Rails Envy BlogAlanna Luna Pollack turned 1 year old on April 22nd, and she is a ray of sunshine. It’s funny how you can tell she has the same sort of personality of her mother. Very easy going and always smiling.
I can’t wait to see what she’s like when she gets older.
Last night was the “Co-Working Rocks!!” Event down at CoLab Orlando. I took some video with my flip and put together the montage you see below.
So this weekend we headed down from Orlando to Miami to visit the family. On the car ride back up we stopped at a McDonalds to grab some food and let the kids stretch their legs.
Everything was going fine until in the middle of dinner when Ender, the 2 year old, assumes “the position.” You’ve probably seen “the position” before if you’re a parent; The body is half way bent over, often combined with holding a chair or table, along with that concentrating or fearful look in his eyes which says “I’m really scared of what is about to happen in my pants”
Unfortunately I realize that he means business, or rather his ass means business, about 5 seconds too late.. which means the poop has already fallen. At this point we might as well wait it out.
What’s even more unfortunate is that we’re diaper training at the moment, which means there’s no diaper there to catch the toxic material. Danae has me go out to the car to get the diaper bag, and once I get back our son has assumed another kid position, this one’s technical term I’m going to refer to as “Rodeo Stance”. I never thought my son could do a good cowboy impression until I saw him enter “Rodeo Stance”. Basically imagine what it might look like if a man had a 50 pound weight attached to his ball sack. How would he walk? He’d walk in “Rodeo Stance”, to attempt to walk while avoiding the weight (or in Ender’s case, poop) dangling between his legs.
I hand Danae the diaper bag so she can fetch the needed materials and instruments for the operation which would follow. I say “Want me to change him?”, trying to be a good husband. Upon reflection, I probably said this in a way that communicated two things simultaneously. The first, a kind caring gesture which communicated “I’ll rescue you and take care of this no problem M’Lady”, the second something like “This is gross, I did not sign up for this, where do I get off the bus, I don’t want to go near that boys ass, OMGWTFBBQ!”
Danae gives me a look of confirmation and I decide to go the distance, taking my son, wipes, and diaper into the men’s restroom.
Luckily the bathroom actually had a changing station. I take the soiled underwear off, trying not to smear it all over his legs as I do so, and set it on the floor to address later. I clean him up as best I can, put his diaper and pants on, and set him on the floor. I’m feeling at this point like I deserve a gold medal or at least a trophy for father of the year. This is seriously gross, and I’ve managed fine so far.
Now it’s time to deal with the soiled underwear, where some additional explanation is in order. My wife and I cloth diaper, which means we are experienced in washing poop out of diapers (albeit with high powered toilet attached hoses). So, I know that Danae is expecting me to walk out of the bathroom with a pair of underwear that is somewhat free of poop. As much as I want to just toss the soiled disgusting underwear in the trash, I know that I have to deal with them.
So I pickup the soiled underwear. It doesn’t look like there’s a great deal of poop, but what there is looks sticky. I’m in the handicap stall, so although I know it’s kinda gross (this is a McDonalds pit stop bathroom), I figure I can easily wash out the sticky poop in the sink and it will go down the drain. So I put the underwear under the faucet and turn the hot water on. As soon as it hits the underwear, I immediately realize that I’ve done two things horribly wrong. First of all, the poop wasn’t as liquidy as I expected it, and there’s some chunks coming off, and second (and this is the worst of all) the sink has a grating at the bottom so instead of going down the drain there is now a layer of poop forming.
I quickly realize this is bad, and move to the toilet. I dip the underwear in the water doing my best to get the chunks out, but well, this isn’t good enough. I need to get the sticky parts off somehow. I remember thinking the following two things… “I’ll give the toilet a flush to clear out the water and then worry about scrubbing” and then “Hey, if I hang the underwear in there when it flushes, maybe it’ll jet some of the poop away”… Seemed logical, so I hang in the underwear and flush the toilet.
The following then occurs, in just this order… The toilet flushes, the jets fly against the underwear, the underwear gets pulled out of my hands, and the toilet gobbles up the underwear like it hadn’t eaten a meal for weeks. I can’t help but laugh out loud as I realize by how much I underestimated the awesome power of this toilet. I turn to Ender and say “That wasn’t supposed to happen”. I’m laughing so hard that he starts laughing, although he has no idea what just occurred.
I realize at this point any chance of that medal or trophy for being a Super Dad is out the window. I’ve lost the underwear, the toilet ate it, and there’s still shit in the bathroom sink.
After calming down, I do my best to clean up the sink, collect Ender, and head back out to Mom. I try my hardest to explain how the hungry toilet needed the underwear more then we did. She’s slightly disappointed, but hey, at least I cleaned him up right?
Perhaps this blog entry will serve as a warning to other fathers; Beware of hungry toilets that eat underwear.
This photo was taken at my grandmother’s 101 birthday. Her and my daughter Alanna are 100 years apart.
How’s that for perspective?
A new Central Florida organization has been in the planning stages for a while now, and this morning Doterati had their first Social Media Breakfast. They invited me down to do my video thing, so I got up early and headed over to Altamonte for the meeting.
What resulted is the 7 minute video below:
Click here to view on Viddler
If you’re planning any events around town and need someone to cover them, or if you need help with creating any sort of media (podcast or video) content, definitely drop me a line (Gregg at RailsEnvy.com).
So as you proabably noticed, this is a fairly new blog. I’ve been polishing up this wordpress template, but I still need a logo for the top left. I explained this to Jason Seifer, my business partner, and he promptly said “can i make one for you”… He then sent me the following two pictures:
Jason's Gregg Soup Logo #1
He then asked “is the tomato soup too much? would you be more partial to a different flavor?”
I replied “split pea?”. I should have known he’d then have to follow it up:
Jason's Gregg Soup Logo #2
Curse you Jason and your Photoshop Skillz! In case it’s not clear to anyone, this is a Joke.
Starting on October 1st, Orlando will have it’s first co-working space called CoLab Orlando. I’m very excited about this new space and have been doing what I can to promote it and help it along.
Late last month they held an Open House in the new space so people could check it out. The Orlando Sentinel’s Etan Horowitz was there with his Flip Video, and he wrote a blog entry and captured the following video.
Oh.. and I’m looking at my phone because I wrote some notes on there.
Again, I did not shoot this video.
