Being the mom of YUCKIES

The word of the day on a New York Times blog a couple of weeks ago was YUCKIES—young unwitting costly kids, which is apparently an update of KIPPERs (kids in parents' pockets eroding retirement savings) in British slang.

I had heard of KIPPERs before, but YUCKIES was new to me and a hoot because it so describes my life right now. I’ve been helping Drama Daughter with the college loans for years (no longer officially—I'm off the payroll with Sallie Mae), Number One Son with college bills and rent and a couple of other financial issues, and Soldier Son with dog sitting—complicated that week by the fact that I had mindlessly given his dog Tank a handful (6? 8? 12?) of grapes Saturday, then realized that the bunch I had laid on the bathroom counter was missing a few minutes later.

Something in the back of my head reminded me that grapes can be toxic to dogs (although I'm sure our previous dog used to eat them, but she had a cast-iron stomach, and we already knew Tank does not), so I surfed the web and found out that they could do anything from nothing to renal shutdown. I had plenty of time to tie my stomach in a knot before most of the remaining bunch showed up on the couch in the living area, transported there by one or another of the four-legged critters, but apparently not too much the worse for wear.

Still, when Tank had a really, really nasty stool Monday morning, I hauled him off to the vet, who said he did seem to have some sort of infection (we did a week’s regimen of amoxycillan) and to keep an eye on him. He couldn’t have his vaccinations while he had diarrhea, so I had to take him back next week for new tags—and bring along a urine sample to see how he was doing on the grape reaction. (He was fine, but grapes are officially off his diet forever.)

So if that wasn't enough fun for that day, after I had gone out to get a visual inspection of the runny stool, he came running up to give me a kiss and whacked me in the lip and knocked me down. I love this animal, but I do have to watch out when he's coming—he has no idea how big he is, and when he's feeling his vinegar, he has more than his share! My lip hurt for the rest of the day.

And then somewhere in the confusion of trying to gather up dog and school supplies to do the vet on the way to the office (fortunately, I didn't have to take Tank to class!), I dropped my cell phone, which decided to tell me it was charging (when it was plugged in), but that's as far as it went. I wanted to get to the vet before my class, so I stuck the phone on the charger and crossed my fingers that it would eventually start to work again. After I got home from work, the phone still wouldn't do anything but announce that it was charging; fortunately, NOS stuck with it long enough to determine that it had somehow gotten shut off. He pushed several combinations of buttons to bring it back to life again, but I could have kissed him for doing it.

I made it to the vet and the class and hit a little actual work time before time to cycle back through the vet shop to the house, where Tank and Alpha Bitch set up a chorus of “oh, look, we have a bunny nest and we want the bunny to play!” Usually, when we tell Tank it's time to come into the house, we open the door and jump out of the way; I had to haul my butt out twice with the leash to drag him back inside that evening. I need to find the bunny a new home....

SS had been great about calling in fairly regularly during his time at Army boot camp, but not too good at sorting out what's up next in his life. Consequently, when he called that evening to tell me he would “graduate” from basic/advanced/whatever training this is next Friday and it wasn’t a big enough deal for me to be there, I scheduled my spring break trip to LA to see DD so that I flew out last Wednesday, went to her play on Friday, and will fly back next Wednesday. That plan let me take advantage of cheaper tickets by flying Wednesday to Wednesday and have a couple of days left to relax and enjoy some time with the dogs before I have to go back to school.

Surely by now you can see where this is going: I got my flight arrangements all set about the time SS told me he thought he was going to have about a 5-day leave. That would let him come home, tell the family in town goodbye, and gather up some stuff he wants to take with him on the flight to his next duty station in Germany. Super; now I had, like, two days of quiet until SS would come home. Then SS called and said that no, he didn't think he'd have the 5 days off, so no, not to plan on his coming home. Then he called and says they're having some special ceremony as part of the graduation where parents/spouses/whoever can pin on their “blues,” which I think is some sort of cord for their uniforms. No idea what that's about. So could I come for the ceremony and bring him the stuff he wants to take to Germany?

Not being one to miss a chance to (a) see my kid or (b) help him have what he needs to be comfortable, I assured him I'd check it out. Turns out that I had plenty of miles to pay for a trip to Georgia without cash, so I set up the paperwork to rent a car in Atlanta for a ridiculous (high) price to drive to Fort Benning; turning 60 will give me a break on the cost of a hotel a few miles up the road from the base. He agreed to pay the baggage fee to get his stuff to Georgia, and if I have to bring other junk home, he can pay for that, too.

The day after I got my flight set up to fly from Thursday before the graduation to Tuesday after it, SS called to tell me that without the 5 days of leave, he would have to be back on base on Monday, so I should change my flight plans to Sunday or Monday. Since I had set up the flight less than 24 hours earlier, changing it was not a problem.

A couple of days later, he called to say he was going to have leave after all, so could I just cancel that flight? No, because too much time had gone by. Ready to show that he could fix problems, he got my confirmation number and called the airline to see whether his military status would allow me to change my plans on his behalf. No, but the cost to cancel the trip would be a lot less than the cost of the hotel and the rental car, but I still wasn’t quite willing to make that call.

Shortly after I landed in Los Angeles, I got a text message from him: “Have you canceled your trip yet?” No. “Good.” No leave? “Undecided.” When he called a couple of hours later, he explained that he could take a weekend pass to stay with me in Georgia, or he could used 5 days of earned leave to fly home, but his weekend would count as two of those days.

So I found myself signed myself up to fly to California for just about long enough to get used to being on Pacific Coast time, fly back to Texas long enough to sort out the California pile of clothes from the Georgia pile, reload the suitcase, and fly into yet another time zone to see David graduate. Just to add to the confusion, this weekend was also the start of daylight savings time, so the progress I was making toward gearing myself up to California time has already been confused again.

I can't possibly make the “pinning” ceremony in Georgia because that turns out to be scheduled for Thursday morning, and I can't get there from here. But I can see him “graduate,” and I can take him out to dinner, and I can get to hug him goodbye before he flies halfway around the world.

I'm planning to take an extra couple of days off on the other side of spring break to try to figure out what time zone I'm in!