More reruns: The Sweater Story

I’m blogging over at Family Jewels again today, and it’s a topic both dear to my heart and important for you to read, so get on over there and read it, okay?

But if you still can’t get enough of me today (frankly, I’m a little sick of me these days!) here’s a golden oldie from my way-back archives, The Sweater Story.

I’ve been back at work for about three weeks now, and I think I’m finally into the rhythm of the office again. I’ve been working on some pretty high-profile stuff around here, so I get lots of face time with senior management, which is nice for a new employee although some days I really feel like I’m in over my head.

Today was an especially busy day. We had our usual all-staff morning meeting, where I gave an update on my project to the group, and I had a couple of drop-by-my-cube meetings with colleagues. I also spent about 30 minutes on a conference call in my director’s office, sitting across the desk from her while we talked to some of the folks down in Southern Ontario region.

It was about 10:30 by the time I finally made it to the bathroom. I was washing my hands when I caught sight of myself in the mirror and noticed it. IT. In that moment, I became truly cognizant of the definition of mortified. On my sweater sleeve – my creamy white cotton knit sleeve, no less – smeared from mid-bicep to near my wrist, was a painfully obvious, incredibly nasty two inch wide smear of baby shit. Suddenly I flashed back to the pre-dawn gloaming of Tristan’s room, where I rushed in to grab a little cuddle before running for the bus. I picked him up out of his crib and slung him onto my hip to deliver him to Beloved, blissfully unaware of the toxic ooze seeping out of his Pampers and ingratiating itself with my arm.

As I gazed at my sullied reflection in the mirror, I tried to console myself: “They won’t notice. It’s not that obvious.” It WAS that obvious. THEY NOTICED! You would have to make a Herculean effort of avoidance to miss it, and I just knew my colleagues weren’t up to the task.

I tried to at least mitigate the damage. First, I tried to rub it off. Have you ever tried to rub dried baby shit off cotton ribbed knit? Then thought maybe a little water might do it. Which worked, inasmuch as it diluted the stain by about 20 per cent and spread it over an area about 300 per cent of the original stain. So I rolled up the sleeve as much as I could, which did a great job of drawing attention to the goodly part of the stain still visible, left the other sleeve down, and tried valiantly not to make eye contact with anyone in my office for three months.

Related posts (automatically generated):

1. The case of the mis-sized sweater I have a sweater. (Stunning lede, no? Wait, it can only get better.) I’ve had this sweater for ages, four or five years at least. (See, nail-biting drama here. I don’t know if I can contain myself.) I really like it. (Surely this is Pulitzer-quality material?) I’ve worn it at...
2. Bad sweater day There’s no comment game today. Sorry about that. I can never tell if you are playing along because you’re humouring me, or if you genuinely like those things. Let me know if you really enjoy them, and I’ll find some more. Then again, there’s not much else today. It’s been...
3. Conquering the French Oh, the irony! Yesterday, I took my dreaded oral exam for the third time since February. Less than 22 hours later, I read this article in the Citizen about how the public service is finally revisiting how it evaluates second-language capability, and how they’ll be moving from a (positively painful)...
4. Worst commercial song appropriation ever Beloved and I are watching American Idol on TV. Well, Beloved is watching it and I’m futzing about on the laptop, half paying attention. A commercial comes on for Wendy’s, the hamburger chain, and Beloved nearly chokes. I miss the visual, but the music running in the background is the...
5. Random bullets of minivan-ness It’s been just over a week since we picked up the minivan. Meh. I don’t hate it, but I can’t say I’m in love with it. It has wheels, a steering wheel, and it goes. I suppose that’s a good start. The first time we tried to pick it up,...