The Dummening: In the Form of Clumsiness

You'd think I would be really calm, and not at all jittery to the point of dropping things and breaking things now that I really can't make coffee. Yeah, I recently broke the coffee carafe. It wasn't that big of a deal because we could just use the french press until I search every store in the tri-state area for a replacement carafe. That worked until I broke the french press. There was also an incident where someone knocked a glass into another glass in the cabinet, causing massive breakage, but I am not claiming that. I swear that was Dave.

Regardless, now that I am unhappily giving up caffeine, it's odd that this sort of thing keeps happening. What sort of thing you ask? The sort of thing where I say, "Oh great! There is the perfect amount of salad left over to make a really big salad for my lunch tomorrow!" And then I followed that up with, "I'll just take a picture of this with my camera."


A few nights later I was making a fritatta for dinner.

In case it isn't clear, that is a picture of four eggs* on the floor. Luke took a look and said, "Crack an egg on your head, let the juice run down."

On the bright side, the frittata did turn out to be delicious. There weren't any leftovers. (I took the picture before everyone had seconds.) Happy Friday the 13th, everyone; I hope you enjoyed your week of dummening! (And since the week was about The Dummening, I am sure no one will care that it was only 5 days long!)

* I did not use the eggs that fell on the floor.

Work Dummening

I blame all my work dummening this week on the fact that I absolutely had to solve a problem before I went to sleep on Tuesday night. Did I say Tuesday night? Because I guess I meant Wednesday morning at 2:30 am. That pretty much threw off the rest of my week.

Then today, I needed to create a database link, but I didn't know the password and the person who knows the password was at physical therapy, so instead of connect to user identified by password, I used connect to user identified by values ' '. And that apparently can trigger a bug that causes ORA-0600 errors. (ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kzdlk_zt2 err] to be specific.)

Oh, the hilarious and wacky adventures that I get into at work. I bet you are all wishing I talked about it more often. The reason I am evening talking about work at all, is that I was one dummening story short for the work week, and I am saving a good one for tomorrow. But really, if I start getting hits from people searching on kzdlk_zt2 err I am totally turning this into a DBA blog and I am going to get rich off the add revenue.

Until tomorrow...

(Oh - to you DBA suckers, you need to get rid of the quotes and use the real password. See metalink note 456320.1)

Smarty Pants Revisited

I already mentioned how I did some dumb things while making my smarty pants outfit. I mentioned ruining the shirt and the end table. But did I mention that at one point I sewed the front and back of the pants together? I did do that. But it still turned out to be a cute outfit. Dave thought I was going to sew the smarties on individually, like sequins. That may have been cool, but I never could have done it while watching our new TV obsession, The Wire.

Diaper Drama Day 2

Do I talk enough about diapers to officially be considered a mommy blogger? Bring on the ad revenue! I'm talking to you Pampers! Come on Pampers, don't you want a frazzled, disorganized, Megan Fox look a like to be your new spokes mom-dle?

OK, back to the dummening. I was with other Ladies Who Lunch (at Target) and we were in the diaper section. My Ladies Who Lunch (at Target) friends are two co-workers with toddlers about Jack's age. They were discussing Size 4 diapers vs. size 5 diapers. I said, "What? Jack is still in 3s! Why move to 4s? You get at least 12 fewer diapers for the same price!"

They had a lot of answers to my incredulous question:
Because 3s are too small!
They leak!
Have you looked at the size recommendation?!!

It is a little odd that we haven't moved up a size yet, because normally I am the first person to move up a size, weight guidelines be damned. My policy is this: 2 consecutive blow outs and you move up a size. Someone recently questioned the 2 in a row policy. Why deal with that twice? Are you insane? Yes, but 1 blowout could be an isolated incident resulting from bad diapering. And Jack really hadn't had any leaks or blowouts.

I insisted that 3s were fine for my small bottomed and possibly thirsty little boy and I bought another box.

They did seem a little small, but so what? 96 diapers for the same price as 84! So what if he looks like he is wearing a diaper thong.

Before my next trip to the store, Dave happened to mention Jack's weight.

Dave: Jack weighs 25.2 pounds, in case you need that info the next time you buy diapers.
Megan: 25.2?
Dave: Yes, 25.2

I looked at the size recommendation on the 3s (16-28 pounds) and I bought another box. Just one more! Dave said, "3s again? He's at the top of the weight range!" I said, "22.5! No he isn't! Dave said, no, I said 25.2, and you repeated it." Oops.

