Wack-O Jack-O

There are many things in my life that are constant that are good – weekends with the kids, flannel sheets in the winter, dinner dates with my husband. And there are many things in my life that are consistently bad, or weird, or a combination platter of the above. Travel curse, medical mysteries, running in to my ex-FIL in weird locations, Dave never loading the dishwasher (“…but I rinsed the dish babe!” “But is that dish going to walk itself to the dishwasher now, honey?”), work never being done, Dave’s annual ‘mancation’ and Jack’s inherited Kmart-blue-light-special GI issues.

This past weekend Dave embarked on a five-day journey to what is affectionately termed in my world as ‘mancation’. It’s really a ruse for Dave and his buddies to find more excuses to drink and be kid-free, under the guise of skiing, after all, when asked, “So, what did you do this mancation”, the answer is almost always, “We (fill in the blank), then we grabbed a drink.” Over the years I’ve managed to rack up enough ‘mancation’ credits to do an around-the-world in a year ‘momcation’ sans husband and kids. But alas, as all moms know, momcation isn’t a real word, because in my life momcations don’t exist, just like the word. I digress.

The key to a happy ‘mancation’ for the family left at home, is a well conceived plan that involves plenty of wine, kids activities, and someone else to help. As such, I did as any enterprising working mom would do, I Facebook’d my sister-in-law Sarah ‘inviting’ me and the kids to visit for the weekend. “Oh yes, the kids have been dying to see their cousins Devon and Daphne…hope you don’t mind, and yeah, by the way, can I bring the dog too? Seriously, I’m not flying, there should be no curse this time. Oh yeah, one more thing, I’m still on Percocet, so I’m hoping that I can pretty much become a pile of goo at your house while my kids run rampant and my dog needs to be let out.” And with hardly a question or comment, Uncle John and Aunt Sarah said, “Sure, make the trek to Woodstock, this will be fun.”

Now, I should probably back-track and tell you a short story about my middle child, Jack. As a baby, Jack was affectionately referred to as Bubba, primarily due to his size and appetite for anything that we ate. Over time, Jack lost his trademark identify, having stretched himself out to be the skinniest member of the family (all while maintaining an extraordinarily large head, thus making him appear rather pin-like) and virtually eating only cereal. It’s true, we were raising Seinfeld. Upon entering kindergarten, Jack kindly requested that we stop calling him Bubba in front of his friends, and simply refer to him as Jack O. Of course, the issue with naming your child a common or popular name is that there is the potential of other kids with the same name, and thus using the first initial of your last name. Jack O. quickly turned into Jack-O, which then turned in to Jacko. And in the process of Jack renaming himself after the King of Pop, he also managed to single handedly change his diet to only cereal, and therefore created his own set of unique plumbing issues only relieved with intervention, medication, and pleads of “just sit there and get your game on boy.”

After playing with their cousins all day, and running themselves in to a stupor, we were getting ready for bed, when Jack complained, “Mommy, my tummy is hurting me.” “Jack, too much cereal? Try sitting on the toilet and let the magic happen buddy.” Apparently, Jack had waited for what appeared to be at least five days to unleash the hounds in to John and Sarah’s bathroom. While trying to sneak off to bed, without even flushing the toilet, Jack was stopped by Uncle John, “Jack, dude, wipe your butt…and the seat, geez, what did you eat?” To which I was called upon and greeted with a six year old sunny-side up evening hello, “Mommy, did I get it all?” Ugh, I’m getting bonus points for my ‘momcation’.

“Jack, go to bed, I’ll take care of this.” And after flushing the toilet, washing my hands like I had an OCD, I turned and looked to my horror of Jack’s evening present never making it down to the sewage system of greater Woodstock, but rather staring at me in the face. “Umm…John, Sarah…do you have a plunger?” To which Sarah shows me the wimpiest plunger that clearly has not spent a moment in our house, because unfortunately, this is not an unusual occurrence after Jack has left the building. To my disappointment, the plunger did no good, which meant we had to call in the big guns. “John, surely you have a Plan B plunger, one that save for ‘special occasions.’” To which John replied, “Hey Sarah, get you get out the Black Plunger, please?”

The Black Plunger held hopes of working, after all this was the industrial strength, janitor wielding version that could likely suck a small child into the depths of the unknown just by looking at it. I was certain this would do the trick. But being a mom, and now, being a mom heavily medicated thanks to my own broken booty issues, I turned over plumbing duties to the man in the house, John. “Geez, I can’t believe this isn’t working. What in the world did your son do in here? I think I read that maybe if you put some petroleum jelly on the end of the plunger, it might work better.” And in an effort to outdo even MacGyver in plumbing magic, we applied Vaseline that is good enough for a baby’s bottom - and even better - good enough for the plunger to wipe out the lasting effects of one said grown baby’s bottom. Sadly, even the ‘sure to work’ petroleum jelly was a bust.

“John, any chance you might have a Plan C?” And magically, or more like shockingly, they did. From the great bowels of the basement came the plumbing auger with a retractable coil that frankly, made me want to recoil in fear that this is what we’ve come down to in the darkening hours of the night. And John made yet another attempt to rid the toilet of Jack’s presents once and for all. “I think it’s working….take that back, it’s stuck.” Geez Jack, are you growing diamonds in your butt? Did you really crap out coal? I thought Santa brought him presents, did I miss the coal under the pillow that he swallowed and now is finding its way some place in the plumbing in John and Sarah’s house?

To my horror, as I paced the hallway on the first floor, I heard the cries from my sister-in-law, that no homeowner (or visiting home owner) wants to hear, “John, stop what you’re doing. The basement is now flooding from the toilet. I want to sell the house.” Seriously, Sarah said, “I want to sell the house”. Not only is Jack’s butt now responsible for a plumbing bill that I don’t want to see, but Jack’s butt may be responsible for the Woodstock Oliveira’s to leave their home in search of a better property, with a better bathroom, and better plumbing. This may go down in history as the most expensive crap ever.

And magically, after what appeared to be hours of attempting to fix the problems, and prayers on my part that John and Sarah wouldn’t disown the Chicago based clan, the toilet was fixed. Kind of. Meaning you just couldn’t put any toilet paper in it. But hey, they have two other bathrooms, who care if one doesn’t really work, right?

I always envisioned that my little Jack would simply be called Jack. Not Bubba. Not Jack O. Or Jack-O. Or heaven help us, Jacko. But now, I must say, that Jackass has a whole new meaning in my world, making Wack-o Jack-o a moniker that I can even warm up to.