Mergatroid

   In the world of parenting there is a nasty award each parent gives themselves:  Horrible Parent Award.

I'll take my award now please.  No need to wait until December and take an official vote, I'll just take my crappy mom award now and call it a day.

After previously explaining my love of the Griswolds, let me explain that I envision every road trip as an epic fail of the National Lampoon's Vacation viariety.  I always seem to forget/lose something of value, one person is either so in trouble or mad they might as well be poor Aunt Edna, dead and strapped to the roof, with the amount of talking we are NOT doing.  And when we finally get to our vacation destination, there is always some unimaginable setback that threatens the good time to be had by all.  Be it a brother in law you can't seem to get along with sitting next to your front-row-balcony terrified kid and he is only holding onto his extremely brave rail leaning kid, making you annoyed and terrified for your child... OR the celebratory fireworks that are launched well past your child's bedtime, waking them up after a now four hour "nap" and the kid is now WIDE awake causing you to be awake as well.

Nothing compares to the forgotten beloved toy.  This weekend is was the youngest's turn to experience my crappy mommyness.  Ever since she was three months old, Hooligan C has slept with a giraffe that makes noise to help sooth her to sleep, and of course I forgot one of the two we own.  Of course in true Griswold fashion I did not notice my horrible mistake until it was bed time and H.C was overly stressed without Dane Giraffe or Gerry Giraffe.  The Hubs and I, knowing we have to go to my mothership, Target, anyway decide that we might as well invest in another giraffe since Dane's voice box has been broken for months and Gerry's voice box is going on the fritz (sticky fingers have gunked up the works).  We walk into Target and have a hard time locating the Giraffes, and when we finally find them, there is only one left in the "on the Go" size, we quickly grab it, giving a large sigh of relief!  I do notice that there is a larger size giraffe and momentarily consider buying the larger one to make up for forgetting Dane and Gerry.

We rush back to my mom's house, open the new giraffe, put it's voice box in the back press the buttons and.....nothing.  Batteries must be dead! We frantically search the house for batteries in the right size and that are still good.  Finding some we quickly swap out the old for the new, press the button and......nothing.  FUCK!  Ok, don't panic...we'll just let her hold this giraffe tonight and maybe by tomorrow there will be more smaller giraffes in the morning shipment and we can replace it. 

We go back to Target in the afternoon, I return broken giraffe and we walk back to the giraffe isle.  Having small panic attacks the whole way that there won't be any giraffes, big or small, I turn the corner and there is one, large giraffe left.  I pick him up, press the button and......nothing!!!!  WTF!  Really Target???  You are going to give me that extra punch in the face for forgetting the damn giraffe once in 17 months????  Not only do you not have a small giraffe, but you can't even have a working, large giraffe?????  I turn the knob for volume to off and then back on, press the button and......boom boom croak, boom boom croak (closest way to spell the sounds, it's nature sounds so use your imagination)!!!  The Hallelujah chorus starts playing in my head, a giraffe that works!  He's huge compared to Dane and Gerry, but he works.  H.C. instantly smiles and reaches for him and you can see the stress melt off of her face. We purchase the giraffe and get him out of the box to the delight of H.C. and she cuddles his neck and promptly takes a nap. 

Welcome to the herd Mergatroid.  (Thank You GAP1 for the $5 word of a name that H.A. can't even say, let alone H.B. and H.C. so we just call him Merg for short.)