Almost immediately, Jack had 2 consecutive blow outs. Ugh. 94 diapers to go. Dave had a good solution though. Just take all those diapers to the daycare and buy bigger ones!

Diaper Drama Day 1

I am going to kick off The Week of Dummening with a little story about diapers. The last time I mentioned the topic is was in reference to the fact that we were days overdue for bringing a new stash of diapers to the daycare. It is funny, because there are a lot of families with kids at Luke's school and younger kids at Jack's daycare, and we see the parents up to 4 times day, crossing paths at various drop offs and pick ups. But we can rarely coordinate something that would make things easier on anyone. Just twice I've plopped one of Jack's friends into the bike trailer with Jack after dropping off Luke at school to save another parent a trip to daycare. But that accounts for 2 times of the 1000 times we have discussed some sort of coordination with other parents. And of course, I've never successfully pawned off my kids on anyone.

One cold day, I decided to drive Luke to school because we weren't organized enough to catch the bus, and we certainly weren't organized enough to drop off Jack first. So after standing around until the bell rang, in the cold, I was carrying Jack, both of us in puffy coats, back to the car, to go to daycare when one of the other moms said, "Want me to take Jack?" I said, "Oh, that would be so great! But DARN IT! If I forget diapers again... And I left them at home, so I need to go get them. Drat!" I may not have actually said drat.

And once I managed to buckle Jack in the car for the second time that day, there was no way I was going to go through it again before dropping him off for the morning. I knew Dave was working from home so I called him and asked him to meet me at the end of the driveway with diapers so I wouldn't have to get out of the car. He said he would just get on his bike in a couple hours and ride the diapers over to daycare. Great! Problem solved. Too bad I didn't take the other mom up on the free stroller ride to daycare. Oh well. I said hi to her again when I saw her a few minutes later. And Dave dutifully took time out of his day to pedal the diapers over to school because we just couldn't forget one more time.

Eight or so hours passed and Dave texted to discuss was picking up whom.
Dave: Target plans? Took all the diapers to daycare.
Megan: No problem. There's a box in the trunk.
Dave: Doh!
Megan: ?

10 minutes or so passed and a light bulb comically lit up over my head. I had diapers in the trunk of the car that whole time!

Interesting Solutions

Remember all that snow? Me neither. It was 77 yesterday. Today, Jack was playing outside and he dumped a play lawn mower full of water onto the patio. Then he jumped in the water. Then he fell in it.

Then, as I valiantly attempted to continue reading the paper, in order to be a great mother, by knowing what is going on in the world, Jack wandered off saying, "Oh no! Water. Oh no! Water." Then that sweet sound trailed off into silence. Soon I realized that a quiet toddler is a dangerous toddler. It turns out that Jack's method for absorbing excess water in your pants is to roll in the sandbox.

I should have seen that one coming, for sure.

And that is a good segue into my programming announcement for next week. Are you ready for 5 days of dummening? Starting Monday, it will be all dummeing all the time, all the way through into Friday. I can think of 4 ideas right off the top of my head, so I am either going to have to think harder to come up with a fifth one, or else just keep my fingers crossed that I do something dumb in the next week. Chances are good.

There's A Blog Post About Irony In Here Somewhere

Last night I was working on Halloween costumes to the best of my ability with a house full of kids with cabin fever who would neither put on nor take off costumes at my command. I gave up and started working on my own costume. But no one would let me sit and sew, or if they did, they wanted to eat parts of my costume, so I gave up on the pants and started working on the top.

Without getting into all the gory details, let's just say that while I was ironing a design that included "e=mc2" onto the front of my shirt, I ended up with the reverse of e=mc2 on the back of the shirt. But you can barely see where the design bled through, because I also took a bunch of paint off the end table where I was ironing and that is now also on the back of the shirt.

I suppose a cardigan could rescue my costume. But I just don't know if I can pull off "Smarty Pants" anymore.

