Chalk and Cheese Chronicles

16 Ridiculously Active Zombies

I went insane the other day and invited 16 boys over to my house for a Halloween party. We went all Plants versus Zombies, building the theme around a fabulous cake, designed by the talented Pam Smith, a mom at our former preschool.

Dress as a zombie, or dress as you like, I told each boy. I figured if most of the boys came as zombies, they'd be rendered a little slow, based on their obvious disfigurements and missing limbs.

Then my crazy mind went to an even crazier place and decided to put on a little backyard Halloween carnival. We'd hand our young guests 25 tickets (from a roll of raffle tickets) upon arrival which they could use to play games. A win at any game, entititled the guest to a prize ticket (tiny playing cards).

Then I went crazier still at the landfill site, Oriental Trading Company. I bought glow-in-the-dark rats, bats, eyeballs, skeletons and other creepy crawlers. I bought kites and foam gliders and aliens embalmed in slime, you know, for the BIG sought after prizes, the kind you see at Chuck E. Cheese that cost 250 tickets.

This is what you do when you have school age boys. You host a gross out fest. I thought briefly of having the boys compete in an arm fart contest, but then I didn't want to end up with 16 winners. Plus, arm farts aren't funny except when you're, say, 6. Or when you're a 40-year-old dad.

I thought I was ready. I'd made a fruit salad and veggie plate as healthy offerings. The brain mold jello turned out deliciously creepy. My mom donated finger shaped cookies, finger jello with layers of Halloween colors and orange slices tricked out with jello. I'd even baked vanilla bean cupakes from scratch, complete with vanila bean paste stripped right from the bean. I stuffed popcorn into hand shaped treat bags well into the night.

The Halloween themed games were all set up. We had a bean bag toss, a ball toss, a croquet game, a Nerf gun target game, a fish tank marble drop, a skeleton clothespin drop, a penny toss and a touch-and-feel mummy box, complete with semi-scary music emanating from within the box.

As this was a drop off birthday party, I'd set up a check-in table at the front gate, with prize bags, a marker for their names, name tags and a sign in sheet to gather names and phone numbers.

I was good to go!

But you can't host a party if you don't have help. Turns out, some of the moms who'd I planned to have helping were running late, very late. And my parents couldn't make it.

So for what seemed like forever and a day, there was just me, my husband (dressed in an easy to make but effective PvZ Cone Zombie costume), my good friend Nora and a sweet 10-year-old neighbor girl who is good with kids.

We worked our butts off.

Things didn't go as I'd planned. I had no one to check in kids at the front gate. I had no one to help serve food from the kitchen; in fact, much of it didn't get served at all. I had no one to man the prize table; it quickly became a "grab on your honor" table - try that with 16 little boys and see how well that works! I had no one to float around and make sure everything and everyone was engaged.

It was mayhem for a while. Well, at least from my perspective because my mind was everywhere and nowhere. The kids didn't notice a thing, they were too busy having fun. The carnival was a hit. The prizes were a hit! I was hosting one rockin' backyard party!

After what seemed like an eternity, my friend and I looked at our watches. We were ready to call it a day.

But only an hour had passed. One measley hour.

Unbelievable.

So we played the mummy game. We divided up the kids into two teams and gave them rolls of toilet paper to wrap one boy from each team like a mummy. They loved this game. When it was over, it looked as if the backyard had been TP'd by teenage girls (clean up was a breeze because we made it a contest).

The winning team received toy toilets. Not just any toy toilets, mind you, but colorful palm-sized loos with heft, all filled with slime.

If you ever host a party for a school age boy, slime toilets are the hot ticket. Make a note of that.

When there was a lull, my friend's husband Jeff saved the day and initiated a zombie walk contest. All the boys were game, with some walking like zombies and some hiding behind bushes. In the end, we had 16 ridiculously active zombies hobbling about the backyard.

Slow down, I wanted to yell, you're zombies!

So in the end, I think the party was a success. All the boys seemed to be having so much fun! They didn't know about my behind-the-scenes stress, or that the fruit salad didn't get served. They loved that they were able to grab more than their deserved winnings from the prize table. I would have stuffed their goodie bags with the leftovers anyway.

