Killah Kittah! With Bonus Child Puke...

For no apparent reason, The Boy got attacked by a Killah Kittah this morning. Thank goodness DH now walks with me or there is no way I would have been able to control my two Kids with a wild cat.

We're walking down the road, minding our own business - all four of us - DH with The Boy and me with The Baby - and across the street we see a cat in the bushes. A nanosecond later another cat came outta nowhere ran across the road and literally started attacking The Boy! His first fight with a Kittah. Evah! Poor Little Guy. Has two scratches on his nose. No clue what it was all about but the killah kittah wasn't about to give up. This cat had its fur all fluffed up and tail bushed out and was screeching. The Boy, of course, wasn't going to let some furry creature that is less than a twentieth of his size get the best of him and it was all DH could do to separate the two of them - The Boy and Killah Kittah!

Naturally, The Baby couldn't stand NOT being a part of the action and it was all I could do to keep her out of the fray. I ended up having to drag her - DRAG HER - through someone's yard to prevent her from getting into the "fight" and the two of us ended up soaking wet when their sprinkler system kicked on. Perfect timing. Just perfect. Two blocks later, she was still walking backwards as I was dragging her while she was still trying to put her two cents into the fracas. Or protect her Big Brother. Or something. [If The Baby would have been in on the action, my money would have been on her. The Boy? Not so much. Truly it is the little one that you have to watch out for - not the big one.]

Gave my heart a little jump start when it all happened - so quickly - and it was just one of those things that you do NOT expect from a stray cat that you just happen to walk by ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET! My goodness. DH was wrestling with The Boy and trying to kick the cat away and Killah Kittah wasn't having any of it insofar as giving up. As soon as we got home I washed The Boy's face with warm water and anti-bacterial soap, put Neosporin on his little boo-boos, and then grabbed the camera to go back and get pictures of Killah Kittah.

No sight of him /her. Nor of the other cat that we had seen laying in the bushes. I'm not sure if it was The Boy that scared them off, DH, or The Baby...

The excitement just doesn't end around here, I tell ya. Just to keep it going, DH and I are about to head downtown to Ikea. We need a new office chair. This one - the one I'm sitting in now - is nothing more than a square stool on wheels, at this point. One arm broke off the chair sometime ago, and while I was in the States, DH leaned back and the back broke. We got our $79.00 worth of super duper high quality leather office chair though [I bought this chair from Service Merchandise - how long have they been out of business now?]. It is time for a replacement. Actually it is long over-due. The leather is in shreds on the seat and the foam stuffing has been oozing out for sometime now.

See, if that isn't enough excitement... A fight between The Boy and a Killah Kittah, plus a trip downtown. How's this? I need poppy seeds for a noodle recipe I want to make tonight. Do you think I'm going to find them anywhere, here? I'm guessing not. The Powers That Be, in the Sandbox, likely associate poppy seeds with some kind of hard-core-narcotic-drug - poppies equal opium or some ridiculous association - and therefore they are probably "haram." Just like they associate H1N1 with pigs. Should have brought them back from the States with me, but didn't think of it, then.

I didn't post this before we left to go downtown. Now I can update it with more excitement than anyone should possibly be allowed to experience in a single day, let alone just the morning. DH and I left the house at 9:14 and went to the bank to cash a check before going to Ikea. We left the bank at 9:23 and headed to Ikea, which is ten or fifteen minutes away, tops. This was the very first time either of us had been in Ikea, here. So we go in, and see all these workers milling about in their navy trousers and bright yellow shirts. There are chains across the showroom areas. Ikea doesn't open until 10. We are directed upstairs to the "cafe." Fine. We've got about twenty minutes to kill. Who knew Ikea serves food.

The line isn't busy, but there are quite a few families and more than a handful of men in the "bachelor" area [why aren't any of these men working?] going through the line - it is a buffet kind of thing, and most of the food is behind glass being apportioned out by imported workers. DH and I decide we're going to get a coffee and maybe a Cinnabon or something if they have it. They don't. What they have are chocolate frosted donuts and eclairs - the ONLY items NOT covered with glass and out in the open - totally and completely - in the middle of the aisles so that everyone can cough and sneeze on them and low enough so that little children can touch them and all sorts of yuckiness... No. Thank. You. So, right by the cash register there are muffins which are all individually wrapped. DH and I decide we'll split one with our coffee. Two choices. Chocolate and something that looks white and pinkish. I ask the cashier when we get up to him what the flavor is - guessing it is strawberry - maybe - it isn't red like strawberries would be, though. I ask the cashier [who is a Saudi] what flavor the muffin is - he says, "four riyals." Yes, I can see that it is four riyals, but what flavor is it? He has no clue what I am asking him - although I'd be willing to be suspect of his for the moment "non-English." A young woman behind me, covered in her head-to-toe black says, "Vanilla. It is vanilla." Thank you. [How come there's pink in it then?] DH pays the cashier the four riyals - coffee is free.

We go to the self-serve coffee urns. Both of us fill our coffee cups and I look for cream. None. Only boxes of "shelf milk." Long-life shelf milk. They never have to be refrigerated. Okay. No. Thank. You. So, DH and I head for a table. As we're walking I have the muffin in one hand and my coffee in another. I'm following DH. He walks between two tables and as I follow him - whoosh. I go straight down in a very awkward split on a slimy tile floor. The muffin in one hand and coffee flailing out of the other.

