Friday, February 24, 2012

I Hate My Job

Picture it. February 23, 2012. A small storm cell passes through the city and the temperature drops from above zero to below. The snowflakes hit the pavement and melt, but because of the falling temperature, the water then freezes. Roadways are now smooth ice rinks. Most drivers are creeping along at two or three kilometers an hour. The assholes and idiots in their penis-compensating, gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks go flying by at the posted speed limit, noticeably having control issues with their fishtailing and inability to navigate a straight line. A commute that should take thirty-five minutes has already taken an hour and a half and there's still so much more to go.

And I'm stuck in the car with two kids.

Normally I wouldn't mind. But the older kid must have known I was already feeling the stresses of the evening and decided to make matters worse. He vomits. He vomits all over himself. He vomits all over the booster seat. He vomits all over the seat itself. He vomits all over the floor. He vomits all over the back of the front seat. He vomits on the car seat next to him. He vomits on his sister. Imagine filling a Ziploc® bag with puke and then smacking your hands together to make it explode. That's what the back of my car looked like.
What adds insult to injury is not only did the kid not tell me he was going to throw up (which sometimes you just don't have that warning time so I can't be too frustrated about it), but he didn't TELL ME after he'd thrown up. There was no "gurblah" sound like when most people vomit. He must have been coughing it up and so I thought it was just coughing. While it spewed forth from his gaping maw, there was no noise at all! All he needed to do was say "hey, um...I threw up."
But no. I learn the hard way when the odour starts to whiff into the front. I can't stand the smell of barf. It makes me want to vomit too...vicious cycle. It's olfactory ipecac to me. I smell it but because I'm more accurately skating my car along than driving, I do not dare look back in case the dude up ahead stops.
"Everything okay back there?" I ask, "I smell throw-up." No answer. "Hellooooo, [name removed]? You sleeping?" No answer. I continue along until I reach the first foster home. I get out to help the sister out of the vehicle and that's when I see the aforementioned disaster. Neither of the kids are sleeping. The sister looks disgusted (and for good reason). The boy is just sitting there staring at the seat. I ask him if he is okay and he begins to cry.
Right now I REALLY dislike this kid. I mean, I don't like kids on the best of days, so when I say I REALLY don't like a kid, you can take that to mean it is five seconds away from being a hood ornament. But I kept my cool. I have to be professional, and getting upset at this thing isn't going to change the fact that the back of my car looks like an bulimic's bathroom. I lie to him. I tell him I'm not mad. I tell him that everything is okay. I drop off his sister and help him clean himself off. I then spend fifteen minutes getting the bulk of the blow out of my car.
We then leave the home to take him back to his foster home. Another long, boring, and now smelly drive. Roads are progressively worse now. I'm heading along a road normally 100km/h at a top speed of probably 2km/h. Douchebuckets are flying past me, barely keeping on the road. There's no where to stop because the people behind will almost certainly try and follow into the shoulder (as you can't see the road's lines due to the ice and snow). And that's when this fucking kid pukes AGAIN! Doesn't say anything, but because he's now on the opposite side of the car (where his sister was before), I can see him clearly. While this time it was more contained (just to himself, the OTHER clean booster seat, and a bit of the seat below), he didn't fucking use the bag I gave him. He starts to cry again. Fuck you, kid. Seriously.
As I stated, I can't pull over. He has to stew in his own stomach juices, bile, and semi-digested foodstuffs for almost ten minutes. We get to his foster home and I help him clean off. I tell the foster parents what happened and borrow some Febreeze® to try and hide the odour until I can get home (another forty-five minutes, as it turned out). I use half the bottle. The mist in the air causes me to cough for a bit, but that's better than the alternative. But even still, the smell eats through the Febreeze® and I have no choice but to crack my window for fresh air. I am cold, and snowflakes and slapping me in the face as I crawl my way home. I stop off for gummi bears when I'm almost home and eat a few. I feel a bit better. Though I still spend two hours cleaning my car in the snow and washing the booster seat covers. A terrible, terrible evening.

There's no moral to this story...except for ensure your children are on an empty stomach before putting them in my car. Next time one pukes in my car, I just might not be able to stop myself from puking on them.