Reverse Reverse Dummening

This post was supposed to be about how I've gotten so much smarter since I quit nursing. When I started to write it last week, it went like this:
***************************************************
Day 12 – I think the brain cells are starting to regenerate.
Thought process number 1: Hmm, what dessert should I make for the barbecue? A cake? Cupcakes? Cookies? What kind of cookies? If I said to Dave, “What kind of cookies should I make?” He would say, “Chocolate with peanut butter filling.” But what’s the point of that when I can’t eat… OMG! I quit nursing! I can eat peanut butter again! This story would make a lot more sense to a lot more people if I wasn’t the only mom on the face of the earth that had been told not to eat peanut butter while nursing. So, yeah, it’s been 18 months. (And you know what? Totally worth it, because Jack already has allergies, and I prefer not to have to deal with a peanut butter allergy if I can help it.) Anyway!!! It only took a week of not nursing for me to re-grow enough brain cells to remember that I can eat peanut butter. As for the dessert, I settled on cupcakes. And my cupcakes turned out like this:

Instead of like this.

So I think things are getting a little better every day.
***********************************************
But that was last week. Last week, I hadn't been to the grocery store 3 times in a 24 hour period. My most recent trip was to pick up my wallet and cell phone. The manager said, "Had you already canceled all your cards?" "Ummm. No, I didn't know my wallet was missing until you called me. From my phone."

It looks like it may take the dummening a little longer to recede than I had originally thought. Or else, it reversed briefly, only to strike again. On the bright side, the transition into full on dementia should be pretty smooth.

The Dummening Family Roundup

I'll start with a dummening story in which I am not the main character:

I was driving through the post office mail box area and the young lady in front of me had her car parked and she was standing outside of it studying each of the mailboxes for clues. After she noticed me, she sort of gave up and decided to go inside the post office for help. But on the way she passed my friendly face and turned to me for advice.

"Do you know if you can put letters to any zip code in there?"

"Yes, yes you can. Any zip code."

"Thanks!"

***Moving on to Luke ***

Luke has been getting a different Spiderman comic book every week for about 8 weeks running. Just today I said, "Wow, are they any other types of books at the library?" And he said, "I don't even want to read this one because Peter Parker has big earrings and looks like a girl." Well, Luke, that is because you checked out Spidergirl.

*** Dave ***

OK, Dave is practically perfect in every way, but he got Dora the Explorer yogurt at the grocery. Dora. The. Explorer. A six year old boy cannot be caught dead with Dora yogurt. Unless that boy is faced with the option of a yogurtless lunch. I told him just to say his Dad was a big Dora fan, and he accidentally switched the yogurt. Still, packing that lunch made for a rough morning.

***Ok - I saved the best for last ***

A loaf of bread, sweet potato french fries, and corn bread have all resulted in burns to my hand, fingers and hand again, respectively. I had to take the day off from baking yesterday just to preserve my delicate skin. I guess it isn't that funny that I can't take something out of the oven without burning myself, so I'll share the other dummening story.

I was bathing suit shopping on Sunday and I could mine that adventure for a weeks worth of stories, but I'll just pick the one. I was specifically looking for tankinis and nothing was fitting right. Then I tried on one that that seemed promising because it was a little tighter. Hmm, really tight. Wouldn't it be funny if I needed the Target changing room attendant to help me out of this thing? And by funny, I mean ohmygodiamstuckinthistankiniIcantgetitoff!!! And by tankini, I mean one piece. Hmm, I guess that explains why I couldn't find the matching bottoms.

Slowly, Slowly, Figuring Things Out

Yesterday was Wednesday, and I had to pry Jack off the bookshelf. From there he moved on to Luke's duffle bag.

(My thought process: Totally safe! He can drag it around, he can try on Luke's basketball shoes, he can look at the bottle of water! Minutes of entertainment.)

Minutes later, he was staggering across the living room with a nalgene bottle that was 2/3 full. Very heavy, the kind of thing that would really hurt when you drop it on your foot.

(Thought process: Intervene.)

Jack indicated that he wanted to drink some of the water. I unscrewed the cap. He pretended to drink. Then he screwed the cap back on. Then he unscrewed the cap. Wash, rinse, repeat.

(Thought process: Wow, I am just sitting on the floor with Baby Jack, playing and having a good time. What a sweetheart. I just love him. He could do this for hours. I should probably check my email. If he could do this for hours, could I just get some work done? No, he'll spill the water eventually. Could I get enough work done to make cleaning up 20 ounces of water and changing all his clothes worth it? He is so cute. Oh, let me hold it Jack. Be careful. Aww, adorable. Seriously, could I work for 5 minutes, or just throw some dishes in the dishwasher while he plays with this water bottle? Could I swoop in and catch it before the bottle spills? LIGHTBULB!!! I could pour the water out!)

