What I Envy...

I have a confession.

I envy other people’s intestines.

Lord, forgive me for I have sinned!  Oh, to have a stomach that loves the food I choose to eat as much as I love to eat it!  But, alas, it has been my destiny to NOT have a stomach that embraces foods of all cultures as readily as I do.  In fact, the type of food it least loves is the backbone of my beloved hometown state: DAIRY!

Dairy is to Wisconsin like white is to rice (I suppose that doesn’t work with brown rice...or wild rice...or...hm, new analogy needed here I guess!).  Like any loyal and Badger-red-blooded Wisconsinite, I LOVE all things dairy: cheese, ice-cream, milk, cheesecake, lattes, cream, butter, did I mention CREAM?  The prayer of this mother’s heart is that my Wisconsin-born and raised offspring will not inherit the curse of lactose-intolerance!

Of course, this problem is easily solved with the marvelous invention of a little pill known as “dairy-aid pills”, aka, “my dairy salvation!”.  The only time this invention doesn’t work is when you don’t use them, as my experience the other day proved.

My husband and I were heading out of town with some friends.  I noticed as I slammed the lid on my suitcase that I was out of dairy-pills, but thought to myself, “No big deal, I’ll just avoid dairy.”

Easier said than done, especially when you are at an adorable cafe with the tempting smell of made-from-scratch lattes wafting under your nose!  My famous last thought before I laid my money on the counter and ordered a milk-infused drink was, “I’m sure one little drink won’t hurt...”

There are many things motherhood has prepared me for but the scene that follows was not among them.  Moments after arriving at the mall with my friends and my baby cozied up on my chest in a carrier, I knew I was in dire...iah straights!  I did what any reasonable person, who had just committed a very unreasonable act of eating something their body goes on strike against, would do.  I RAN to the nearest restroom, knowing my next YEAR could be dedicated to bonding with a toilet.

There I was: trying to finagle off my belt with a baby-carrier suctioned to my torso while in a two by three foot stall.  Naturally, this alone would prove to be too boring for my life so my two-month-old baby chose that moment to wake and began SCREAMING, obviously starving in spite of the fact that he had just eaten thirty minutes before.  While I attempted to multi-task and get him out of the carrier to feed him, his pacifier went flying across the “ever-so-clean” public restroom floor.  

The final straw as I was sitting on the great throne, holding a carrier in one hand, holding a baby in the other, feeding a baby and sticking my leg under the stall door to try and reign in his nuk with my foot, my phone rang.  I recognized the ringtone as my husband calling.  Both accidentally and amazingly in all the commotion, the speaker button on the cell was bumped and the phone picked up.  My dear oblivious husband began hollering “Hello?  Babe?  Are you there?”  while I shouted back over my crying baby (much to the amusement of all the other patrons in the restroom, I’m sure),

“I’M A LITTLE BUSY RIGHT NOW!  UNLESS THIS IS LIFE OR DEATH, HANG UP OR I WILL GO CRAZY!!!!”

Somehow, I survived that moment...and that day; which, ended up feeling like a field-trip to every restroom in central Wisconsin.

The moral of this story is simply this: if you are lactose-intolerant, always have dairy-pills on hand.  And if you have intestines that don’t go on strike for nearly every food you consume, consider yourself blessed.  Granted, I would have missed out on that exciting adventure (and the tour de toilets) if I did have a “normal” stomach so I suppose I can count my blessings as well.

There’s always a silver lining...and sometimes even a silver toilet.