Housekeeping

A few things of note to anyone interested (well, I guess if you're reading this...) :

1. My email address is on the about page--it's uberimma at gmail, etc.

2. Yes, the RSS feed will continue to bring you all of Barak's potty updates and so forth, but it will not let you comment. If you want to comment (and you do, don't you? don't you? please? I really like the comments...) you have to be a reader. I don't mind making you a reader. Really I don't. I like readers. I just don't want them to be sitting in my husband's shiur.

3. I'll make this blog go private sometime after Shabbos. And I'll probably un-private it one of these days, when I get less paranoid. Although that might not be until my kids are all safely married.

4. I wasn't going to really post today, but as long as I'm here and you're here, I might as well bring you a potty update.

So, two days a week I work at home, right? This means that I have agreed to be generally available when not in the office--I pick up the phone, check my email, get back to people if necessary. Today I worked in the office, but came home to a fairly urgent voice mail on my cell phone (which I'd forgotten to take that morning). Just as I finished listening to the message, Iyyar woke up and demanded to nurse; just as he was done, Barak woke up howling to poop on the potty. I put him on the toilet, looked at my watch, and realized that because of the time change window (I work for people who travel a lot) I had twenty minutes to call back before the end of the business day. So I called, perched on the side of the bathtub with Iyyar on my lap and Barak on the toilet reading a book about construction equipment.

"Hi, it's me. I already faxed those remarks. They've all been translated and sent to the venue for the prompter. Does she still need the four-minute intro..."

[In the middle of this very professional exchange, I hear a car backfiring. Only it's not a car. It's Barak, with the most unbelievably explosive diarrhea I have ever heard from anyone of any age. The person I am talking to, an unflappable executive assistant, pauses.]

"What was that?"

[Me, innocently] "What was what?"

[Unflappable assistant, with concern] "I thought I heard a gunshot."

[Me, cheerily, as I pantomime encouragement to Barak, who is filling the toilet with gallons of foulness that I won't have to wipe off his tush or dispose of in the trash, hooray!] "Oh, I don't think so. We don't get many of those around here."