A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

I was telling a little story to some friends last week from when Pumpkin was a baby. I’ve been meaning to blog about it because it’s just so darn funny, but never got around to it until now. Warning: It’s slightly gross, nothing too graphic, but if you have a really weak stomach, you might want to proceed with caution.

When Pumpkin was a few months old, Hubby and I were working at the same discount store. He worked full-time during the day, and I worked part-time at night. That worked out nicely because they were always willing to work with us and we never needed a babysitter just to go to work. We only had one vehicle, so he got off of work about an hour before I had to go in so I could get there on time.

Anyway, one day it was almost time for me to leave for work and I was straightening up in Pumpkin’s room. Her diaper pail was full, so I took the bag out, tied it up and put a new one in. I was about to take the full bag out when the phone rang. I sat the bag down and answered the phone. When I got off the phone, I went to get ready for work and forgot about the bag of diapers.

Later that evening while I was at work, our neighbors came down. They had two kids, one of which was still in diapers. We happened to have a bunch of disposable diapers stockpiled for Pumpkin, some of which were larger sizes that she couldn’t wear yet. We had a big trash bag full of size 3s, which is what our neighbors’ kid wore, so they asked Hubby if he had a few they could have until they went out to the store. He went into Pumpkin’s room, grabbed a trash bag full of diapers, brought it into the living room and untied it. He told the mother to get out as many as she needed. She reached in, made a face, and said, “Um… are these used?” Yes, that’s right, he had grabbed the bag of dirty diapers!

I wish I could have been there to see the look on his face. He called me at work to ask why there was a bag of dirty diapers sitting out in Pumpkin’s room, then proceeded to tell me the story. Yes, I guess it was kind of my fault the whole thing happened, but I couldn’t apologize because I was laughing so hard. It’s a good thing it was almost closing time, because I had a serious case of the giggles for the rest of the night.

So there it is, one of my favorite stories about Hubby. And proof positive that I can be pretty ditzy sometimes.

As you probably know if you’re a regular reader, I’m a firm believer in accepting oneself as one is. I personally weigh more now than I ever have in my entire life, but I don’t tend to obsess over it. While I know losing weight would make me feel better physically, those numbers on the scale usually have little impact on my self-image. Emphasize usually.

I went to the doctor yesterday because my sinuses have been giving me trouble lately. I was having a decent day considering how crappy I was feeling- until I stepped on the scales. I had gained five pounds since my last visit. Normally that wouldn’t bother me, but my last visit was only a few weeks ago. Yikes.

I almost asked the doctor to give me some of the best fat burners on the market, but I didn’t. My health insurance runs out at the end of the month, and I couldn’t justify paying out of pocket for them when I could probably do just as well with some lifestyle modifications. It’s just finding the willpower to make those changes.

Anyhoo, Hubby got home shortly after I got home from the doctor. He said his mom had invited us over for dinner, so off we went. As soon as we got over there, she told me to come into the kitchen. Guess what was there? Lots and lots of candy. Their neighbors had given it to them, and they wanted to spread the love. Oh, joy.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t all sour candy (my favorite). Lemonheads, SweetTarts, Spree, Airheads, you name it. Boxes upon boxes of it, and it wasn’t the stuff that stores throw out because it’s too old. Normally I would have asked questions, but their neighbors are all the time getting deals on stuff. And they just had to get that deal, on that candy, right when I needed it the least.

I tried to get away with just taking a couple of packs, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Between Pumpkin and me, we came home with half a grocery bag full of the stuff. Lovely. Maybe I can give some of it away. It’s calling my name, taunting me, and if it stays here too long, I’m not going to be able to resist.

Hubby simultaneously amuses me and annoys me when he talks about what I do for a living. Up until not long ago, when someone asked him what his wife did, he would tell them that she was a typer.

I took a bit of offense to that, because typing is just inputting other people’s words into a computer. That’s not what I do. I did a little of that when I was younger, but now it’s my own words, therefore I’m writing.

I tried to explain that to Hubby, but he just looked at me like I was explaining the chemical makeup of Leptovox. He doesn’t get it at all. He reasons that since I’m not writing stuff out by hand, that makes me a typer. Not a typist, mind you, but a typer. But I decided to leave that alone and tackle one issue at a time.