Would I do it again? Yes. I love planning parties. But I would make sure I didn't just have ghosts in the kitchen, but real help, real live flesh and blood help.

Vomit in the Waiting Room

The great thing about having 7-year-olds is that they've long ago left behind the urge to put anything and everything into their mouths. The pediatrician's office was always the most cringe inducing to me when my boys were younger. The germy bits of everything they'd touch would inevitably end up in their mouths.

At 7, a visit to the doctor means I hand my sons a book from home and say, "Why don't you read this while we wait?"and they'll each grab the book and... read. So that's what my son was doing while at the pediatrician's office, waiting to be seen for an ache in his leg.

Then in toddled the ghost of sick baby visits past, all sticky fingered, sweaty and bewildered, a blue baby blanket half draped around him. He was about 2, this child, and he stood there in a daze as his mom plunked him down for a moment so she could check in with the receptionist.

Uh oh, I thought to myself, here come all the sick kids.

Then it happened. The poor little fellow gurgled a bit and then sputtered pink and red puke all over the place. It rained down on his clothes, on his baby blanket, on his mom, on the floor and indeed, onto the nearby train table where it flowed down to the floor in tiny drips.

I hopped up and hightailed it toward the restroom in search of paper towls.

"We need paper towels!" I told the receptionist, who I happened to see emerging from the restroom. "A boy out there has thrown up."

"Here, " she said, thrusting a handful of paper towels my way.

"Wet towels, " I answered, pushing past her toward the sink. "And it's not MY kid, " I added.

But still I wanted to help because I remember being that mom in situations like that and feeling so grateful to be surrounded by helpful strangers.

So I returned to the waiting room with wet paper towels and attempted to clean up the mess.

Meanwhile, the receptionist and the nurse failed to kick into action. They were like deer in the headlights.

Don't they see stuff like this happen all the time? Don't they have a bucket of emergency cleaning supplies on hand, just in case a sick child should, well, get sick all over the place? For God's sake, isn't this a pediatrician's office?

I moved the vomit around with my handful of towels. Swish, swish.

The mother of the sick boy was trying to comfort him. They were both dripping in vomit.

"Do you need a bag for his dirty clothes and blanket?" I asked, "I have some in my car."

"Yes," she said, "thank you."

But just when I turned to go, the nurse overheard us and said, "Don't we have garbage bags here?"

At that point, we got called into a room and I left the receptionist and the nurse to help the sick boy and his mother.

Of course, you should have garbage bags. And gloves. And disinfectant. And kind words of comfort BECAUSE YOU ARE A PEDIATRICIAN'S OFFICE. You've seen this before, right?

I have never warmed to the front office staff at our pediatrician's office and it's only out of sheer laziness that I've yet to change to a new one. But I will do so, soon.

Twenty minutes later, my son and I emerged from our small room. The nice doctor gave us her opinion on my son's leg and sent us on our way.

On our way out, I noticed a container of Clorox wipes on the counter of the receptionist's desk that had not been there before. I'm sure it was used to clean up the waiting room but I know that if I'd done the white glove test, I'd have spied pink bits of vomit in the cracks of the train table, and under its legs and beyond. The receptionist had been wearing a beautiful, long winter-like sweater, the type not meant for getting down on one's hands and knees and scrubbing floors.

Heading toward the exit, we passed about 4-5 people in the waiting room. All was calm and the room seemed fairly clean. A toddler played about the train table.

I wanted to throw open the windows, spray a bit of dilluted bleach (or similar) on the train table, put up some yellow caution tape and pronounce the place a biohazard zone, but instead, we just walked past those people and into our car and drove away.

I'm sure they'll all be fine and yes, there are germs and gross things everywhere. We all assume the waiting room toys are full of germs and the remnants of bodily secretions and you know what? It is full of germs and bodily secretions. Will we get sick from it? Probably not. It's just... well, gross.

Ponder that while I move "finding a new pediatrician" to the top of my to-do list!

 

Chalk and Cheese Chronicles.