Remember how the other day the daughter produced a whopper of a poop in her carseat on the way home (along with the spilled milkshake and accompanying craziness?). Well I neglected to mention that earlier that morning she had also puked her guts up on our bed after having her morning milk. These two signs together indicated the beginning stages of what is pretty much the worst thing ever:
A GOD-AWFUL EVIL SON-OF-A-BITCHIN' STOMACH VIRUS
Things weren't super bad yesterday, just very watery poops that smelled like some heinous cross between rotten eggs and decaying roadkill. But then, this morning, two things happened:
1. The wife woke up also feeling sick. Oh. shit.
2. I walked to the daughter's room to get her up out of her crib, and upon opening the door got a whiff of quite possibly the most noxious combination of human-produced odors I have ever encountered. OH. SHIT. AND PUKE. EVERYWHERE...
Needless to say all the kid's clothes got ripped off again and the blankets, sheet, bumpers, etc. got ripped out of the crib. Straight to bath time, put her back in the pajamas, begin the task of getting all sorts of poop-and-puke-ified items run through the laundry.
Then made the incredibly stupid mistake of giving her the normal morning bottle of milk, which she drank ravenously. And then she also puked ravenously. Add to the wash list the fitted sheet and mattress pad from our bed, the towel that I had sat her upon (but which she managed to miss almost completely, not exactly a world class marksman when it comes to projectile vomiting). Oh yeah, and my boxer shorts. It seems they are really quite absorbent. Who knew?
I called and scheduled a sick visit to the doctor's office for her and got from the doctor information that I basically already knew: nasty bastard asshole stomach virus, do the normal stuff to prevent dehydration. Kind of a waste, but with the whole cancer thing going on in the background figured it's best not to take chances.
And then the rest of the day was a glorious mix of caring for the two respective sickies - the daughter & her mommy. I did manage to mix in some quality playing time on Epic Mickey when both of them took a nap - excellent, highly recommended Wii game.
Now it's off to bed, hoping that no horrendous puke-poop messes greet me in the morning from the daughter or the wife...and especially not from myself...
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
An open letter to the manufacturers of women's clothing
Dear manufacturers of women's clothing:
STOP BEING A BUNCH OF DICKS!
I am a man, and (unlike perhaps some men out there, not naming names, only winking suggestively) the only clothes that I own are men's clothes. When I wash my clothes, I do exactly the following things:
1. Pile as many items as possible into the washing machine.
2. Close lid and put in detergent.
3. Set the cycle and turn on the washing machine.
4. Once washing machine is finished, transfer pile of wet clothes into dryer.
5. Empty lint filter so I don't set the goddamn house on fire, set dryer cycle, turn on dryer.
Unfortunately, on those occasions when I have to wash my wife's clothes (which is pretty often as she goes to a job 5 days a week that requires specific garments which must thus constantly be washed) there is a whole new set of steps inserted into the middle of this relatively simple routine.
Apparently you, the makers of women's clothes, are a bunch of dicks who have nothing better to do than to fuck with me (and anyone else unfortunate enough to ever have to wash women's clothes) by coming up with all sorts of unnecessary added instructions when it comes time to dry said clothes. Those three glorious words, "tumble dry low," that I find on every garment of mine are apparently not in your evil heartless vocabulary. Instead you decide to hit me with shit like:
"Dry flat"
"Reshape and dry flat"
"Hang to dry"
or my personal favorites:
"Tumble dry low until damp, then remove and dry flat"
"Hang on northward-facing clothesline for precisely 22 minutes 33 seconds, then turn on a spit next to an open fire built of knotty pine logs until dry"
OK, maybe I made that last one up, but the one before it is 100% real. And you know what? It's not happening. I'm sorry, 25 dollar Target hooded sweatshirt with various bedazzled adornments, but go fuck yourself if you think I'm hanging out by the dryer to check every 5 minutes to determine when you are "damp" so I can take you out and lay you on top of something in order to finish drying. I'm sorry but I'm pretty busy making sure my 15 month old doesn't consume any change that fell out of my pocket, find a way to gouge her eyes out with a Mickey Mouse figurine, or order a Playboy TV movie on demand by pressing random buttons on the remote control.