After much debating, he finally told me he would start telling people that I’m a writer. But I can just hear him now: “She calls herself a writer, but I don’t see her writing anything. All she does is sit in front of the computer and type.”

Oh well. I don’t really understand the nuts and bolts of what he does for a living. I know he cuts down trees and brush around power lines, but when he comes home and tells me about the specifics of what he did that day, I just kind of smile and nod. I guess it’s all the same.

I think that should be in the running for the strangest blog post title ever! Allow me to tell the story behind it, which I promised to do in my last post.

When Pumpkin and I got back home from the doctor the other day, she was in tears with pain. I got her some ice to put on her hand and went to the medicine cabinet to get her some Advil to take. She only had about three doses of the liquid kind left, so I dug out some Children’s Advil pills that I had bought a few months ago. She hadn’t done very well with them at the time, but I’ve had some luck getting her to take allergy pills that were larger than those recently, so I figured I would try them again.

So I got her two of those and a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and headed back to the living room. She grimaced at first, but agreed to try them. After all, she hates the liquid kind.

She put the first one in her mouth, took a drink of water, and swallowed it on the first try. I praised her for doing so well, then gave her the other one. That’s when the fun began.

She didn’t make it on the first try with that one, but I told her it was okay, to keep trying. I remember how hard it was when I first had to take a pill as a child. She tried several more times, each time taking a bigger drink of water, to no avail. She began to get frustrated, and took a really huge drink of water, tossed her head back, and tried really hard to swallow. Her cheeks were all puffed out because she had so much water in her mouth, and as she tried to swallow the pill, her eyes (which were already as big around as saucers) crossed. She looked like a cross-eyed frog.

I couldn’t help but laugh. And you know how contagious laughter is. I saw a smile creep up on her face, her cheeks still full of water. Before I knew it, the freezing cold water was all over both of us, and we were both laughing so hard that tears were rolling down our cheeks.

The pill didn’t come out of her mouth with the water, and she eventually swallowed it somehow between giggles. We both had to change clothes, and we laughed about it off and on for the rest of the evening.

If that water had been any colder, it would have been ice. But I’m glad that happened, because it took Pumpkin’s mind off of her hand for a while. And it still gives me the giggles thinking about it. Good times.

It has been hot up here in the mountains for early June. Temperatures have been steadily in the eighties since the beginning of the month. It has been a little toasty in the house with no AC, but so far I’ve been able to live with it. But over the next week it’s supposed to cool down… according to the local weather website, quite a bit. See the notes for Thursday below:

High near zero, low near zero, huh? Well, if anyone out there is planning on coming to take advantage of this area’s fine golf courses, you might want to either come right now or put up your golf bags for another couple of weeks. And if that’s what they call pleasant, they’re seriously warped!

I was just thinking of a funny story, and thought I would share. It has been a good ten years since it happened, but I remember it well to this day.

When I was in college, I worked in the kitchen at the local hospital. Not a glamorous job by any means, but it was one of the most fun places I’ve ever worked. I had my sister-in-law to thank for the job, because she was the public relations manager there and talked to the kitchen manager for me.

I had been working there for a while, and we had to go to inservices every so often. They were a drag, but they weren’t terribly frequent. Then one day I started seeing fliers about how we were all going to be going on cruises or something. I was a bit confused, but just kind of shrugged it off because I knew it was too good to be true.

As it turned out, the “cruises” were actually a new series of required inservices. We had to go to one every week or two, and let me tell you they were BORING. Most of them had absolutely nothing to do with my job either, so that made me hate sitting through them that much more.

I went home from work after a particularly boring one, and a while later the phone rang. I answered, and it was my sis-in-law. She asked me how my day was at work, and I said, “It was okay, except I had to sit through another one of those boring inservices.” She proceeded to inform me that she was the one who had been in charge of the whole thing. Woopsie.

She didn’t let me live that down for a long time. But at least she was able to laugh about it. I still don’t see how she could not find those things utterly dull and pointless, though.