The Pitter Patter THUMP of Little Lubricated Feet

For the first time in my blogging history, I must ask that those of you who might not want to know a few things DO NOT READ THIS POST.  I am talking to you, Mom and Dad, and to any of M's family that might decide right off the bat that this is going to be a little bit TMI.  I will not describe our sex life, but the hints about it could be more than you care to read.  If you do read on, I can promise that it will be funny.  So long as you aren't too disturbed by the implications.

The culprit always returns to the scene of the crime

Yesterday was our third anniversary.  M brought me three beautiful roses when he came home from class, and a box of DARK DARK DARK chocolate.  Because he loves me and knows me so well.  For him, I did my best to take care of something I could only describe as the mess.

Oh, the mess.  The sort of mess that will be with us until we move or replace the floors, I have no doubt.  The sort of mess that will become the thing of family legend, to our daughters' teenaged horror.

You see, knowing that our anniversary was on a Monday, knowing that it would be the first day of a week where M would have work (starting at 6am in Indiana) and then immediately head to class (letting out at 9pm on the near south side) we would celebrate our anniversary in chunks, around and about in the city or in our home as deemed appropriate.

We had our date last weekend- we went to see Paul Simon play the Vic.  For those of you familiar with venues in Chicago, you'll know what that means.  For those of you who aren't, let's put it this way... Most Paul Simon experts agree that this is the smallest, most intimate venue he's played since the '70s.  While there's normally a 1,000 occupancy limit in the Vic, a full third of that was taken up by radio personalities, and almost half of the balcony was dedicated to VIP- mostly members of one of the musician's family and his friends (he's an Evanston native).

Next weekend we're having our traditional anniversary to-do: we're seeing a baseball game.  We've done that the weekend after our wedding/anniversary since the first one.  In the future, it's the part of our anniversary happenings the kids will be invited to.

Paul Simon at the Vic

But Sunday night was the romantic part of the celebration.  M had built me a new desk and bedside table, replaced my kitchen faucet, and generally been wonderful and amazing (as usual) all afternoon.  So once the kids were in bed, we decided to hit the sack as soon as humanly possible.

And as I'm sure you can guess from my cleverly placed italics, we didn't sleep much.

Now, as I had an appointment relatively early in the morning, I wanted to be sure that Our Mary Poppins wouldn't be mortified by the girls bringing her some new and fabulous toy from Mommy and Daddy's room.  So I scoured the room, hiding things here and there, at the very least getting everything out of sight.  It's a little tricky to put everything away when you've just changed the plan for where everything goes (see "new bedside tables") and you're sort of dazed and in a rush.  What with the winds and the windows being open, the bedroom door has a tendency to open and shut of its own accord,  so just trapping everyone outside wasn't a very comfortable option.  I thought I did a pretty good job.  Nobody was going to get embarrassed or awkward.  And I succeeded.  For the moment.

When I came home and relieved Our Mary Poppins, I returned to the bedroom so I could put away clean laundry.  And then SI, our little detective in training, found the only remnants of the nights activities.  M had, in his excitable and eager enthusiasm, thrown the lid to our bottle of lube on the floor.  Where it had rolled beneath his dresser, far out of reach of any little fingers.  Including my own.

Of course, this also meant that when I left the bottle of very, VERY expensive and high quality lubricant on his bedside table, I had not noticed that this bottle was OPEN.

A word on our choice of lubricant, Jo Premium.  This is widely acknowledge the very finest of silicone based personal lubricants.  Extremely long lasting.  Completely water-proof.  Never, NEVER sticky or tacky.  Costs an arm and a leg, as far as lube goes, but worth every pretty penny.  Just ask your friendly local feminist sex-toy shop owner.

As I folded laundry, on my side of the bed, I saw a most alarming sight.  As if in slow motion, SI was  reaching towards the bottle on Daddy's bedside table.  And as if time had frozen for that infinitessimal moment, I stared and stared and stared, wondering- "What is wrong with this picture?"

And then it happened.  The exquisitely lubricated bottle slipped between her fingers, and as I ran pell-mell around the bed to try to stop the inevitable from happening, the pharmaceutical grade silicone began gushing out of the bottle.

The bottle half-emptied, I returned it to the shelf.  And poor, unwitting SI, sensing a lecture or perhaps an angry shout, ran THROUGH the puddle in an attempt to escape.  Encasing her feet in super long-lasting, water resistant, silicone based personal lubricant.

I had already grabbed a handkerchief that was destined to go straight into the garbage and was sopping up what I could when I heard a new sound- one I had never heard before, but was absolutely unmistakable.  It was the sound of SI losing all traction with the floor.

I turned over my shoulder to see SI floundering, comically, as her feet failed to make understandable contact with the floor beneath her.  She was essentially running in place, wobbling precariously, her little feet stomping, sliding, running, as she barely moved forward.  And then, THUMP, she landed heavily on her hands and knees.

Blanking for a moment on the full implications of the situation, I waited for her to run back to me so I could kiss her hands and finish my weak attempts at cleaning up the pool of silicone on M's beside floor.

But SI could not run back to me, because she could not maintain contact with the floor.  Another cartoonish attempt, legs working wildly and desperately struggling to maintain balance, and THUMP, onto the floor again, this time rear-end first.  This set DD giggling furiously, as she put the pieces together about what Mommy was doing on the floor, and what SI was doing.  And I saw the wild gleam of mischief in her eyes.

Sometimes, just staying upright is half the battle

Suddenly the real dilemma reared its ugly head.  Do I take SI to the bathroom and start trying to wash her feet, do I clean up the mess on the floor before it spreads farther than I can fear or imagine, or do I somehow wrangle both children away from the bedroom?

I opted to help the hysterical toddler who suddenly found the laws of physics failing her, hoping that bringing her to the tub- DD's favorite place on earth- would lure DD after me.

It worked beautifully.  Unfortunately, I hadn't counted on DD having to run through SI's little silicone footprints to get there.  The moment she scurried through SI's pharmaceutical grade footprints, physics failed her as well.  Legs working wildly, she managed to cross the threshold from the hardwood floor of the bedroom to the tiled floor of the bathroom.  Upon contact, the silicone seemed to gain viscosity, and THUMP, down went DD.

After much scrubbing with castile soap, I felt I had done the best I could for my lubricated grublings.  And then the task remained- cleaning the silicone off of the floor.

Google was no help at all.  Nor, I'm sorry to say, was the JO website.  Apparently most people store their highly expensive sex accessories with more care.  The best I could do was to get instructions for removing the silicone based lubricants used by some furniture manufacturing machines from your furniture.

I'm sorry to say, I failed.  I did all I could, I essentially polished nearly half of the bedroom floor with silicone, but it was too late.  The floor on M's side of the bed is, to put it mildly, a safety hazard.  He entertained himself before bed by sliding around in front of his dresser.

I keep discovering that I've missed spots.  This morning, on my way to prepare my children for their day, my feet went completely out from under me in the hallway.  Added to the comedic scene of your truly suddenly finding her feet whisked out from under her is the fact that she was, of course, holding a full cup of water.  Which she proceeded to wear for most of the morning.

Little lubricated footprints

Random patches of the floor in my nearly-entirely hardwood home, from the dining room on one end to the living room on the other and every room in between, are suddenly hazardous.

I can only hope that the regular wear and tear of a family of four tromping around will do something the mitigate the dangers facing us.  In the meantime, M manged to locate his hastily discarded lube lid, and we will forever remember our third anniversary as, hopefully, our most comically dangerous.

But then, there's always next year.