Well, I’m headed off for my weekend away – I’ll be at NOFA NH on Saturday giving the keynote and at the NESEA Building Energy Public Forum Panel on Tuesday night. Posting will be intermittent while I’m gone, but I figure I’d leave you all with a laugh at my expense.
Eric had a horrible moment the other day in class. Students were coming in and he was calling up a youtube video on space exploration for his students to see. But somehow while answering a student question, he committed a typo, which brought up, on a huge screen a hard-core porn site with very explicit visuals. After a second or two the students’ laughter alerted Eric to the problem, but he was about as embarassed as any human being could possibly be – and terrified that students might think he’d done it on purpose. He immediately apologized profusely, emailed his department chair about what happened just in case anyone took offense, and let’s just say he’s still blushing.
This got us on one of those great party conversations about your most embarassing moment. I still think mine is hysterically funny, even though I can’t tell the story without turning red. Eric thinks that because it only involved a few people, mine wasn’t as bad. I am willing to bet that my midwife has told this story a bunch of times, though, so I’m not convinced only a few people know ;-).
It was during the very end of my pregnancy with Isaiah. Let’s just say that that night my husband and I were using a time-honored traditional method of trying to naturally induce labor – sex. And at the very moment of happiness, I felt a puddle of liquid appear underneath my butt. This is a little worrisome because you are not supposed to have sex after your water breaks, for fear of contamination of the little bugger. I wasn’t quite clear on whether this constituted “after” since it was pretty much simultaneous, but it seemed potentially problematic.
Well there are two choices here. Either my water broke or I peed my pants. I had read the baby books and I knew that the way you tell whether the liquid is pee or not is to sniff it – amniotic fluid smells sweetish, pee smells like pee. I tell my husband “I think my water just broke” and we get down to sniff the sheets. The sheets smell sweet – quite sweet, actually. Almost fruity.
It is rather late, but we call my neighbor to watch the younger kids, call my midwife who is very gracious about being awakened in the night, and head to the hospital. We get there. We test for amniotic fluid. The test is negative, and my now slightly-annoyed midwife says wearily that I must have wet my pants. I’m pretty offended by this and swear I didn’t, and demand that she repeat the test, saying that it definitely smelled sweet. She repeats, the results are the same, I go home. My midwife clearly thinks I’m an idiot and an incontinent one at that – and I’m wondering if she’s right. My neighbor is gracious but probably doesn’t think I’m that bright either – what kind of imbecile can’t tell pee from amniotic fluid?
So we go upstairs, tired and cranky and while Eric takes a shower, I go and change the sheets. As I do so, I find in my sheets a plastic sippy cup belonging to one of my older sons that was once filled with apple juice, tangled in the blankets, its cap slightly askew.
How about you? Got a favorite embarassing moment to entertain the group with?
Sharon