That Kind of Person

Two weeks ago, I was spending Friday evening sitting on the back porch with my parents, sipping red wine as Aster cooed in the bouncy seat and Dianthus dug in the sandbox. The sun had warmed the flagstones, the sky was brilliant blue and every time the Mister popped out to join the conversation, the tantalizing aroma of roasting chicken wafted out. I opened a second bottle of wine long before we finished the first. I had decided that the first wine would go perfectly with the roast chicken, so I wanted to save it for dinner, and I thought we might all like a second glass before dinner.

My mother was surprised by this gesture. We aren't the kind of people to open two bottles of wine, and certainly not the second before the first is gone.
I mentioned that, just for one evening, I wanted to pretend that I was the kind of person who spent Friday evenings sipping just the wine I wanted in the sunlight.
And, for a moment I was.
At that moment, I also thought that I should blog about the moment. How to be that kind of person: do that thing. While I might never fully pick up the associated stereotypes, by definition, I can be the kind of person that does X just by doing X, whether or not I think I'm that kind of person. In my mind, I'm not the kind of person that watches reality television or drives a mini-van. In truth, I am. Apparently, by the same logic, I am also the kind of person who attends crazy, expensive underground supper club foodie dinners*, bakes elaborate fig-frosting cakes, and, for at least a moment, I was the kind of person who opens the bottle of wine she wants while lounging in the autumn light.
Neither bottle was finished that night, by the way. Four adults who started sipping wine right at five drank a total of a little over a bottle's worth (about 2 glasses each). The toddler acted up at dinner. The three month old started crying. The young parents fell into a heap in bed as soon as they could (at 39, I still consider myself a young parent). It didn't last long because the baby, snotty-nosed with crud he'd picked up from his brother, started crying inconsolably every two hours.
Sometime around 4 am the Mister stumbled into our room, turned on the light and handed me a pair of pliers, saying he needed help extracting a toothpick from his foot. I was unfazed by his request. Partly because I was still partially asleep, partially because I couldn't open one of my eyes because it was gunked shut with pink-eye, and largely because I had stepped on the same pile of toothpicks in the middle of the afternoon. One had wedged itself a full inch into my shoe and it had taken me two pairs of pliers and taking apart the layers of my new shoes to remove it.
So I'm the kind of person who lets her toddler play with toothpicks and not pick them up. And the kind of person who impales herself on a toothpick and tells her family about it but doesn't pick up the rest of the pile. But I am not the kind of person that can pull out a wooden toothpick from her husband's foot in the middle of the night, although not for lack of trying. It turns out that pointed wooden cocktail toothpicks, (blue in this case), are very sharp, but they splinter easily. Any pressure with the pliers (or the needle-nose pliers, or the tweezers) further fractured the toothpick into little bits.

In the morning (real morning, not 4 am morning), we sent the Mister off to the Convenient Care Clinic. My parents were concerned about sending him there (I didn't have the best experience when they disregarded my black widow bite symptoms), but I convinced them that the doctor was unlikely to tell the Mister that he didn't have a toothpick in his foot.

Hours (literally) later the Mister returned home. Even with superior tweezers, the doctor also had splintering trouble, and eventually had to just cut out the three quarter inch piece of toothpick. She also gave the Mister a prescription for antibiotics.

Sunday night, after my parents were gone, the Mister was itchy and I told him he looked pink. He told me it was the lighting.

I was worried enough that the next day I e-mailed the lobster-red Mister that he should call his doctor and he was worried enough that he did. His doctor sent him back to the Convenient Care Clinic, but he wasn't there when Aster and I walked by to sit in the waiting room with him. So when daycare called telling me to come pick up feverish Dianthus, I sobbed that I would, just as soon as I found out what was wrong with my husband and where the car with the car seat was.

The Mister returned from the pharmacy with a different antibiotic, still red and itchy and woozy from the shot they had given him to counteract his allergic reaction to penicillin (amoxicillin in this case). I picked up Dianthus and his bag of Halloween treats.

We suffered through a long afternoon and yes, I am the kind of person who will let her sick two-year old dress up as a Hawaiian Firefighter to go trick-or-treating**. But I am also the kind of person that will take him to only one house.

Dianthus puked all over the Mister in the middle of the night. I effectively lost a week of work with him home all day. The Mister, Aster and I eventually became sick with this new crud. The Mister's toothpick hole is healing without infection.

And, two weeks later, I am the kind of person who thinks it is funny.

Surely, the kind of person who sips wine in the Friday evening sunlight and sends her son to daycare with homemade pumpkin cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting does not leave sharp toothpicks lying around her house or lack clean pants because the few things that fit her current post-pregnancy size were all peed upon during coughing fits. But maybe they are.

*Someday I am going to blog about the Test Kitchen Oklahoma, the “Underground Supper Club” to which I “belong” but probably not any time soon. You can check out the menu of the dinner I ate on Oct. 2 on their website (logging in just requires an e-mail, nothing more).

**Click for comparison of Dianthus as another young punk and a black cat. The Hawaiian Firefighter resulted from his pink Hawaiian shorts and Fireman's Hat being his two favorite pieces of apparel at the moment.