Another Classic Morning

OK, so it was more like ten minutes, not the whole morning, but it will take you all morning or evening to read this, so...
Elena called and I invited her and Ben (two months older than Alex) over here, since Garrett was--to give too much detail--in a somewhat constipated state and had to take a laxative to "clear him out." Since this was a day off school for him it seemed an ideal time to stick near home and bathroom for that purpose. She asked if she could bring anything over, and all I could think of was Ben's latest Thomas DVD, one we don't have and which would therefore be a treat for the three resident Thomas fans (Garrett, Bot, and Alex, for those losing track--Liam and Cory were at school anyway, since this day off was for some state teacher conference or something that affected the public schools but not the parochial ones.)
So, she came over as I was trying to find a lid to go with the sippy cup Bot had requested and a valve to go with the lid, so I let Bot let her in. Immediately I heard her instructing Tina (the dog, again for those who may lose track) to not lick Ben, and shortly after to not sniff her butt. Now, I admit, Tina does lick rather generously, and she tends to sniff people between the legs from both the front and back, but every once in a while i defensively think to myself, "But she's a dog, she licks to say hi, and, well, her nose happens to be at the height of most people's butts, and hey, I have enough critters to train so the fact that I haven't gotten around to curbing these two little things should not make me feel as self-conscious as I feel right now, so there!"
I then heard her instruct Bot to be gentler with Ben--Bot has a tendency toward the spastic lately, especially since he was a knight for Halloween and Garrett was Spiderman and we got the movie to celebrate G's Halloween enthusiasm for the costume thing this year, so he is very in to both swordplay AND acting out the parts of Spiderman and the Green Goblin simultaneously. Add in the natural spike in energy when people come over and, well, he was apparently crowding Ben a bit.
At this point I had not even managed to get the lemonade in the cup and greet them, and they had not even made it past the living room. At some point I heard another instruction toward Bot to be gentler, or to leave more space, or whatever, so I gave up on the lemonade and went down the hall to the living room to instruct Richard to play in a less spastic manner or go outside to play. I then saw that the futon was almost totally stripped of the sheet and blanket we cover it with, and grumbling I started to rearrange it when Alex walked right up to Ben and gave him a good shove.
I picked up Alex and plopped him on the floor in the middle of my room, getting somewhat exasperated at the less-than-smooth beginning to the morning's visit, then went back to the living room because I heard Elena ask Bot to please not put the ballooons in Bens' face so much. (Gee, what else are balloons FOR?) I then went back down the hall to check on Alex, who was mad enough at his ostracism-due-to-violence to be pulling photo albums off the shelf of my bookcase. I plopped him back on his bottom further away from the shelf and gave him a firm NO and went back to the living room to make sure the dog was still outside (at some point in the previous five minutes I'd shoved her out the back door--yay fenced yard) and to run interference on my spastic Bot instead of listening to someone else do it for me. I might have even planned to get to some sort of proper hello or something. When I arrived there, Garrett was under the blanket on the couch, so I told him to get out because that blanket was for covering the couch and if he wanted to go under a blanket he should go upstairs and get his own blanket. As I re-rearranged the blankets he started up the stairs, and Elena asked him where he was going. He didn't answer, and he's been much better about answering back to people so I prompted him to answer her.
"G, where are you going?"
No answer, though he did look back at me briefly on his way up.
"G, what are you going to do up there?"
He got to the top of the steps and leaned on the railing that looked down over the hallway and said, "He was spitting."
"What?"
"He spits." and he gave a little cough-ish noise.
"Garrett Connor, don't you dare spit over that railing." Hmm, this is new, G never spits--
Garrett said one more time "I spit--" and proceeded to throw up over the railing onto the floor one flight down.
I stood there, separated from the rags and such by a puddle of vomit and the threat of more coming down on top of me, and casually instructed G to come on down. He leaned over and threw up again. I informed Elena that this was because of the saline laxative, nothing to worry about germwise, and then watched as Garrett leaned over the railing on his way downstairs and threw up again. I figured he was moving slowly enough that I could go around the other way, get some old towels to lay over the mess, and escort G to the bathroom. Once he was in the bathroom, I went to start wiping up the mess (on one hand I was happy I didn't have to go all the way upstairs to clean up the mess, on the other I had to admit that the long fall did mean the mess was rather widely spread across the hallway) when Alex walked up and stepped in the little bit I hadn't covered with a towel. I scooped him up, rinsed his feet in the tub, plopped him on the bathmat, and went back to tend to the hallway when I heard Bot again doing something that required intervention on Elena's part.
I stomped over the towels covering the mess, picked up Bot, took him to the playroom so I could "discuss" this without an audience, and in a low but very stern whisper (an extremely effective voice to use sometimes) I told him in no uncertain terms to not budge from the seat in which I'd put him. When he challenged with "Why do you always make me sit on this table, Mom?" (Oh, he was on the kiddie table, not in a chair, oops, oh well) I replied that I did NOT have the patience for him being so crazy with a Little Kid right now and he should just SIT--just as I was realizing that the vomit was splashed on the walls as well as across the floor. I also noted that the walls were not all that clean to begin with under the vomit. And this is the house that I swore would be thoroughly clean, cleaned out, repainted, and organized by Thanksgiving--three weeks out from that deadline the house is only getting cleaner when and where someone vomits.
It was at this point that I started feeling just a bit sory for myself.
Elena kindly asked if there was anything she could do to help, and being in a fit of self-pity I said no. She then offered to put in the Thomas video to keep the kids in the playroom and out of the hall, and this was too sensible for me to come up with any objections. I got out the garbage bags and paper towels and spray bottle and steamer--which began spitting steam because I apparently filled it too much, just when Alex came around the corner and was deflected from the steam by Elena, making me feel even more incompetent and annoyed at myself, and as I scrubbed I kept thinking that my kids were good kids, so what if the dog sniffs butts and the kids push and get spastic and throw up over railings, why isn't that OK, and why can't I manage to get them to not DO those things that I'm trying to convince myself are not so bad, and look how much dust and dirt there is along the baseboards, I might as well get depressed about that...
Still, it only took minutes to clean up, so having deposited a garbage bag full of vomit-soaked towels in the basment and disposed of the paper towels and put back the cleaner and washed my hands, I walked in to the kitchen/playroom and picked up Alex who came right over to me, and with tears welling up I looked at my friend and said:
"So, in the ten minutes you've been here, my dog has pestered you, my toddler pushed your child, my preschooler was being spastic, and my eight-year-old vomited from one flight up."
Her response was basically, "So?"
A minute later, she said, "So, can we have tea and raid the Halloween candy now?"
And life was back to normal. It's good to know people who know what's important in life.

Then Jake emailed me later on that he'd be leaving for Japan for a week starting the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend (Gee, is Thanksgiving this month? I didn't realize that it was in November, Sue...) and I was bummed again, which is also rather normal.