I'm Not Ready For Potty Training

Amy’s 17 months old. She’s at that stage where she follows me into the bathroom whenever I leave the door open a crack or wreaks havoc in the house whenever I don’t. Sometimes it’s a choice of the lesser of two evils. This means if we’re alone in the house I’m usually stuck with a peep show to my peeing. I only poop during her nap or if Nick or Alex are there to keep an eye on her. No one needs an audience for that except gross kinky fetishists. (And even they don’t involve toddlers.) Of course I still can’t poop in peace and halfway through she’s banging on the door demanding, “Momma out!”

Amy also makes the poopy face and has started bringing me clean diapers whenever she drops a load in her Huggies. I’d been thinking about starting potty training with her at some point soon, even though I know she’s still a bit young. Why not? She’s showing signs of interest, is aware of being dirty, and doesn’t enjoy being in her own filth. And, quite frankly, I’m sick of shitty diapers.

So today after nap we did the usual cuddle and chat and change the wet diaper and began to play. Then I saw it. She looked at me and made the Amy patented poopy face. I asked, “Amy, are you pooping?” And, lo and behold, she giggled and responded with an enthusiastic “Yeah!” And I thought to myselves, selves, this is an excellent learning opportunity we shouldn’t pass up! Commence potty training!

Excitedly, I scooped up my little girl and dashed her to the bathroom before the half smile/half poopy face could leave her visage. I threw open the toilet seat. I yanked off her little pants and one sock. The sock promptly fell into the toilet. I fished it out before it sank. That’s ok, I thought, she has more socks. My daughter stood confused while I wrestled with the diaper I’d apparently fastened too efficiently. Why on earth was Mommy doing this standing up? She kept trying to lay down and I held her up by the arm with one hand as she loudly protested. "No! No! No! Nooooo!" As I finally managed to open the tape and peel it away with my other hand, her eyes locked with mine, she gave a mighty poopy face push, and finished crapping on my fingers. Ah, we had corn last night.

Undeterred, I dropped the soiled diaper, washed my hands while holding her wriggling body between my knees, and then calmly dumped the poop that had made it into the diaper in the toilet. She watched, disinterested. She wanted to play in the bathtub. Instead I placed her on the toilet and praised her for sitting there so nicely. Bad idea. The crap that had been in the diaper? It was smeared all over that adorable little toddler butt of hers. And now it was all over the toilet seat. And she was just about to put her hands in it.

No big deal. I will just take her off, sit on the tub, stick her over my knee, and clean her with some toilet paper. Then I’ll wipe up the seat. Into the other room for a fresh diaper and we’re done. No big deal. And it wouldn’t have been. Except for two things. The first being the alarm went off letting me know I had to pick Alex up from school in 10 minutes. The second being…no toilet paper. SHIT! Literally. So I grabbed my angel around the waist trying to avoid her filthy ass, and rushed from the bathroom. By now she was already frustrated and crying. This was made worse by the fact that in my panic I banged her head into the door frame. I am a terrible mother. I ran to the changing area (aka my bed) and threw down some wipes under her gross butt and proceeded to coo apologies to her while wiping the filth from her behind. Dammit I forgot to get a clean diaper!

So once she was clean I cuddled my naked-from-the-waist-down child to me and fetched a diaper. I called my sister downstairs and asked her if she could watch the “little beast” while I ran to get Alex. There was no way I was going to get her dressed and out the door. Luckily, my sister took pity and said yes. After I managed to get the diaper and pants on I had just enough time to remember to wipe the toilet seat and wash my hands before running out to pick up Alex. And, for once this week, I wasn’t late. I am Super Mom.

*I am writing this for your benefit Jr. Highschool teacher. To explain the traumatic experience that lead to my daughter still not being properly potty trained at 16. I suck at life.

Zombie Housing Discrimination

Sherry is my best friend. She works, yet finds the time to communicate with my crazy ass through texts throughout the day. If my psychologist ever read through some of our conversations I might be back in a padded room. Here's an example of one conversation following her stomach virus:

Me: How you feeling?
Me: (an hour later with no response) Has the zombie virus taken hold?
Sherry: I finally ate after a 24 hour fast.
Me: Was it human flesh? Tell me it wasn't human flesh. I'd hate to have to shoot you.
Sherry: ... ... ... No ... ... ...

So I did what any normal person would do to test her zombie status. I took a picture of my butt (it's a large and meaty butt and also where I store the remnants of my brain) and sent it to her.

Me: Does this look tasty to you?
Sherry: That's not fair!
Me: You're thinking of biting it!
Me: Are you a zombie!? Are you?
Sherry: *Stops nibbling ass* Huh? No! You had a little...something...here and I was getting it off...I was helping!
Me: Now I'm infected dammit. I thought I had at least til 2012.
Me: You couldn't let me get my house with a pool? Enjoy it just for a year?
Sherry: Just infect your neighbors. Zombie Pool Party!
Me: They're not gonna let a zombie buy a house!
Me: My credit sucks. And you think I won't have eaten the kids and at least infected Nick by then?
Me: Hell I'm half ready to chomp Amy right now. (Amy is my 17 month old daughter.)
Sherry: The housing market sucks. Some places are trying to bring back variable loans again. They'll sell to a zombie.
Me: We're talking suburbia. They'd barely sell to you. They're not gonna sell to a zombie. (At this point I'll clarify Sherry is a black, bisexual, single mother.)
Sherry: ...Hmmm, has your skin changed color yet? Get the house before it changes. Don't want any burning... What do they burn for zombies?


