>Embarassing Moment No. 5347
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Margaret hosted play group yesterday. She is a perfectionist who would make other perfectionists envious. Her house is always flawlessly cleaned and decorated whenever I visit. Her playroom carpet, on which her baby ostensibly plays, is whiter than white (mine, on the other hand, is stained beyond all recognition). How does she do it???
So there we were, six moms chatting while six toddlers busily ran around checking out the toys. It was all going so well- I had made it on time, remembered to change Baby’s diaper and I even packed a snack and bottle for later. I looked presentable and so did Baby. Today, we could hang with this crowd. Our facade seemed unpenetrable.
As I talked with the moms about I-never-can-remember-what, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Margaret’s daughter Betsy kept poking around in my diaper bag. She pulled out a toy; I put it back in. A few minutes later, she pulled out a diaper; I put it back in.
In a moment, Betsy toddled into the middle of the mommy circle, triumphantly holding up a bottle.
“Oh, Betsy, that bottle doesn’t belong to you,” Margaret said.
Betsy continued to hold up the bottle, smiling proudly.
It was no ordinary bottle.
It contained milk that was days, no, weeks old. The clotted, sour milk had separated into snotlike clumps that clung to the bottle’s sides.
“Whose bottle is that?” Margaret said, echoing what I was thinking.
Actually, what I was thinking was far worse. It was, That is disgusting! What the hell kind of mom would keep that thing within a child’s reach?!
But then I had another thought. That looks like one of my bottles.
“I think it’s mine,” I said dazedly.
The other moms started giggling.
“I think. Yeah. It looks like mine. I must’ve had it in my diaper bag and not realized it.”
“It would be easy to forget,” Margaret said dubiously.
“Wait a second!” I said. “I am so stupid! Why did I just admit that it was mine? I should’ve just sat here and been like, Ewww, whose bottle is that?!, along with the rest of you!”
The giggles turned to laughter. It was pretty funny. But I’ve already gotten two e-mails this morning that made reference to the bottle. I’m pretty sure the moms aren’t going to forget this one any time soon.
Aww, shit. It’s really no use trying to pretend to be someone I’m not, is it?
>Hehehehe…I swear we lead dual lives or something. There have been a couple of times that a sippy cup has slid down into the recesses of Miss Kitty’s diaper bag and I’ve found it later…milk congealed into a blog when you open it up, forcing you into a gagging air-vomit as you try to wash the milkcurd down the sink. EWWWW! I also have a perfectionist friend with equally clean carpets. I’m just lucky if someone stops by and there’s not cat hair or tree pines on mine right now.HA!
>I, too, have found the sippy cups containing the milk that has gone from liquid to solid and back to liquid. Those just go straight into the bin. I don’t even wnat to open them. It’s worth the cost of a new sippy cup to not have to smell that!
>I thought you were going to say that the kid found it under the couch of the woman who owned that pristine house!
>That is very funny because it sounds like something someone would find in my car.One time when Rachel was a baby, my mother in law took an old bottle lik ethat and poured it into Rachel’s regular, fresh bottle. Unaware of this, I took Rachel’s bottle upstairs. I put it in her mouth. She took a swallow and then gagged. She was like 8 months old or something.
>You crack me up!I thought you were going to say she was sucking on a tampon or something! That would have been WAY worse!You aren’t alone. When I moved our bed a few months ago, I found a bottle of rotting milk. My son is 11 months old. He does not take a bottle. So that means…. Yep! It came from my daughter, who is now THREE AND A HALF!Ugh!
>Aw heck, stuff like that happens! You just had it happen to you at Mrs. Perfect’s house.Just be yourself. People will still like you…they’ll probably like you more! 🙂
>I have a sister-in-law whose house is always Company Ready. But one very hot summer, in the space of three days, she found two prehistoric sippies of milk in the toybox in her playroom, and one more under the front seat of her SUV.It can happen to the best of us. Thank god, because otherwise we would have to kill some of these women. (Me? I’ve got kid cups all the hell over this house. It’s a nightmare.)
>Could it be that there are more slacker moms lurking in suburbia than you first imagined?I am constantly finding sippie cups under couches, cloged with dry heave inducing clots of stuff. And, my husband is the dishwasher, and he rarely manages to finish the dishes in a single day. Fun.
>I think the problem I have is that most of you moms at least keep your old sippy cups hidden behind beds and in toy boxes. My old bottle, on the other hand, is on display for all the mom world to view. Yeah, I’ve found plenty of old bottles around the house, but at least I can keep that shizzle to myself.
>I love how you tell a story. I gotta give a thumbs up for thinking of such a funny comeback off the top of your head when in the hot seat. I’ve got more than a few super organized moms that I love hanging out with, and they found out long ago that my standards are much more lax then theirs. Of course, this doesn’t stop them from lending me wipes, extra juice, extra if I run out (which happens all too often).
>Hehe. Been there done that. Red-faced and all, in a huge circle of moms with disgusting cup on display. Oy. And nope, no use. 😉
>At least it didn’t *burst* in there.(Yup. Happened to my husband. He left a full bottle in the spare diaper bag. In the car. In a heat wave. For three weeks.)
>You would have been busted eventually. You were better to just own up.
>I, too, keep those in my car. I’m probably making exquisitely elegant cheese and have no idea. . .I’m certain that nobody actually plays in Margarets playroom. It’s totally for show.
>Yes, the worst part is them all seeing it. I found what looked like a year old bottle with milk in it IN OUR BED recently. How could it not have turned up? Makes you think we never make our bed or something. Ew.Here’s a public humiliation moment for you…I was driving my friends car last week and had to stop for gas. I didn’t know which side of the car the tank was on, so when I stopped at the pump, I realized the tank was on the other side. The gas station was crowded, so a few cars had to stop and wait for me as I turned the car around, 5 point turn-Austin Powers style, to get to the other side of the pump. Only problem is I pulled up on the EXACT SAME SIDE OF THE CAR. I even got out and checked for the tank. As if I hadn’t just done the exact same thing! I looked around and it was obvious several people had noticed. I wanted to scream out “its not my car!” and drive off to a different station. However, I didn’t want to run out of gas so I had to just suck it up and move a THIRD time to a new pump. Yeah, that was a stellar moment. I love showing off how smart I am!
>Oh no! Poor thing! Mothers with white carpet should be shot. See how nice and clean they can keep their carpet while they’re bleeding all over it.
>Ok, I just found your blog, and this is my second comment, because you have me choking on my cheerios.Thank you for being the kind of mom who forgets to take the bottles out of her diaper bag. I thought I was the only one.