Adventures in Portable Crapping

 
So, clearly I have been on an extended hiatus. At first I was planning to jump in and pretend as though nothing had happened, but I figured that would be silly and insulting to all three of my readers. Now, two of you know why I have been absent for so long, but for the one person out there who doesn't know...well, we adopted a child this year and frankly my last few months have been spent trying to integrate a two-year old girl into our house of crazy.

Yep. Please let that sink in. Two year old. Female. Into my house of boys.

So basically I have been drinking and crying for about 8 months.

Maybe you would think that would be the subject of my post: Seriously, I tried it...I adopted a kid. HA! I could write an entire BOOK about this experience. It might be titled, "Corky Poppins:A Tale of Wine Consumption brought on by Potty Training" or maybe "Zone Defense: How to Parent when you are Outnumbered". But I digress...

Once again, I return to my favorite subject. You know what it is, so please don't act all shocked and surprised. I am once again talking about the potty. Yes, I am still consumed by the toilet, but this time it is the portable version that attracts my attention.  Why, might you ask? Well, it appears that my adopted daughter, Little Miss Fancy Pants, has the bladder approximately the size of a baby fairy. I have never met a child who can hold it for 75 minutes if we are at the playground, but has to pee like Austin Powers after cryo-sleep once we are in the store for 5 minutes. Or in church. Or at her brother's baseball game. Or on the highway. I have never seen a child pee so much. Now, I am used to having boys who can  just drop trou and pee anywhere. But now I went and complicated things and decided to have a pretty princess, so I was forced to buy a portable crapper so my baby can pee whenever the mood strikes her.Here is what I bought: this. I basically bought this because it was inexpensive and I could fold it up and stash in away in a messenger bag. The last thing I needed was a free-standing potty sloshing around in the back of my Equinox. Knowing the sharp curves here in the woods it would only be a matter of time before that darn thing tipped over and the inside of my car would be awash in pee. Please, I have enough problems.

I love this potty, but what I don't love are the price of the special bags that "custom fit" this product.  A package of 10 bags is $5. That's 50 cents a bag. You can get all crazy and buy 30 for $12 which is 40 a bag, but you are still paying 40 cents for a bag of human waste. Think about that for a second. Also, considering how much my child goes to the bathroom, I would be going through a ton of those bags. Naturally, because I am curious and innovative (read: annoying and cheap) I figured there must be a way that I could fashion bags of my own. One reviewer of the product suggested grocery bags and paper towels, but that didn't seem to be just right.

Walking through Wal-Mart, on our way back from the bathroom, naturally, I strolled by the pet section and was struck with inspiration. People train puppies to pee on those pee pad thing-ys  all the time...why not just buy some of THOSE and put them in grocery bags? Those pads have to be super absorbent if one expects a puppy to use one so surely it could hold up to my child peeing on it. I bought a package, stopped in the bathroom AGAIN, and drove home.

I gathered my supplies. As you can see below:

I unfolded that puppy training pad and was totally shocked at how large it was.  Seriously this thing is huge! I think our entire family could crouch down to pee on a section of this thing. Check out how big it is:

I folded the pad in half and then cut it into thirds as shown below.  I then cut each third in half again so that I ended up with six sections.

I then used a very hi-tech method of applying two strips of packing tape to the short side of each section of the pee pad.

I pressed each section into a plastic grocery bag and voila! Custom-made pee bags! I admit that I danced around a little bit. Which made me so sad that I had a drink of wine. 

Here's the fun math: Those puppy pads come in packs of 14. Each one makes 6 bags. So you can make 84 bags with one package. At my local Wal-Mart, those puppy pads cost $7.50. Do the math, and that comes out to just about 9 cents a bag. Yes, you are still paying for a bag of human waste, but I would rather pay $7.50 for pee than $34. I love my kid, but there are limits. :)