On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

Dr. Isis is currently on her way home from MRU.  She's cuddled up in the middle seat between Mr. and Little Isis.  She and Little Isis have been splitting the headphones from her MP3 player and she and Little Isis have already been scolded once for singing a little too loudly that they are Natural Women.

Dr. Isis has a limit of about 5 days away from MRU before the vacation begins to wear a little thin.  Please don't mistake me.  I have had a lovely time visiting family, but being away from home can be stressful.  Dr. Isis has been away from home for 8 days, exceeding her 5 day limit by 3 whole days, and this morning I realized just how ready I am to return home.  Here's how I knew this:

 We began to approach hurricane season.  For being in a non-childproofed house, Little Isis (Dr. Isis's comic foil) has been amazingly well-behaved.  I think Little Isis heard me tell Grandmom Isis on the phone just how good he has been and realized he had a limited time in which to conduct all of the badness he had been planning for the week.  This morning he proceeded to chase my in-laws' 6 pound toy poodle around the house and attempt to throw any piece of "no touch" he could get to before an adult intervened.  The thing about extended family is that extended family is typically very excited to watch Little Isis.  However, sometimes Little Isis and extended family can have exactly the same attention span - as soon as you begin to let your guard down and relax you realize that the extended family has been distracted by another task or something shiny and is no longer paying attention to Little Isis.  Little Isis then takes this unsupervised opportunity to eat dog food or play in the sand litter box.   Eight days of hypervigilance can be exhausting.

 Dr. Isis really needs to be in her own bed again.  Little Isis has been sleeping in a Pack and Play in the bedroom Mr. and Dr. Isis have been sharing.  Two nights ago Little Isis woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to be in the bed with Mr. and Dr. Isis.  Dr. Isis obliged.  This lasted for about 30 minutes until Little Isis turned to become the middle bar of the "H" between Mr. and Dr. Isis and then kicked Dr. Isis in the face, bloodying and fattening her lip. For the record, Dr. Isis still looks better than Jessica Simpson after her last round of collagen.

Figure1: Or, perhaps Jessica Simpson also has a toddler around to kick her in the mouth

Dr. Isis decided to vacate her marital bed and find safe sleeping elsewhere.  She went out to the living room, but the living room bed was occupied by Mother Isis-in-Law.  Father Isis-in-Law was under the weather and she was trying to avoid being contaminated.  Brother Isis-in-Law had laid claim to the den and Dr. Isis was desperate for a place to sleep where she didn't have to worry about sleeping in the same position Joe Lewis boxed in.  Her only option?  Little Isis's brand new Thomas the Train tent.  Dr. Isis gathered her pillow and blanket and crawled inside Thomas's caboose.

The next morning Dr. Isis emerged from the train tent and met gazes with a very puzzled looking Father Isis-in-Law who assumed that Dr. Isis must have slept in the train tent to fulfill some strange fantasy or just to be wacky. Over the course of the next day, he offered her an inflatable mattress  and a sleeping bag to put in the train tent (you know, for comfort) and asked if she planned to sleep there again before he tried to take it down to pack it away.

For the record, the train tent wasn't all that uncomfortable.

"I have a confession..."  Dr. Isis hates to do laundry.  H-A-T-E-S laundry.  Beyond that, I especially hate doing laundry in a house that is not my own.   For that very reason when we travel I always bring enough clothes to guarantee that I will not need to do laundry while I am away from home.  However, during our trip Mr. Isis kept doing laundry every two days.  He would come to me and ask if I had anything that needed washed.  He would gather up one or two items, a couple of Little Isis's things, and one or two pieces of his clothing and launder away.  That meant that every two days there was washing, drying, and folding to be done and it made me just plain crazy.  I couldn't figure out why he was so obsessed with doing laundry,  but I was also cheesed at having our belongings strewn about in assorted stages of the laundering process. 

By the end of the trip I was about at my wits end with Mr. Isis's frequent laundry doing and lost my junk with him, threatening his life and well-being if he did any more laundry.  And, with that, poor Mr. Isis replied "I have a confession.  I forgot to pack underwear and only have the one pair that I wore here.  I didn't want to make a big deal about it.  I've been alternating between washing the one pair and going commando so that I would only have to do laundry every two days.  I was trying to minimize stressing you out."

Figure 2: A artist's rendition of Dr. Isis after hearing Mr. Isis's explanation

But we are on our way home.  Soon enough I will be able to crawl into my own bed, all will again be right with the world, and Mr. Isis will be able to return to wear underpants every day.  Ahhh.