Considering the Big Picture

We mill around the front hall, getting ready to go. Hats are on, shoes are on, diapers in the bag, everyone has their water bottles. Water bottles, water – pee. Who needs to pee? Malli is sent upstairs to pee — no, wait! Mary is going to go first, because Malli always gets some pee on the seat. Not sure how she manages it, but she’s 100% consistent. Always.

… Okay… NOW Malli can have a pee…

Meantime, I do a quick check of the diapers to see if anyone needs to be changed before we head out. Disposables are easy: there’s a squooshiness, a weightedness that tells you if, and how much, is in there. The sniff test tells you what.

Do you ever sometimes stop and really SEE what it is you’re doing? Peel back the veneer of unthinking familiarity and look at this objectively? As if you’d never done it before? As if someone else were doing it to you?

“Squoosh test”, “sniff test”. Let’s stop and consider this for a moment, shall we?

How many jobs are there that allow – never mind require – one to squeeze half-a-dozen people in the crotch several times a day? Which, put in bald terms like that is kind of gross. Never mind the sniff test, favoured by the neighbour’s disreputable dog. Sheesh.

All diapers are – hurrah! – light and crinkly, so we can proceed as soon as Malli returns downstairs. And there she is!

“All set? Okay, let’s go sit on the porch!” Anal Retentive Methodical Nigel halts in the door as an Important Thought comes to him. He turns, eyes wide with urgency.

“Mary, you didn’t check Malli!”

“I don’t need to check Malli. She can pee on herself — I mean, by herself.”

Some while later, I discover my first mis-statement was in fact no mis-statement at all. Urgh. That does it. The girl will be using the potty for another month or so, at least. HOW she manages to get a quarter cup of pee on the seat and under her toilet ring I do not know, but taking a potty upstairs to tip out and clean cannot be any more work than scrubbing off the toilet ring and seat and disinfecting everything. And there’s far less chance of me inadvertently setting my butt down on a pee-sticky toilet.

You know? OTHER people don’t squeeze crotches as part of their work life (and I’m thinking that if they did it as part of their love life, it would be a pretty short-lived love life); OTHER people don’t play “pee-or-water?” six times a day; OTHER people perform sniff tests on roses, chocolate and fine wine, not backsides.

I have a weird job.