Mama Needs a Cosmo

Aahh, yes. It’s time for “’What Into the Hell’” Wednesday!

In yesterday’s post, there was a small blurb about distracted driving. Today, I’ve decided to post about “distracted pooping.”

(For those of you with weak constitutions, consider yourselves warned.)

There are only a few activities left in my world that I consider sacred, and using the ladies room at my office—where I can shut the stall door without worry of being interrupted by my preschooler—is one of them.

I don’t think I’m asking for a lot here. Who can argue with wanting some relative peace and quiet where I can do my business and go on about my day?

And for the most part, my office restroom (a lovely three-stall facility shared with four other suites on our floor) is usually low-key. Yesterday afternoon, however, my peace and quiet was interrupted when someone blew in the door while talking on her cell phone.

What made matters worse was the fact that the person on the other end of the phone was talking so loudly that I could hear—with relative ease—everything he was saying. (Or yelling, really, because they were in the middle of an argument.)

“How come you have to act like this every time I go out with Felicia?,” the woman in the stall next to me asked.

“You lied to me. You told me that you were going to dinner with your sister.”

“I lied to you because you act all weird whenever I go out. I like to go out with my friends without you once in a while.”

“I don’t act ‘all weird’ . . .”

[Enter Cosmo Mom, thoroughly displeased with the woman’s disregard for common decency.]

I gave a long loud sigh, and, making sure she could hear me, I said:

“Are you kidding me with this?”

She interrupted her boyfriend and said, “Hang on, I’m in the bathroom.”

I thought she was going to engage me, because I knew for certain that she’d heard me. Instead, she said, “I thought someone said something to me.”

“You’re in the bathroom?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

And since they were able to resume their conversation before I could say anything else, and because I was thoroughly pissed (no pun intended) at this point, I decided to make some noise. [Here comes the nasty . . . ]

First of all, I ripped open the sanitary napkin I had in my pocket, making a loud “zipper” noise. Then I slammed the lid of the metal container hanging on the stall’s wall after I threw the old pad away. Twice. Then I flushed the toilet while crinkling the toilet lid liners. Twice.

Still, they kept talking.

But, before I could do or say anything else, she said, “Hang on again,” after which she put the phone on the floor, wiped, flushed, picked the phone back up, and said, while pulling up her pants and leaving the stall, “I just don’t understand why you don’t trust me . . . ”

I can tell her why I don’t trust her! She just took her cell phone into the bathroom, carried on what should have been a very private argument with her boyfriend, put the phone on the bathroom floor, wiped her nether regions, put that same phone back up to her ear and face, and walked out the door without washing her hands!!

WHAT INTO THE HELL?!

*Sigh.* At least I didn’t knock the phone out of her hand with my purse . . . can I consider that an improvement in behavior?

I’ve been following the “Young People Who Rock” blog for a while now, and I thought I’d share one of the most recent posts:

Monday, December 10, 2007
Cell Phones for Soldiers

“Hey mom … I love you and miss you, but I’m pretty busy … so gotta go … Bye.”

I talk to my mom several times a day, and probably like a lot of people, I take it for granted. That’s a feeling that only gets stronger when you consider soldiers who are in a war zone this holiday season and how expensive calling loved ones overseas can be.

When Brittany and Robbie Bergquist of Norwell, Massachusetts, heard of a soldier having to pay almost $8,000 for a phone bill to call his family from Iraq, they wanted to do something. With $21, the brother and sister duo, then 12 and 13, respectively, started Cell Phones for Soldiers. The organization turns old cell phones into minutes of prepaid calling cards for U.S. troops stationed overseas.

People donate their old phones to the teens. They came up with the idea to sell them to a recycler for $5 and use the money to buy calling cards. Since they started three years ago, the pair has raised more than $1 million in donations and sent 400,000 minutes to troops. They hope to increase that amount nearly tenfold in the next five years so that more soldiers can call and say, “Hey, Mom.”

I know that yesterday was “‘What Into The Hell’ Wednesday,” but I’ve got another tick and a funny story about how I picked it off, and I couldn’t wait until next Wednesday to tell it.

My biggest pet peeve is with people who pop their gum. I’d rather eat foil and scratch my fingers down a blackboard at the same time than listen to someone pop their gum–suffice to say that it’s a sound that I loathe.

My second biggest pet peeve is with people who don’t respect my personal space. I don’t do well in the presence of a “close talker,” and don’t get me started on close-talking spitters.

Last night at the grocery store, I encountered someone who did both.

Sometimes when I’m grocery shopping without the boys, I choose to stand in the longest line for checking out. This gives me time to enjoy the opportunity of thumbing through the tabloids at a leisurely pace, without having to scream “put that down!” or “get back here!” or “I said no candy!”

But my choice to do this last night came with a price.

The woman who got in line behind me had been somewhat of a line jumper. She was in a hurry–not a good thing when most grocery stores are packed with the “after work” crowd at 6:00pm. And she picked MY line to stand and fidget and do her grumbling.

And pop her gum.

I tried to ignore it by diving into the George Clooney vs. Fabio updates, but I found myself reading the intro sentence over and over, with no retention.

Pop . . . pop . . . pop . . . And then came the cell phone call.

And while she was balancing her phone in one hand and doing whatever with the other, she managed to bump me with her basket. Hard. Four times.

OH. It was SOOO on.

The first couple of times, I used my butt to push the cart backwards. The third time, I looked back at her, but she was so engrossed in her cell phone conversation that she didn’t even see me. The last time, I gently moved the basket backwards, then stepped out from between my basket and hers, entering the “people go on this side” space and exiting the “baskets stay on that side” space. As I did this, I grabbed my purse, which also happened to be doubling as a tote bag and was filled with a bunch of items that I’d brought home from work. (I’ve got two words for you: LOADED and HEAVY.)

And as I waited for the diva behind me to get so close to me that I could feel her breath on my neck, I whipped my bag around onto my shoulder, and its forward motion knocked into her arm and forced the phone from her hand and onto the ground.

CosmoMama: 1           Gum-popping-space-invader: 0

As she gasped at me, I turned around, and with an unapologetic look on my face, I said, “Oh. I didn’t realize you were THAT close to me.”

Oohhh! Was she pissed!! But the folks behind her didn’t seem to mind my antics.

Right after my planned attack, it was my turn to check out, and by then she’d collected her phone and told whoever was on the other end that she was not very pleased with what I’d done. (Obscenities removed.)

I had to contain myself until I was inside of my car, and by then I was laughing so hysterically that I almost didn’t realize I’d put the car in reverse.

Like the title of my blog notes: I’m “trying” to take the high road, but I don’t necessarily do it all the time.

*Evil snicker*