I chance it and leave him with the bottle while I grab an empty one, change them out, pour out the water and give him the original bottle back.

(Thought process: Why. Did. It. Take. Me. So. Long. tofigurethisout?)

I used the remaining "Jack is busy playing with a nalgene bottle time" to put two dishes in the dishwasher. If only I had acted sooner, I could have maybe cleared off half the counter!

Free Day

I have a nasty cold, and upon my cold I lay the blame for what happened today.

Way back last week when I had the brilliant idea to go to the zoo with the boys on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the forecast was for 49 degrees. That seemed like perfect winter zoo weather. We'd dress warmly and check out the indoor exhibits when we were cold. So I made the announcement: We're going to the zoo. A few days ago, the forecast was for 60 + and I thought, "Well, the crowds will be worse, but not everyone gets MLK day off." At that point, I didn't know it was free day at the zoo. And then someone told me, but Luke already knew the plan, and how bad could free day really be? How bad? I'll let the google map from the car to the zoo speak for itself. (OK, instead of letting the map speak for itself, I'll add that it was 9/10 of a mile. We walked for at least 20 minutes from the car to the zoo. We had to stop and get a drink on the way.) Oh, and what I also didn't know until it was way too late, was that the zoo is right next to the park where the Martin Luther King Jr. rally and parade began.

So I guess only a crazy person would go to the zoo on free day, but I have to say, that even though it was insanely crowded, people were very polite and considerate. I didn't feel the need to be mean to anyone's kids and no one felt the need to tell me I was mean. So that was nice. And right when I started to feel the tiniest bit claustrophobic, Luke decided he wanted to leave.

Of course it was at least an hour and a half before we were back at the car, but we had a fun day.

More on Jack

More on Jack:
* Standing unassisted
* Climbing up stairs
* Constantly teething
* Learning to ride his little vehicle

From Zucchini

Moron Mommy:

* Pauses camera before catching baby

From Zucchini

Question and Answer

Question: What happens if you miss a few pieces when you put the bottles together?

Answer: Your baby spills so much milk on himself that he runs out of spare clothes and comes home from daycare in a purple ruffled shirt.

From Blog pix

Don't Call Me, I'll Call You

Seriously. My phone is broken.

Now I am trying to get all my cute pictures and videos off before it's too late.

Nature V. Nurture

Dave and I were discussing Nature vs. Nurture at dinner last night (probably in regards to our awesome parenting and how much it impacts our perfect children.) But with your biological children, does it matter what comes from your genes and what comes from your environment and actions? What's the diff? Who cares? And if something is not a genetic trait, but a learned behavior, does that mean it can be unlearned? Or relearned for the better?

I guess what I mean is, can people change?

The reason I ask is that Luke could not find his shoes this morning and it upset the delicate balance that allows us to get out of the house somewhere within an hour of on time without screaming, crying, or shaking our fists at the gods. Meetings were almost missed, bottles were forgotten, tears were shed. Luke's shoes were right by the front door. I have to feel a little sorry for the kid because he seems to have my tendency to lose things, combined with Dave's inability to look for and find things. Is the inability to look for and find things a genetic trait? Possibly on the y chromosome? Do I lose things because I need to scale back from ubertasking to mere multitasking?

This week I had to borrow Dave’s keys, mine were later found in a breast pump compartment. I went to physical therapy for my knee and couldn’t find my insurance card. I was sure it was on my desk, but it turned out to be in my wallet after all. It is time for a change. I don’t care if my very mitochondrial DNA insists that I lose things, I am going to try to keep track, and I am going to try to help Luke do the same. Wish me luck!

Milestone Miscellaneous

Since I am sure no one wants to hear the milk and bottle disaster from this morning, I am just going to skip over it. Have you ever smelled milk and thought maybe it's bad, but I should taste it just to be sure? Isn't that dumb?

