Thursday, April 26, 2007

Poopee Pot

Tonight I bring you a post with no photos, only text.
Why? Because I have to admit that I am overwhelmed with sweating the small stuff this week.

We returned from a lovely (albeit cold and rainy) trip to Fresno on Monday evening. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday doing my usual routine with Harlan involving making the rounds at the neighborhood playgrounds, meeting up with friends, and sitting on the floor of my living room while the gorilla from that 70's Samsonite luggage commercial shrieks and throws objects as large as his entire body at me if I pick up the phone or walk towards the computer. When he napped, I crashed hard. Nothing was sewn, stitched, knitted, or baked. No crumbs were removed from highchair trays or kitchen counters, no shriveled up grapes were pulled out from under the sofa. Mail was not sorted and phone calls were not returned. I napped on the couch and watched an episode of Desperate Housewives, and I don't mention this to be ironic or in any way poetic, it's just what happened. I took the advice of Richard Dreyfus' character in one of my favorite movies What About Bob, "Give yourself permission to take a vacation from your problems." I turned on the Tivo and ate some See's candy and did not feel guilty or unproductive. I did yoga and washed my hair, and trudged through the crumbs on the floor nestled among baby gorilla's wreckage while he slept.

Then today all hell broke loose, the small stuff happened and I sweated it big time. First of all, the cloth diapers that I carefully researched and selected arrived. The unbleached prefolds required being laundered prior to use. Three times for maximum absorbency. No problem. I loaded up 42 of the 100 I ordered and took them along with Harlan to the laundromat. I washed and dried them twice and brought them home, only to discover that they are so enormous that even if I wore them I could barely fit a pair of maternity pants over them. WTF? I ordered the toddler size based on the weight chart provided on the website. No way is a 30 pound baby going to wear these suckers. I berated myself for having wasted $100 on something I can only resell for half that price, and thought that this was the worst part of my day when the mail arrived, and in it was a big old letter from my crazy landlord.

Was it a new lease? Nope. It's a letter stating that we have been throwing out our trash in ripped up bags that he has to clean up, and that he is charging us $50 for the service. If anyone reading this blog happens to recall, my landlord rarely puts our trash out for the sanitation service to collect. At one point I went out and bought giant lawn and leaf bags and collected all the rat-eaten trash myself and put it out on the curb. I sent him a letter complaining about it and charging him for the trash bags, and his response was to call me and curse me out and threaten to throw me out. It gets better though! Enclosed with the letter are color photos of the garbage cans filled with bags of garbage that have clearly been eaten by rats. The bags appear to be shredded with a cheese grater, they are mere pieces of plastic entwined with trash swimming in a can that has clearly been ignored for at least a month. At the bottom of the letter the landlord demands that I cease putting out my garbage in this condition, or else he will "take further action". While this is clearly hilarious and insane, it just pushed me over the edge a bit and I turned and looked at my four foot pile of newly laundered, useless, $100 Chinese pre-fold diapers and wondered how I ever gave up cigarettes. Calgon take me away!

But fear not dear readers, I won't leave you on such a bleak note. My husband Joe has a co-worker at the school he teaches at who goes to grad school at night at City College, which has a very diverse and international student body. When the professor read the attendance for the first time she prefaced one of the names with, "I'm sure I'm mispronouncing this, but, Poopee Pot?" An Indonesian student replied, "Yes, I am Poopee Pot, that is correct". The class tried to stifle their laughter and the professor asked Poopee if he had a knick name that he preferred (Poop? Pee? Pot?) "Yes, my friends call me Pizza Man." I do have a very scatalogical sense of humor so I apologize if you're not with me here, but Poopee Pot has become the answer to about 50% of the questions around here ever since Joe brought that story home (i.e. "What should we eat for dinner?" "Who is hosting the democratic debate tonight?" Answer: Poopee Pot?) This is how I overcome sweating the small stuff. Poop jokes always do it for me.

7 comments:

futuregirl said...

I've got one for you. My mother-in-law works at a bank and one of her Indian customers is named Harddick Patel. Hard dick ... Patel. Oh, yes. And then there was the teller she hired named Toushie. That caused a lot of giggling at the bank. Gotta love Atlantic City.

Sonya said...

Is it the phase of the moon or some weird toddler uprising? I've been riding this train for the past few weeks. Trudging, wading through wreckage? Yes, I relate.

{kimmymade} said...

Jessica -- I'm so sorry! This sounds like a maddeningly frustrating week indeed. Would it perk you up if I said that I have 3 friends due to give birth in the next 4-8 weeks, and so I have a big BunBun Babythreads order to place with you? I *love* Hayden's new T-shirt, btw! YOur work is BEAUTIFUL!

Angelina said...

I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to start smoking again through the toddler years! If poop jokes do it for you, I say more power to ya!

I could almost cry for you at the thought of all those diapers you can't use. Also the landlord bit.

I hope you're close to getting a house!!!! My fingers are crossed for you and Joe and Harlan.

Lindellica said...

You want to try bringing the diapers over here and we can wash them multiple times in hot water? We have a dryer that's free too... maybe run it on high for several hours and see if they shrink more?

Hope stuff is going better now. I sympathize, sometimes the small stuff does all come at you at once.

the fabled needle (jen) said...

Poopee Pot? Man, I sure could have used some of that last week! I hate it when the small stuff gets you down - it seems like that is what really gets to anybody. I hope your week is doing better!

Veronica TM said...

you make me laugh! i am so sorry to hear about the diapers, i know you did a lot of research. i hope things got better after that.