Splendiferous Zeppelin Escapades

Jessica just left for California for her brother’s wedding, and I get to spend the weekend (a 3-day weekend!) with Spencer.  I’m quite happy about this.  I also get to spend the weekend with cloth diapers, or at least that’s what I thought.  This post is NOT void of vivid descriptions of baby poop, so be warned.  :)

I’ve changed his cloth diapers before, but I’ve never done the whole shabang by myself.  This involves using them throughout the day and having to deal with any poopies as well as washing/drying them at night and re-stuffing them.  I was all gung-ho about it.  I was on board.  In fact, I’ve never had any issues yet, and I’ve been behind Jessica 100% with this.  I still am, but I think my weekend of cloth diapering is over.  That’s right: after one diaper change I may be going disposable until Jessica gets back.  Here’s why.

The very first diaper I changed after we got back from the airport was a poopie.  It stank pretty bad, but I’m a veteran.  I don’t cringe in the face of duty.  I wisely removed the cover from the changing table, not knowing whether the wet in his pants was pee or poop (gross!).  I laid him down, pulled down the pants and diaper, and there it was, Lake Spencer.  Maybe Mud-Bog Spencer or Swamp Spencer would be more accurate.  It was definitely liquid, but with solid leanings.  Please understand, I’m not a noob when it comes to these things.  I have always done my fair share of diapers, poop and non-poop alike, but this one was massive and disgusting.  And the worst part?  I knew I couldn’t just wrap it up and throw it away.

I cleaned off Spencer’s bum while trying to keep his hands from investigating The Swamp and finally managed to get poop separated from baby.  I set him down, bottomless, and sent him to the bath tub.  I very carefully carried The Mud-Bog to the toilet and prepared to dump it out like I’ve been instructed.  Jessica’s told me that you just dump out what you can and then put the rest in the pail.  First of all, this was NOT going in the pail because I didn’t want to have to SCRUB sloshed over swamp-stuff from the pail.  That meant it was going straight to the washer, but I wasn’t going to throw all the “mud” in there.  My problems increased as I realized it was just in that “sweet” spot on the liquid/solid scale that it wouldn’t dump out of the diaper.  I balanced it in one hand while going to get water in a cup with the other hand and tried to rinse it off into the toilet.  That was fine for the first time, but then I realized I had to get more water, but now I had a dripping swamp-diaper that I had to balance just right so it wouldn’t come out while I got to the faucet.

I did this about 5 times and decided it was ready for the washer.  Unfortunately, on my way over there, the now mostly water/somewhat poop stuff on the surface of the diaper started to drip out, so I had to catch it with my hands.  This does take two hands to achieve such a feat, and I found myself at quite a loss for how to open our front-loader washer.  My feet soon sprang to action, and I really hope you can get the vivid picture of me juggling the swamp diaper while dancing on  one foot while the other is tangled up in the washer door handle.  It even makes me laugh…now.

So, it all turned out ok, but I just don’t think I’m going to do it the rest of this weekend.  Sure, Spencer likely won’t put me through that again, but I just don’t want to deal with it when the disposable works just fine.  Don’t get me wrong, I am totally behind moving to cloth diapers and think it’s a fantastic idea and will support Jessica a 100%.  But Jessica’s not here.  :)

P.S.  I really am behind you a 100% sweetie!  Just not for the next couple days!  I love you!

In case you hadn’t heard of it, Jessica and I have a board game that we quite enjoy and just finished playing: Lord of the Rings.  It’s a little more complex than your traditional Monopoly or Risk type of game, but it plays pretty quickly in about an hour.  Its main distinctive trait is that it is a cooperative game in which all the players play their hands individually on the same team against the board.  The board controls Sauron, and each of the players plays a hobbit.  The hobbits try to make it through all the main locations in the trilogy while dealing with all sorts of troublesome events like you find in the books.  They must work together to make it to Mt. Doom and throw in the Ring.