Oh. My. Fukking. Gawd. What is this? Is this puke?!?! Please please please do not let this be puke that is all over the floor and now all over me. I was not very lady-like, upon that discovery, nor very quiet. "What the Fukk!!!" Standing several feet away is a woman - covered head-to-toe in black with her four-year old child - a little girl dressed in hot pink and yellow - who had just thrown up right where I landed. Child puke all over my blue and cork Steve Madden slides. Luvly. Just fukking luvleee. And my long black bag is covered with it now - and it is on my bare legs and on my feet. You have got to be freakin' kidding me! I get up - with an audience who has witnessed this entire spectacle and whip off my puke-covered abeya. So what that I have short-shorts on and a short-sleeved t-shirt. There is puke everywhere. The mother of the child approaches me and says, "I am sorry. Are you okay." Sure, lady. Do I look okay to you?! I am covered in your child's puke and you couldn't even have the decency to stand here to prevent someone from sliding through this shit and falling in it?! Or at least park that stroller which your four-year-old is too big for next to this? DH is telling me to "calm down" and trying to "ssshhh" me. That "it is just a little kid." It is NOT the kid I am angry at. I am angry at the mother for NOT doing anything to make sure no one did what I did.

I race to the ladies room - bare skin showing and I don't care - to immerse my black bag in water to try to clean off the big chunks as best as possible. I need paper towels to start scrubbing it with. There are no paper towels. Great. Isn't this just great. I leave the black bag in the sink with the water running and go back out to find DH to ask him to go to the men's room to get me some paper towels. He does. I clean off the hideous black covering I am forced to wear as best as I can - which, for the record, is not very well at all. I put it on, soaking wet, and cold, and leave the ladies room and tell DH that we need to go home. He says, "Can't we just get a chair first?" You cannot be serious, right? "We're already here." Guess who will be sleeping on the couch for the next week or so??? I am holding the sides of the black bag out as far away from my body with both hands as I can - it is wide open at the bottom and my legs are showing. I could care less though, and for all of those of you who were at Ikea this morning and staring that my legs were showing - don't look if it offends you so. Lady with four-year-old who puked comes up to me and says she is sorry. She suggests that I dry my black bag under the dryer in the ladies room. I tell her that drying it is not an option. The thing needs a full and total decontamination and dry-cleaning.

There are still chains across the show room areas. We have another minute or two to go. I look down at my feet and discover that I've not done a very good job cleaning off my shoes - there is still quite a bit of gunk on one of them. I tell DH that I have to go clean my shoes and he says he'll meet me at the office chairs. Ahh. No. I don't think so. "Here, hold this." I hand him my pocketbook. I go back to the ladies room. Oh, crap. There aren't any paper towels there, remember? A man is going into the men's room and I ask him to get me some paper towels. He willing does so - and hurriedly - I think he was afraid I was going to go in the men's room after them myself - and had he not been there to get them for me that probably would have happened.

After I cleaned my shoes off, I decided that I should probably tell someone that there were no paper towels in the ladies room [yes, there is a dispenser for them - and there are paper towels in the men's room - but none in the ladies room - why?!?]. I tell some young man standing at the entrance to one of the showrooms and he points to two other men standing on the stairs doing nothing. I tell them there are no towels in the ladies room. They don't have a clue. I walk away. Let someone else deal with it at this point. I don't really care.

We find a chair. Quickly. DH says, "What about this one?" I could care less at this point - I really don't want to be chair shopping - I want to take my wet puke-covered cold wet black bag off and I want to go home. I need another shower. If that's the chair you like then get it. When you shop at Ikea you don't have the option of taking "that" chair. You have to go and get the chair yourself from the warehouse. Fine. It is in aisle 12, bin 6. We head to the warehouse. We can't find the chair. Yep. It just keeps getting better and better. DH finds someone to ask - a Saudi man busying himself with anything he can busy himself with so that he doesn't actually have to help us. The Saudi man sends DH back upstairs for an "invoice." I tell DH that I'll wait for him. I am not going to walk through the entire Ikea showroom again in a soaking wet black bag which I am holding at my sides to keep it from touching me. As I am standing there - a wet mess - don't you know lady with four year old puking child is once again in the vicinity. She says she is sorry. Yeah, lady, I get it. You're sorry. Apology accepted. That you couldn't have the decency to park that child's stroller in front of the puke - or stand there until someone came to clean it up [yes, help for that was actually already on the way - but it was too late for me, wasn't it!] - you cannot apologize enough for. She and child too old for a stroller waltz off [by the way - I never saw the child in the stroller ONCE!] and a minute later, in this gigantic huge echoing sound traveling warehouse comes a blood curdling cry. Child is now crying. Lady - do us all a gigantic huge favor. Take that child home.

We purchase our chair and as we are walking through the parking lot to get to the truck I am not waiting. I am taking nasty wet puke covered black bag off. I wad it up and put it in the back of the truck. DH says, "Don't you want to go to that other store?" Ahh. No. I want to go to the cleaners. Right now. We head back to our compound and do not even come home. We go straight to the cleaners. I hand my black bag to one of the little guys at our cleaners and he says, "Water, Madam?" Umm. No. Not water. Throw up. It is nasty. He immediately opens a bag so that I can put it in for him and he doesn't have to touch it. I don't blame him. I head over to the Commissary. I still need poppy seeds. Of course there are none... I expected no less.

It has not been a good morning. No. It certainly has not.