Artifacts from Mental Space

Warning for Non-Parents:  Diaper humor ahead.

Mal just had his regularly-scheduled diaper load event.  Unfortunately, we were all roughhousing at the time, so the smell pretty much knocked me and Robert out cold.  We both pretended to pass out, and Mallory got concerned and knelt down to look in our faces and ask if we were okay.  But that's not the point of this story, cute as it was.

R said, "He needs a change, stat!"  I said, "No, wait a bit.  I want to make sure he's finished.  Ain't nothing worse than being in the middle of changing him, to discover he's got a little something extra."

"A lagniappe?"

"A lag-nappy!"

"Nappy Lag!"

At which point we both started laughing like drains, and Mal got even more concerned.  Poor kid.  You really shouldn't expose them to bad puns at such an early age.

I was supposed to have my annual ob/gyn kenobi exam today, but I couldn't get a babysitter. So cancelled. It turns out Robert is really bored at work and could have watched Mal for an hour (my doctor is a couple blocks from the embassy) but we couldn't know that in advance.

So I played with Mal all day until he crashed for a long nap, during which I worked on revising this short story.

I'm probably not the first woman to forego a PAP in favor of writing.

Playing with Mallory was good too. I had to clean the balconies, as pollen was about an inch deep on them. Not to mention a few random poisonous caterpillars that had wound up on our balconies. (These caterpillars are very odd. They huddle in bunches of 50 of so on the ground, and when they go somewhere they line up nose to tail - not that caterpillars have either - and trundle along in a line. You'd think they'd be prime picking for birds, but they are highly caustic. Contact with them results in something almost indistinguishable from chicken pox.)

So I put Mal in his wetsuit and he splashed about in the water as I hosed down and squeegeed the upstairs balcony. Downstairs was dirtier, so he sat in his stroller under the trees and watched me and the kitties and the birds. Of course, the nasty feral cats are the main reason why the balcony is so gross, but to Mal they are kitties.

After that we strolled over to the park and played on the swings. One of the tortoises who lives in the park was running around (for a tortoise) and we watched her searching for particularly succulent plants while we had lunch. It was a gorgeous day to be outside, the best kind of day to not work full-time.