In other news, I wanted to post this picture because it's what inspired me to write all about Jack's new milestones. But I forgot to include the picture, and the fact that he had his first bath in the real tub. Yea! And you can almost see his two new teeth here, which I also forgot to include in the milestone announcement. Speaking of milestones, we are rapidly approaching my 100th post. V. exciting. Also, it's almost the 19th of July, which I haven't quite turned into a holiday where people send me gifts, but I always get good wishes on that day. More on that later. So I was thinking of having a joint 19th of July, 100th post celebration, where I encourage people to post a comment and then I randomly pick a winner and send them a prize. The prize is to be determined, but I welcome suggestions. One very talented, funny, and famous blogger recently gave away 5 wii+wii sports to random commenters and she got 42000 comments. Nintendo hasn't offered me anything yet, so my prize would probably be something lying around the house that I don't want anymore. Or something I could send through the internets without having to do anything more strenuous than get my credit card out of my wallet. Assuming I can find my wallet and that my credit card is in there. Hopefully no one in my family will include in their comment that it takes me months to get to the post office. I only wish I had bought some kitschy trinkets in Hot Springs. Stay tuned and plan to comment on the 19th of July!

B is for Bowling

Most people already know this, but just to get everyone up to speed, I am sort of type A, and I used to be obsessed with my GPA. When I was in school, that is. I don't care about it now, obviously. Or maybe not so obviously since that is what I am writing about. But back to high school. I am not going to put any dates on in, but I can guarantee this: when I was a junior in high school, and our gym class was held at the local bowling alley, Rob Base was definitely playing on the radio. (Parenting Aside: We went through a long phase of counting to 3 to give Luke a chance to follow orders without getting a time out. Once I couldn't stop myself from following "1, 2, 3" with "get loose now." Luke cried and said, "' 'Cept I don't want to get loose." ANYWAY, I was not very good at bowling. And by "was" I mean, "as recently as two months ago, I took Luke bowling and got the bumpers for both of us, and he beat me." In high school I was even worse. In order to get an A in bowling you had to bowl 100. It quickly became apparent that I would not be bowling 100. What to do? Was I to get a B for the first time since grades were invented? A B? In bowling? Well, there were easy two options for getting an A. The first would be to cheat and give myself a score of 100. Aside from the moral and ethical dilemma of debasing myself by cheating at bowling, there is a slight problem that I have with arithmetic. Geometry? No problem! Algebra? Calculus? I love you! Arithmetic? Hmm, not so much. I am not sure that I had both the understanding of how to keep score and the ability to make the numbers add up to something resembling 101. In retrospect, it is entirely possible that I was bowling A caliber frames, but not adding up the score correctly. But based on my scores at forced, work-related team functions over the years, that's probably not the case. But I digress, I would never cheat, especially not at bowling. That left me with option 2: Bowl during my free time and bring in my score sheet for extra credit. Almost as bad as cheating, was having to bowl a terrible game in my free time and then turn the results in for extra credit. I have done many extra credit, brown nosing projects over the years, (I wrote a paper on the catalytic converter before I switched majors from engineering to the more employable field of botany) but I couldn't make myself be a big enough geek. Sure, my friends would have been happy to go bowling with me! Sure, I told my parents I was bowling half the time anyway! (Hi Mom and Dad!). But I had to draw the line somewhere. I had to take a stand and plan to enter my senior year without a 4.0 in order to relieve to pressure and survive. I didn't cheat, I didn't do extra credit, I got a B and it was the healthiest thing I could have done.The point of this story is that in my first two games of wii bowling, I bowled a 144 and a 177, beating everyone. Because I am awesome at wii bowling. Or everyone else is really bad. But probably because I am awesome. I stole the picture from here.

Wednesday Casual Picnic at the Park

We usually picnic on Wednesdays, and today is Wednesday. As usual, I tried to make things as complicated as possible. Hazel Miller was playing at the Bands on the Bricks, and I needed tomatoes for dinner tomorrow, so I figured, "Why not go to the farmers market, get some tomatoes, have a picnic and then watch a band?" And "why not take the kids there on the bus, and have Dave meet us there?" I packed the stroller, the diaper bag, a bag for the tomatoes, the sling, (so I could carry Jack while getting on the bus with Luke and the stroller and the diaper bag), and then I decided there was no way I could carry a picnic too. It's actually a small miracle that I was able to realize my limitations so clearly. Anywho, I drove to the daycare and we took the bus downtown. Dave met us there, I bought tomatoes, the best cherries ever, and a basil plant to replace my latest disappeared zucchini plant. I have officially given up on zucchini. You win, rodent! (Shaking fist at rodent!) Then we ate dinner, and listened to two songs before we headed home. Dave and Luke biked home and Jack and I took the bus. At first it was all I could do to distract Jack from playing with the wheels of the stroller. Then he noticed the leaves of the basil plant. Then it was all I could do to distract him from the leaves of the basil plant. Now, Jack was in the sling on my hip, and I was sort of holding the bag with the basil plant, and sort of holding the stroller. So it was a difficult balancing act to distract Jack from one with the other, just in time to keep him from eating either. Then he realized, "Hey, I can reach both of these!"

