there. No dice. So I do my duties at work, get Dave for lunch, bitch a little about misplacing my phone. Bla bla bla. The kids and I go home and they take a nap. I look around for my phone some more to no avail. Kids wake up.

After playing for a few minutes, Rhianna announces she needs to go potty. Go for it. She pretty much does this herself most of the time now so I just let her go until the announcement of "Mamma! No flush toilet!" Huh???

I go in to see a small amount of soggy toiletpaper floating around and otherwise (well, other than the water) empty bowl. Hmm. What would YOU do? Well, I feel like I followed my instinct when it said "Try again to flush." Upon trying to flush the toilet again, it did the scary almost-overflow thing that plugged toilets usually do. Next step, the plunger.

The first trouble with the plunger is that now that it has been used in front of them, both kids know the purpose of the plunger and think this should be a regular activity. The second is that they usually end up unveiling a disgusting, toilet-plugging pile of poo. Oh well, gotta unplug the toilet somehow. So in I go.

Plunge One. Nothing.

Plunge two. Gurgle. I try the flush again. Some water goes down, but definitely not that satisfying "glug-glug" of a properly flushed toilet.

Plunge three. Something dark. (Insert preparing-for-something-yucky face.)

Wait. Poop isn't metallic.





I go to the computer, "Dave?"

"yeah?"

"I found the phone."






I repeat, I really do love my kids. I have to. Otherwise they might not have lived.

PS, Kara, if you're reading this, I have, for the record, just completed my first official "dad-zen breath." And I'm pretty sure I had the concentric square forehead and everything.