A Mother's Day Reality Check.

 

We're going random again today - coherent thoughts lately are reserved for other areas of my life, HA!  Here's a little tidbit from Mother's Day, which for those of you who cringe at the thought of Mother's Day did NOT include breakfast in bed, cards from kids, roses, or any of that other nonsense.   Let this be thought of as Mel's Mother's Day Reality Check - a post from the trenches, hehe.

Mother's Day weekend we enjoyed a trip to the beach. It was great!  And the boys are finally at a great age to enjoy and play at the beach without trying to drown themselves every 2 minutes in the ocean - yay!  I packed up everything the night before (as usual) and our only "left-behind" items were the baby wipes...oops.  {Mothering FAIL} I had ONE half used package in the car which actually lasted the entire trip - whoa!

This came in to play when we had a little, uh, incident at the beach.  Corbin was getting pretty tired and as usual wanted me to hold him (lazy buns), so I wrapped him up in his towel and headed back. {Imagine me trying to climb sand dunes with a 30 lb preschooler in my arms and you get the idea}

As I'm walking back up to the condo I started getting a whiff of a not-so-pleasant smell.  And I, of course, in my usual "Duh" fashion think to myself - Hmmm...what's that smell?  Sheesh this towel is kind of stinky.  Not putting two and two together, I just keep walking with my less than fresh kiddo.

I finally realize that he has, in fact, had a major blowout in a...wait for it...a swim diaper.  Now some of you know what this means, and I will enlighten the rest.  A swim diaper is about as absorbent as one sheet of toilet paper.   As in, the smell I've been smelling is literally all over me, my swim suit, Corbin, and his towel.  Ewwww.

I also realize that I have left his ONE half bag of wipes at the beach with Mark.  Nice.  So I end up hosing the poor kid down in the shower.  Which leaves me with another problem...our suits are yucky.  

Hayden contributes to our growing laundry pile that night by wetting the bed...argh...and he's officially gone through ALL his underwear.  Laundry time has come.  

But, no problem, I saw laundry facilities at the resort so I can handle this little hiccup.  I wake up early while everyone else is still groggily watching cartoons or getting dressed and head out (oh and it's also Mother's Day, I think I really felt the true essence that morning).  I have a 10 dollar bill, but I'm hoping for a change machine - I mean it is a coin laundry right?  Yeah, no.  No change machine.

Alright, no problem, I got this.  I'll head to the convenience store.  I need detergent anyway.  So while I'm checking out, I ask if I can get change and the guy is all chatting it up for what feels like forever about how awesome he is that his store gives change.  Yeah, that's great, and about my change...

Finally, he says, "Ok so what do you need?  I can give you anything but quarters. But you won't need quarters because laundry mats have change machines"  Anything BUT quarters? Uh, that's what I NEED!!! And no, believe it or not, they don't all have change machines.  Argh.

I go back to my car and kind of sit there a minute in defeat...next to my stinky laundry (it's obviously mocking me at this point).

Ok, no problem.  I've got a fancy phone, let's look up a laundry mat.  There must be a laundry mat in Port Aransas.  Closest one that my phone knows about....in CORPUS CHRISTI.  That's like at least a 15-20 minute drive!!!! BAH!

Back to drumming my fingers on the steering wheel.   Hmmm.  At this point I'm kind of stumped.  I'm close to the point of doing laundry in the ocean if I have to.  I will prevail!!!!!!!!!!!!

I remember that there's a coke machine next to the laundry place.  Maybe it will give me change!  I throw my money in.  Hit the return button...and...nothing.  It also refuses to return my dollar.  I go back to my car with a cold Diet Coke and 35 cents.  I start figuring out how many diet cokes I'd have to buy to get enough quarters to wash and dry my clothes (it's 9 by the way, in case you're curious).

Unfortunately, I don't have 9 dollar bills.

By this time, it's getting later and the front office of the condo place has opened.  I head there in complete defeat, hoping that they can help direct me to the nearest change machine, laundry mat, anything.

And what do you know...they give change.  Lots and lots of QUARTERS!  I could have slept in and saved myself about an hour of laundry adventure.  Oh well.  Happy Mother's Day to me!