Seriously, women's clothing manufacturers, enough with this already. I know these garments are not made out of some fancy space age shit that requires truly delicate care. If "tumble dry low" is good enough for all the cotton / poly blends in my own wardrobe, surely it must be for any that are worn by my wife. You're not fooling anybody into believing this stuff is somehow expensive and exotic because it has "special care" instructions. You're just being assholes and making the washer to dryer clothing transition far more difficult than it needs to be.
So please, I implore you, STOP BEING A BUNCH OF DICKS. "Tumble dry low." Say it with me. "Tumble dry low."
Sincerely,
Joe
STOP BEING A BUNCH OF DICKS!
I am a man, and (unlike perhaps some men out there, not naming names, only winking suggestively) the only clothes that I own are men's clothes. When I wash my clothes, I do exactly the following things:
1. Pile as many items as possible into the washing machine.
2. Close lid and put in detergent.
3. Set the cycle and turn on the washing machine.
4. Once washing machine is finished, transfer pile of wet clothes into dryer.
5. Empty lint filter so I don't set the goddamn house on fire, set dryer cycle, turn on dryer.
Unfortunately, on those occasions when I have to wash my wife's clothes (which is pretty often as she goes to a job 5 days a week that requires specific garments which must thus constantly be washed) there is a whole new set of steps inserted into the middle of this relatively simple routine.
Apparently you, the makers of women's clothes, are a bunch of dicks who have nothing better to do than to fuck with me (and anyone else unfortunate enough to ever have to wash women's clothes) by coming up with all sorts of unnecessary added instructions when it comes time to dry said clothes. Those three glorious words, "tumble dry low," that I find on every garment of mine are apparently not in your evil heartless vocabulary. Instead you decide to hit me with shit like:
"Dry flat"
"Reshape and dry flat"
"Hang to dry"
or my personal favorites:
"Tumble dry low until damp, then remove and dry flat"
"Hang on northward-facing clothesline for precisely 22 minutes 33 seconds, then turn on a spit next to an open fire built of knotty pine logs until dry"
OK, maybe I made that last one up, but the one before it is 100% real. And you know what? It's not happening. I'm sorry, 25 dollar Target hooded sweatshirt with various bedazzled adornments, but go fuck yourself if you think I'm hanging out by the dryer to check every 5 minutes to determine when you are "damp" so I can take you out and lay you on top of something in order to finish drying. I'm sorry but I'm pretty busy making sure my 15 month old doesn't consume any change that fell out of my pocket, find a way to gouge her eyes out with a Mickey Mouse figurine, or order a Playboy TV movie on demand by pressing random buttons on the remote control.
Seriously, women's clothing manufacturers, enough with this already. I know these garments are not made out of some fancy space age shit that requires truly delicate care. If "tumble dry low" is good enough for all the cotton / poly blends in my own wardrobe, surely it must be for any that are worn by my wife. You're not fooling anybody into believing this stuff is somehow expensive and exotic because it has "special care" instructions. You're just being assholes and making the washer to dryer clothing transition far more difficult than it needs to be.
So please, I implore you, STOP BEING A BUNCH OF DICKS. "Tumble dry low." Say it with me. "Tumble dry low."
Sincerely,
Joe
Double Dare
This is a repost of a status update / comment that I wrote on Facebook earlier today and thought would be worth sharing here as well.
Joe thinks making high school kids pass a Double-Dare style obstacle course consisting of events like those I went through with my daughter this afternoon would do far more to curb teen pregnancy than any sex ed class possibly could.
A summary:
- Make the mistake of leaving a partially consumed vanilla milkshake in cup holder next to car seat in back of car. After arriving home, find milkshake is spilled all over back seat and everything that was sitting on it.
- Fumble around trying to mop up as much milkshake as possible with random fast food napkins lying around the car. Meanwhile daughter is kicking and screaming because she wants out of her car seat.
- Also, she smells really bad, she has obviously pooped. A LOT.
- Take her out of car seat and in the house, notice that I have a true "blow out" on my hands as the whole back of her pants are yellowish-brown and wet. AWESOME.
- Rip off all her clothes, trying to minimize the amount of poop that gets on me, haul her directly to the bathtub and rip off my own shirt as well as it also has poop on it now.
- Bathe her, get her dressed, take her down stairs.
- Place her on the floor to play with one of her toys while I go to the other room to grab a t-shirt to put on from a stack of clean clothes. In the approximately 15 seconds I am gone she manages to stand up holding onto the one toy, slip and fall over and bang her face into something. Screaming and crying commences.
