Warning: The Shit is Spreading

So, on Thursday, per her Facebook status, Roger Rogers had a terrible, no good, very bad day.

Then on Friday, Harley Quinn's Facebook status indicated she was in the middle of complete suckage. 

Well, friends, I'm here to tell you that today is my day for the holy hell of annoyance, frustration, anger and WTF craziness.

It's like some old timers war story... "It started so well. It was a beautiful cool day..." I swear there really is a Hellmouth. Sigh. 

Anyway, as it goes, X-man was excited about going to Arthur this a.m. to buy some baked goods at the 3rd Saturday Market in Arthur.

He told us at the exit for Arthur off 57 that he needed to go poopy. So I pulled into the parking lot of the DQ, where X-man started screaming that he didn't want to use the potty and he didn't have to go poopy. I learned my lesson a couple weeks ago when KTDID and I drove him to the aquarium and he said he had to pee but as soon as I got on the exit he said he didn't have to and told me not to go to the McDonald's -- and then five minutes later peed his pants. So, this time, I pulled over and MacTroll tried to take him in to use the restroom. He wouldn't have it. So I said I had to pee, too, and we'd all use the potty at the same time.

In the bathroom area, X-man wanted to use the bathroom by himself. I'm all cool with him in his own stall, but not alone in the bathroom. He didn't want MacTroll to go with him -- "No bathroom for you, Daddy! You stay here! Mommy go there."

MacTroll waited until he was in the stall with the door closed and then snuck in to observe. X-man peed standing up, then turned around and climbed up to go poopy. Then he wiped and came out to wash his hands. All the while, MacTroll found out that neither of the urinals in the bathroom flushed appropriately. 

The women's bathroom at the DQ in Arcola was disgusting. The women's stalls are so tight that when I shut the door, I could hardly turn around. When I sat to pee, my knees were up against the door. The toilets really needed to be scrubbed (at 9:30 a.m.) and I didn't want anything to do, even with shoes on, with pushing the pedal to make the top of the garbage can come up. 

X-man joined me out in the parking lot, but when MacTroll came out -- X-man demanded that he return to the bathroom to go poopy, too.

When we finally got on our way towards Arthur, I had high hopes for wooden toys, custom chairs, tables, boxes, droves of baked goods, etc. But no. Apparently, those folks must abandon their own town on Saturday to go to other larger cities (Urbana) to sell their goods, because what we found were 1970's like hand towels, a table with 6 old books on it, two bakers with mostly white bread and a few jars of honey and some WWF (Yes, like vintage WWE) paraphernalia. It was very disappointing.

About 3 minutes before we walked into the U of I Extension building where the market takes place, X-man started to get a little loud. Arthur is a very sleepy town. And people started staring at his loudness. I didn't mind when it was just him counting cars. I mean -- at least he can count, right? But when we went in the building and saw what was available at 10 a.m., MacTroll and I immediately went quiet. "Well, maybe we'll just peruse downtown and end up at that playground," I offered. MacTroll nodded.

We walked out of the building and X-man demanded to be carried. I said, "No." Then I couldn't remember if we'd locked the door on the car, so MacTroll ran back to check. But X-man grabbed onto him and screamed at him, "NO! You must hold my hand!" Even though we were going to wait by the sidewalk. Then the meltdown started -- I pointed out that the park was 2 blocks away and we could go there first. I got hit and he screamed in my face. MacTroll came back and tried to distract him and put him on his shoulders. 

X-man said he wanted a snack. I pointed to the bakery down the street -- and he started screaming about how he didn't want to go to the baker. "The baker is closed!" You can't take a kid like this into a restaurant. So I told him his options were to go to the bakery or go home and the choice put him into complete disarray. I took him from MacTroll and tried to talk to him. He screamed to be put down. Then he screamed to be picked up. People were still staring. I was embarrassed. I looked at MacTroll and said, "We're done. Back to the car." 

MacTroll tried to usher X-man, but he tried to run away from him toward the park. So I picked X-man up and got hit again. I told him hitting was not nice, but he was too far into the tantrum. No distraction or logic was working. He was screaming and lunging to hurt me. He tried to bite my arm. I turned him over my shoulder in a firefighter carry and lugged him back to the car. I put him in his carseat buckled him in and got in to drive. He kicked my seat repeatedly screaming that he wanted to go this way or that way. Anyway but the way I was going.

I asked him to try to take a breath and calm down and talk to us. MacTroll tried to take over that part -- and instantly got screamed at. "Don't talk to me, Daddy! Turn around!"

Then he told me that I was happy. I was happy -- because he was sad. And the kid might have just taken a sword and shoved it through the back of my car seat and through my chest. Any discussion about how sad I was that he was sad went unheard. 

So we drove back home with X-man in some stage of screaming, whimpering or crying all the way to Savoy. And I ran off to the Urbana Farmer's Market to try and salvage my morning. But at 11:30 a lot of the vendors are gone. And if they aren't gone, the stuff I wanted is LONG gone. I had promised MacTroll a loaf of bread, so I wandered into the Co-op. But it was full of people, and I hadn't been there since they moved from the old location and the line was long -- and I didn't want to have to deal with sorting out my member/owner status because I was starting to feel dizzy and needed lunch. So I left and wandered down to Mirabelle's for the bread.

On the way to Mirabelle's, I stopped at Heel to Toe. It's having their summer sale for anyone interested in discounted Birks or other sandals. Nothing in a size 41 that I liked. So I got to Mirabelle's and got a garlic loaf and walked back to my car. 

When I got home, I found out that the additional escrow money I had sent Chase to cover my property taxes in August (because I'm one of those people who believes in having money in an account so people can pay bills on time) got screwed. The bank apparently couldn't do the math to sort out the correct escrow payment when they gave me my mortgage 2 years ago...and now they'd taken the money I'd sent them and  apparently just applied it to two complete payments (i.e. interest in Chase's hands). So I had to call and straighten that out, which was annoying because they told me that by filling in the "Additional Escrow" box on my payment form, I had done something unusual for their customers. I guess the "usual" thing to do is to just let Chase make the payment -- even if my account doesn't have the money in it and then they can do an "escrow review" and increase my monthly payment to the correct amount. Um... shouldn't they have done that appropriately on the front end before I bought my house? 

What made it worse was that on my new statement it says that if they're "unclear" as to where I'd like the money to go, they'll pay off any "late bills or service charges" with my check and then hold the money and contact you to see where you'd like to put it. Um, if that's their policy, why didn't they do it? Instead they just rotated it forward -- but I guess the extra escrow payment area wasn't clear enough to whomever processed my check.

Then X-man got mad because MacTroll wouldn't let him play with the hose -- so he peed his pants just to show MacTroll who's boss. He went inside and dumped out his Lego bin and played quietly for a few minutes. Then he had to poop, and he made it to the potty, but he had a dingleberry, which he didn't realize until he stood up over my newly cleaned carpet and let it drop to the floor, it was so nice that it happened in the middle of me trying to finally eat lunch.

Then X-man fought me over having to wash his hands after he touched his poopy bottom.

So now I've  retreated to my bedroom. I'm seriously thinking of blockading the door and just staying here until the damn thing burns down and I'm trapped in it.