By this time hours have gone by. I've already picked up Alex (my 6 year old son) from school and we're over my friend Joan's house so our kids can play. I decide to get her into the conversation. Joan, like most people who I consider true friends, is well aware I'm pretty crazy. But without any context I start asking her what she thinks people would burn on the front lawn of a family of zombies. She doesn't get it. So I explain that racists burn crosses on the lawns when black families move in. What would zombie haters burn on the lawn if my zombie family were to move into suburbia? She starts laughing at me and reminds me again that I'm nuts. But she plays along and begins naming random items. So...who's really crazy here? Me? Or the people who humor my madness? Once Joan settles on an answer I'm back to the texting.

Me: My friend Joan says pigs for some reason.
Me: I don't think she gets it.
Me: I say...tombstones?
Me: Winding sheets?
Me: But if I infect Nick it's all over. He's ALREADY PR. (Puerto Rican in case anyone doesn't get that.) PR AND a zombie is a little much. Then what if they start asking where the kids went?
Sherry: They don't want your half breed kids anyway. PR/White/Zombie (if they survived). All the bullying! Cooked meat thrown at them in the playground. That might be what Joan was thinking. Zombies don't like cooked food (don't know her, so going out on a limb).
Me: Nah. She just thinks we're freaks. She doesn't understand it's all gonna end in zombies.
Me: But I see where you're going with the meat angle.
Sherry: Ah! Then cooked meat for her! We get the fresh stuff! *does raw meat dance* I like the tombstone angle too. Can you see people lugging those onto your property? Or making a bunch of fake ones? "Get in the ground where ya belong!"
Me: Fuck them! If I'm not a zombie I'm doing the Viking funeral! That'll teach em!
Sherry: Burning them or you? lol
Me: Both. Vikings liked to take people with them!
Sherry: Cool! I wanna loot and pillage!
Me: As long as it's not my house.


Reading over this, it's actually a pretty normal type of conversation for the two of us. Including getting a random person in on it without context and having sent her a picture of my ass. Once we started discussing the weather and I ended up with a picture of her boobs because she took responsibility for making it snow. And it evolved into a conversation promising to take care of the others children should we meet untimely deaths.

Like I said, best friend.

My Baking Should Be A Crime

One of my hobbies is baking. I happen to be very good at it. Every so often I send baked goods into work with my husband, Nick. The guys at his office love my baking. I love hearing about how much they love my baking. Ok, so I like approval. So sue me.

A few weeks ago I sent in dozens and dozens of cookies. Nick brought them into some muckity muck meeting where he says they were attacked like chum in the water of a shark tank. Afterward there were a few cookies left so Nick brought them down to one of the IT rooms to share with the peons, since he was one in the not so distant past and decided to bring joy into their windowless lives.

Apparently one of the less important muckities HAD to have more cookies so he went around asking where they had gone. Upon finding out where they were he staked out the room. A room he didn't have access to, because important secure stuff he didn't have proper clearance for went on behind the key-carded door. So he waited for someone with a card to enter, elbowed his way in, and went for the cookies.

An argument broke out. The techs attempted to kick him out of the room. He refused to leave. They insisted he couldn't be there due to security measures. He insisted he was important enough to be wherever he wanted to be. And so forth and so on.

It all became intensely heated and the guy in question had to be called in to a meeting with the head muckity muck about breaching security procedures. Over my cookies. I still don't know if he got any. But they are now legendary.

The real irony of all this is that Nick works for this company mainly doing things with IT security. He's so good at it that he's no longer one of the peons without a window. I guess he can wipe a virus, restore a hard drive, and set up a firewall without a problem. But he'll never see the chocolate chips coming.

Today I sent in mini cheesecakes. I await the impending destruction of the company.

Yet Another Blog Is Born

So here I go again. I'm starting yet ANOTHER blog. I must have at least three or four abandoned blogs out there on the net somewhere. Blogs I can no longer remember the titles of, the sign in names I used for, or even still use the email addresses connected to. Poor, sad homeless blogs left to wander forever, lost and unloved. My discarded children. And yet I begin a new one. Why? Why would I start yet again?

Well, because I have children. Two of them. And every other thing in my life at this moment is devoted to them. Or my husband. Or my household. That's right. I'm yet another stay-at-home-mom gone blogger. But I'm not going to pretend to be noble about it. This is going to be an exercise in narcissism. This is going to be all about my feelings, my thoughts (assuming I'm still somewhat capable of having coherent ones), and my outlook on things. Some random. Some important. Sometimes I'm just going to babble. Sometimes I might just tell a funny story so that when I'm suffering from early onset Alzheimer's I can go online, read this blog, laugh, and wonder where crackpots like this were when I was a lonely SAHM and needed friends.

Hopefully, I'll keep up with this blog. Because I need to at least write like an adult if I can't speak like one most of the day.

Also, my husband has a huge penis. (He made me promise I'd say that as a condition of keeping his nose out of my blog.)