- With my head and one arm in my shirt, scoop her up and comfort her. Thankfully at this point my mom arrives at the house and is able to assist. She takes daughter off my hands so that I can:
- Collect diaper that I left on changing pad earlier, place god awful smelling diaper in grocery bag and take it outside to trash.
- Return to car and clean remaining sticky milkshake residue off seat with leather wipes.
- Remove car seat from car, rip off cover, spray and scrub giant poop stain with Dreft, place in washing machine.
- Grab poop stained clothes that were also left on changing pad, hit them with Dreft and add them to the wash.
- Dive through the giant mouth & grab the final orange flag as I slide down the tongue, completing the obstacle course. Yeah, I won a trip to Space Camp!!!
Joe thinks making high school kids pass a Double-Dare style obstacle course consisting of events like those I went through with my daughter this afternoon would do far more to curb teen pregnancy than any sex ed class possibly could.
A summary:
- Make the mistake of leaving a partially consumed vanilla milkshake in cup holder next to car seat in back of car. After arriving home, find milkshake is spilled all over back seat and everything that was sitting on it.
- Fumble around trying to mop up as much milkshake as possible with random fast food napkins lying around the car. Meanwhile daughter is kicking and screaming because she wants out of her car seat.
- Also, she smells really bad, she has obviously pooped. A LOT.
- Take her out of car seat and in the house, notice that I have a true "blow out" on my hands as the whole back of her pants are yellowish-brown and wet. AWESOME.
- Rip off all her clothes, trying to minimize the amount of poop that gets on me, haul her directly to the bathtub and rip off my own shirt as well as it also has poop on it now.
- Bathe her, get her dressed, take her down stairs.
- Place her on the floor to play with one of her toys while I go to the other room to grab a t-shirt to put on from a stack of clean clothes. In the approximately 15 seconds I am gone she manages to stand up holding onto the one toy, slip and fall over and bang her face into something. Screaming and crying commences.
- With my head and one arm in my shirt, scoop her up and comfort her. Thankfully at this point my mom arrives at the house and is able to assist. She takes daughter off my hands so that I can:
- Collect diaper that I left on changing pad earlier, place god awful smelling diaper in grocery bag and take it outside to trash.
- Return to car and clean remaining sticky milkshake residue off seat with leather wipes.
- Remove car seat from car, rip off cover, spray and scrub giant poop stain with Dreft, place in washing machine.
- Grab poop stained clothes that were also left on changing pad, hit them with Dreft and add them to the wash.
- Dive through the giant mouth & grab the final orange flag as I slide down the tongue, completing the obstacle course. Yeah, I won a trip to Space Camp!!!
Quick introduction
I thought to myself this evening, "The stuff I write on Facebook gets a bit lengthy and verbose at times, I should start a blog." So I am doing just that. I figured I can cross-post at FB for the benefit of my friends and that perhaps others outside my FB loop might also find this blog and decide to become "followers." Not that I really care all that much about gaining followers, but I suppose it'd be neat if I did.
Anyway as the "About Me" says I'm trying to simultaneously be a graduate (specifically doctoral, PhD) student and stay-at-home dad. Most days the dad part takes priority, this has been especially true since July when my daughter was diagnosed with cancer, specifically neuroblastoma. I will write a separate post at some point including all the details about that for the benefit of those who don't know them already. But I do want to specify that this blog is not going to be all about childhood cancer or being a parent of a child with cancer, though it's certainly possible or even probable that there will be quite a few posts about that. Having a child diagnosed with cancer is after all, to borrow the words of my former Senator and now our VP Joe Biden, "a big fucking deal."
Anyway, here it is, hope it doesn't suck too much and that I stick with it long enough to entertain someone other than myself.
Anyway as the "About Me" says I'm trying to simultaneously be a graduate (specifically doctoral, PhD) student and stay-at-home dad. Most days the dad part takes priority, this has been especially true since July when my daughter was diagnosed with cancer, specifically neuroblastoma. I will write a separate post at some point including all the details about that for the benefit of those who don't know them already. But I do want to specify that this blog is not going to be all about childhood cancer or being a parent of a child with cancer, though it's certainly possible or even probable that there will be quite a few posts about that. Having a child diagnosed with cancer is after all, to borrow the words of my former Senator and now our VP Joe Biden, "a big fucking deal."
Anyway, here it is, hope it doesn't suck too much and that I stick with it long enough to entertain someone other than myself.
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