Morning Madness

I know Helen is eagerly awaiting my upcoming post about why I love Public Works and diesel powered equipment, but that will have to wait for a while longer. Sorry, Helen, but here's a tantalizing hint: it's the closest you will ever get to pure, raw, unadulterated power, baby. The heavy rumble as the engines fire up, the...

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah: morning madness. As you might know, or guess, it's been quite an adjustment for all of us for me to get up and go to work every. single. day. But it's been going pretty well. The boys get up VERY early. They come in our room and shuffle around the bed for a while, and then we all get up. All except Lloyd, I mean- he is so super efficient that he doesn't need the entire morning to accomplish his chores so he stays in bed until I leave for work. The boys watch Underdog, I throw some toast at them and get ready to go, pretty much peacefully.

Today, though, we had a little snafu. The boys came into our room around 4:30, and then WENT BACK TO SLEEP. I don't know why they came in- I'm not home during the day so for all I know Lloyd puts them in hockey masks and makes them have chainsaw fights to entertain the neighbors in exchange for a little extra cash, giving them early morning nightmares. Not that the reason for this aberration matters one tiny bit, of course. I got up and killed a little time, made my lunch and had some extra coffee. That was nice and all, but eventually I had to get showered and dressed, and they STILL WEREN'T UP. This was pretty much unprecedented, and I had no idea what to do.

Decision time, people: do I go in, turn the lights on, shower and get dressed like normal, taking the risk that they'll wake up all grumpy and cross and I'll be late? Or do I creep in there quietly to get my clothes and then suffer the agony of getting ready without all my required supplies and equipment and have to get dressed in the kitchen? I went with the stealth route, hoping they would at least stay asleep until I slammed the door behind me and accidentally set off the alarm.

I took a shower in their grimy, toy-infested tub, and washed my hair with Target brand baby wash. I dried off with a pre-dampened Buzz Lightyear towel and brushed my teeth with a Hello Kitty toothbrush and Little Bear toothpaste. After that, nothing was left to do but get dressed.

Now, don't be too shocked, but I am actually pretty organized when it comes to work clothes. On Sunday afternoon, I pick out four or five outfits so I can just grab a pile each morning and not have to think about it any more. Unfortunately, when I snuck into the closet in the dark, narrowly avoiding getting beaned by a trash bag full of Christmas presents and my manual 35 mm camera with the broken flash shoe, I could not find the dark wash boot cut denims that went with the week's last pre-arranged set. I carefully backed out to pillage the clothes pile, only to be thwarted once again by Lloyd's laundry prowess. There was zilch, and I mean NOTHING, either dirty or clean.

I did the only thing I could do. I posted about it on Facebook. Then I belly crawled back into the dark, peril-ridden closet, grabbed the only pair of pants I could readily and quietly find, a slim cut black velveteen pair, and bolted out the door. Problem solved, you might think, right? That's what I thought, anyway, until I got a good look in the enormous, brightly illuminated full-length mirror in the office bathroom. The thing is, there are few outfits, if any, where a pair of denims can be appropriately replaced with velveteens. At least in my closet. To make matters worse, the replacement pants seemed to have some sort of static issue. They stuck to my boots and the absurdly mismatched jacket clung to the pants. As a result, both the pants and the jacket spent all day inching upwards, and I looked like I raided the closet of a fashion-challenged dwarf. Dopey, perhaps. Only dumpier, and without that snappy hat. I considered tucking the pants into the boots, but feared I would look like a badly-dressed dwarf on the way to ill-advised riding lessons.

And let's not even talk my face and hair and all the rest, okay? I've pretty much given up on makeup improving my appearance in any appreciable way, but let me just say that a comb and some deodorant would have been warmly welcomed, not only by me, but by everyone in my office, and perhaps some passersby on the sidewalk outside my window. I did feel a little better when I saw someone from another division wearing athletic socks with black pumps. I didn't even want to ask what his morning was like.

I don't think I've EVER been so happy to get home from work. I've spent all afternoon problem solving so this doesn't happen to me again. I have a solution involving drop caches, but it's going to require some fairly intensive shopping and there will probably be some logistical issues. Now, here's a couple of little things to cleanse your palate. For a REALLY funny and excellent story about missing pants, click here.

And, I have been in a class all week. Today one of the exercises included filling in an organizational chart for an incident response. Here are my entries:

Chief- Ben Derr

Safety Officer- Izzy Dedgette, assisted by I.C. Blood

Shelter Manager- Bill DeShack

Heavy Equipment Supervisor- Anita Phillip

And that's all I have to say about that.

DCL Update, and a Totally Irrelevant Aside

So, apparently, not all of you have seen these hideous new Huggies. If you REALLY want to, you can see the commercial here, or just read about them here. But don't say I didn't warn you!

And, just in case you didn't believe me about the clothies, you can look here to see just a small selection of the diaper fashion that's readily available.

I know you're really just waiting for the irrelevant aside, so here goes: C Mike's comment about the straw in the bra idea not being all that original reminded me of the first time I went to one of those dumb flying squadron parties where you're supposed to dress up in a flight suit. The unadorned, standard Air Force flight suit can be seen here, if you are unfamiliar with them. Having never been to one of these soirees before, I didn't realize the idea was to create some slu.tty get-up out of the flight suit. Instead, I racked my brain to come up with a clever 'pilot' costume, and the only thing I could think of was a pilot whale. I stuffed pillows down the suit and put an aluminum funnel on my head with a silver stocking over it. For a spout, you know. Then I put a ziploc bag filled with water in the side pocket and ran some tubing up the inside of the stocking and up the funnel. I kept my hand in my pocket and squeezed the bag to squirt water up the tube and out the spout. It was a neat party trick and everyone liked it. Then it was time for the judging and I squeezed the bag too hard and it broke in the pocket and the spout didn't work and everyone just thought I was a weird girl in a fat flight suit that wet her pants and some tan little twinkie in a revealing Hello Kitty themed flightsuit won. After that I put beer in the bag and rerouted the tubing to my mouth. I hate Hello Kitty.