I just thought this deserved a mention because our reactions to it while playing are so unique.  Inevitably, as we are finishing this game, the mood gets really tense as we make our final plans to avoid meeting Sauron.  When we die (lose), we yell (yes, yell) out in frustration, and when we chuck the Ring we yell in triumph.  Yep, it’s that engrossing.  Anyway, if you want to learn more, click here.  It’s a bit expensive (brand new $50, used off eBay maybe $35-40), but we’ve quite enjoyed it.  It’s our first game venturing into the expansive board game world (see http://boardgamegeek.com for more), and I’m looking forward to getting a lot more of these types of games.

We had our annual ice storm start today and that meant longer commute times for me and house-relegation for Jessica.  For those of you not familiar with them (I know I wasn’t before I came here), the ice storm is simply misting rain in sub-freezing temperatures with the end-result being a nice sheet of ice on EVERYTHING.

By now I’m used to these, and I just know that it involves taking a little more time to get places.  I did observe a couple new things:

1. It is possible to drive your car too slow on an ice-covered road.  This one guy almost caused a five-car pileup because a unique situation required a bunch of people several cars behind him to “slam” on their brakes because of the slow line he generated.

2. When scraping ice off the car window, once you have some of the ice off at the bottom, it is best to flip the scraper over from the normal motion.  The normal scraping works fine for thin layers or snow, but with thick layers it just jams the contact portion of the ice into the firmly planted portion behind it.  With the inverted motion, it redirects a lot of your force outward from or perpendicular to the window.  This is effective because the warming air on the inside of the car (you turned it on, right?) has created a thin layer of melted ice on the part touching the window, and it needs a prying motion more than a jamming one.  Hope that makes sense.

[I really hate to keep on talking about politics here, so this will be the last time before the elections, I promise...]

I know Mr. Obama is a busy man, so I’ll go ahead and preempt his thanks to me by saying, You’re Welcome!  Clearly, he thought highly of my flowchart posted a week ago because he followed it to the letter last night even better than ever before.  Glad I could be of help!

With Palin’s debate flowchart flooding teh internets, I thought it would only be fair to post Obama’s flowchart.  I couldn’t do Biden’s because his debating style actually makes sense.  I found it a lot easier to listen to him than Obama.  I also didn’t have time to make it pretty, but oh well, here it is:

Barack Obama Debate Flowchart

1. Is the question about a problem? Yes – Goto 2a. No – Goto 2b.

2a. Blame it on President Bush Goto 3.

2b. Spin it into a problem and blame it on President Bush Goto 3.

3. Say that John McCain as President would do the EXACT same thing as Bush. Goto 4. *

4. Does the question have anything to do with your next note card? Yes – Goto 5a. No – Goto 5b

5a. Give your response making sure to pause after every word for dramatic (read: annoying speech behavior) effect. Goto 6.

5b. Your agenda is more important than the moderators, talk about what you want. Goto 6.

6. Promise that you will fix every problem the nation in such a way that it will involve CHANGE and will be the exact opposite of Bush/McCain.  It must also involve spending.  It involves CHANGE, so it must be the right solution, right?  Right?  Go CHANGE!  Goto 7. **

7. Is the ninety seconds filled? Yes – Goto 8a. No – Goto 8b.

8a. OMG! You’re the most over-aggrandized political figure in recent memory! Next question. ***

8b. Make a statement about all the starving, under-insured, complete-wreck-of-a-life citizens whose life will be blessed by having the opportunity to have you as president. Oh, and be sure to pause every word for dramatic (read: time-wasting) effect. Goto 8a.

* This really should be attributed to Joe Biden who said in the last debate that John McCain’s policy “is the same as George Bush’s” in every way. Rubbish and outright lies, much like everything else that comes out of a politician’s mouth.

** According to Barack Obama, nothing currently works.  I’ve only ever heard him talk about change.  I’ve never heard him mention a program or policy that is currently adequate.  Thanks to him, I’ve added a note to my list of attractive qualities in a candidate:  Look for someone who can identify things that are working and use those to make things that aren’t working, working.  If someone can only identify problems, they aren’t likely to be able to resolve them.

*** Can I just say that Barack Obama is so overly built up by his fans, that everytime I hear him speak, I am completely underwhelmed.  I have no love for McCain.  He has shown during this campaign that he employs pointless tactics that group him up with almost every other campaigning political slimeballs out there, but Barack Obama is exactly the same way and bears no distinctive trait that sets him above the pack.