Speaking of how I like to make things complicated, I have friends who have the cutest picture of their soon to be 8 year old, when he was 6 months old. It was a naked baby on his tummy, on some sort of rug or something. Cute. So I thought, hey, Jack just had a bath, he is the cutest thing ever, I'm on vacation at a hotel, where a naked baby photo is less risky from a pee perspective, why not try to see what kind of adorable photo I can take?



Let's just say I haven't purchased a frame yet.

And now, to get that image out of your mind, here is Jack in his slip 'n slide debut:



Oh, and I sort of forgot to get off the bus at the daycare and rode it all the way home instead. So I guess I'll pick up the car tomorrow.

Dummening to the Nth Degree

I'll just present the dummening in list form.
1.) I forgot all the pump accessories on Tuesday.
2.) I borrowed a co-worker's car (since I had biked to work) to run home for the pump parts, but before I drove away I sat in the car for a full 3 minutes reminding myself how to drive a stick shift. (I could have made a whole post out of this one, but when I told the story to Dave he said I should just keep it to myself.)
3.) I wistfully remembered owning C3PO underoos, only to find out that my sister was the one with the lame underwear and I probably had nothing!
4.) After all the tornadoes, and even calling the daycare to make sure everyone was safe after their field trip, and reading about the devastation, and worrying about the people affected, I got on my bike to ride home and thought, "Ugh, it's so windy." Long pause. Oh yeah.
5.) Lastly, Day 6 of Jack on solid food - we went out to dinner and I didn't pack any food for him to eat. Poor little guy. He didn't seem to mind though.
6.) Just edited this post to correct my spelling of (w)hole.

We are camping this weekend so stay tuned for cute camping pictures, and to find out what we forgot to pack, etc.

Prospecting for Liquid Gold

I may be about to jinx myself into writers block, but events transpired today to assure me that I will not soon run out of material for this blog. Earlier today, my friend said, "i just picked up a piece of garbage flying around the yard that says our block party is saturday." And I said, "Can I pretend it happened to me? I don't have a blog post for tomorrow yet. " But then an exciting thing happened. Wine was delivered to me at work! I drunkenly joined a wine club in Napa 2 years ago to get 20% off all my purchases that day. The plan was to quit when I got home. Woo hoo, 20% off! Then I thought, why not just get one shipment and then cancel? So four times a year I get wine shipped to me at work (can't be shipped at home because an adult has to sign for it.) I always think, "Yea! wine! I'll plan a special meal and drink delicious wine with it! Then I make my usual weekly menu of pizza, spaghetti, tofu stir fry, chicken something, leftovers, burritos, and The Southern Sun. I did recently make risotto and had to use some good wine and it was soooo good. But mostly, I am accidentally building up a collection of wine by not canceling my wine club membership, not drinking the good wine because I never plan a good meal, and then buying Red Truck whenever it's on sale and drinking it with pizza.

ANYWAY, my wine arrived today, and I picked it up on the way back from the lactation room. I always mean to bring some sort of milk satchel, with which to conceal the expressed breast milk, but it's not that hard to conceal 3 ounces in the palm of your hand. Unless you are carrying a box of wine. So I picked up the wine, and laid the ziplock bag of milk across the top of the box and went on my merry way across the parking lot back to my office, contemplating the blood of life, and mothers milk. It was sunny, and I was smiling. I smiled at the VP in the suit when I walked in, and he even seemed about to smile back at me when I tripped and the bag of milk went flying and landed at his feet.

"Ahhhh!"

"Aaaah!"

That was the conversation we had instead. Very professional. I snatched up the milk and ran away. Stopped at my bosses office and had this conversation:

"I just tripped right in front of [VP] while carrying milk and a box of wine."
"I hope you saved the wine."
"I did save the wine, but the milk is more valuable!"
"Is it? You can always make more milk."

Fortunately the milk survived too. My dignity on the other hand? Not so much.

(Photo Credit to either Melanie or Jill who took this picture after we were bullied into a tour at Gundlach Bundschu)