Wednesday, July 30, 2014

It's a bird! it's a plane! It's....it's.....my underwear!?

Huh?  Underwear?  OK, let’s back up a bit.  I was recently complaining to Chuck I didn’t have any comfortable underwear.  I have had 7 abdominal surgeries, 3 this past year alone, so I have a road map of scar tissue on my belly.  Emily is 10 months old now so maternity undies slide right off the second I pull them on and regular underwear rubs up against the scars and is very irritating.  Now, combine that with the fact that I have kind of let myself go, clothing wise if you will, since the baby was born and you have the perfect storm of nothing fitting properly, things that do fit way beyond their prime (think stretched out elastics, holes and mystery stains) and the rest out-of-style by a good half decade or more. 
Back to my underwear.  First, let me preface this with the following statement; my husband is AMAZING!!  I could not ask for a better husband or father for my girls.  Please keep that in mind while reading the next few sentences!!  Chuck ordered some new underwear for me online.  He bought ones that were supposed to be super soft, yoga pant like so they wouldn’t rub on my belly scars.  Unbelievably thoughtful, right?  Well, a few days later the package arrives and Anna and I open it.  I can honestly say I have NEVER laughed so hard in all my life.  These things were HUGE!!!  They were the entire length of my outstretched arms.  Now, I know you are all thinking, yeah, but you have T-Rex arms Erin, they can’t be that big.  TRUST ME!!!  Without missing a beat Anna announces that they must be giant’s underwear.  They were so big I took a picture of Sara and Anna in them.  Both of the girls in the same pair!  One in each leg hole with room to spare! 
So I had already taken them out of the package and I wasn’t sure what the return policy would be on opened underwear so I started thinking about what I could do with these massive sets of britches.  I tossed around a few ideas; slip covers for the cat ravaged furniture, a shade awning for our porch, fold them and keep them in the linen closet (they may be a bit more practical than a table cloth when drying off after a shower) or use them as crib sheets for Em.
After thinking about it for a bit I came up with the perfect idea!  If you go way, way back to an earlier post you will see that I am a closet doomsday prepper.  OK, so I am not really a prepper…I am just fascinated by the show.  I always thought I should have a “GO” bag at the ready just in case the apocalypse came upon us.  These undies could prove invaluable in a doomsday scenario.   My betrothed didn’t just order me 1 pair, he got me 6!  So if I take one pair, a half pair might be sufficient, but take the pair and sew it into a ruck sack.  I could close off the leg holes and use the elastic waist band to fashion some handles.  OK, great so I have my GO bag, now I need to fill it with things that would help me and my family survive in the event of Armageddon.  The other 5 pairs of underwear would be a great place to start.

These enormous briefs could be used for shelter…just stick a large branch or two inside of one and you have a tent. Sleeping…string one up between two trees and voila, you have a hammock big enough for my entire clan.  If we need to quickly jump out of a plane or off a cliff, hey, it’s the end of the world, it could happen, just put your arms through the leg holes and as you jump the ass end of the undies would catch enough air to help you stick a smooth landing.   Water closing in on you?  No problem!  Fill them with sand, spin it around and tie off the end and there you have a sandbag.  Hungry?  Again, the undies can help with that…dredge them along the bottom of a river and it makes a nice net for catching fish.  Of course you can’t face the end of the world Naked and Afraid (another one of my guilty pleasure shows) so take 2 pairs of underwear; 2 upside down would make a nice jumper…from what I have seen in the magazines those are all the rage these days.  There are so many uses for this extra, extra large lingerie that my hubby got for me…a sling to carry the baby, toys…take off the elastic waistband and make a Chinese jump rope, hang one from a tree and throw coconuts through the leg holes like a bean bag toss…in my scenario we are on a tropical island.  I could go on and on.
But I won’t.  Why?  Because I was able to return them.  Of course that wasn’t without issues…so I take them back and of course I get the cashier with a super loud voice.  He asks why I am returning the underwear and I tell him that it is slightly larger than I need.  The register he is using breaks down.  We need to move to the next one at the customer service booth.  At this point there are a few people behind me, he calls in for help and again I am forced to state why I am returning them.  For the love of Christ this register sh*ts the bed…so now we are on to register #3 and now the manager is involved…so yet again I have to verbalize why I am returning the underwear to an ever growing crowd of impatient shoppers.  I was ready to just take the bloomers home and be done with it…but finally, finally Mr. Loud Talker gets the transaction processed and I can take my embarrassed self and do the walk of shame through the sea of pissed off customers…as if I had anything to do with the registers breaking!!
In case any of you were wondering I did get some underwear in a more reasonable size, but in an effort to always be honest with my faithful blog readers, I have to confess, I never did try the underwear on that Chuck got me…I was terrified that they might actually fit!!!

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Did that really just come out of my mouth? General Family Announcements

There are many times I want to call one of my family members out on something, but, in an effort to protect their self-esteem I just make "general family announcements".  That way no one is put on the spot and made to feel bad.  Here are a few of the recent General Family Announcements I have had to make;

* "If you need to get something out of your nose please use a tissue, do not wipe it on your dress".  Feel free to substitute dress with; wall, couch, floor, ceiling (we have bunk beds), dance costume, toilet paper roll or me!  Sadly, I have had to use all of those in place of dress and many more!!!

* "If you poop please flush it down the toilet...no one wants to see it."

 * "If you do manage to poop on the toilet please use toilet paper to wipe."  On more than one occasion I have found a floater and mysteriously there is no toilet paper with it.

* "If by some miracle you do remember to use toilet paper to wipe your poop please for the love of God flush it down the toilet and not leave it in the bathroom trash!"  I think I need to hold a remedial toileting class over here.

* "No one is putting soap in anyone's butt crack!"

* "This is supposed to be the summer of fun damn it!  Can you all stop crying and have fun for Christ's sake?"

* "No putting your finger in the kitty's bum!"  This wasn't truly a General Family Announcement...this was directed specifically at Emily.  Our cat Lucy is all black except for her bright white balloon knot (that is how I refer to her butt hole...sounds a little more pleasant, right?)...Emily has made it her life's mission to try and get her finger in there.  In Em's defense the cat does prance around with that thing glowing like a flippin' bulls-eye.

* "It's quite a life we have carved out for ourselves here.  How about we leave it all behind, move to Montana and just live in a shack?"  Again, not a General Family Announcement...just a question Chuck posed to me last night and without hesitation I said a resounding "YES"!  Not sure if he meant taking the kids with us or alone, again, my answer was a resounding YES!

*"If you lick the powder off a donut please either eat it or throw it away...don't put naked, wet donuts back in the box."

* "Tampons are not toys."