New Lows In Sleep Deprivation

You know you've reached complete and utter exhaustion when you can't figure out how to operate the Diaper Dekor. For the first week or so after Milo's birth we shoved diapers into the mouth of the thing and then waited for it to do something magical, like seal up the diapers and spit them out like sausage links. Unfortunately we hadn't bought the diaper pail that does that. We'd bought one that looks all high tech and shit but doesn't do much at all.

I should probably have foreseen this moment a month ago when I bought the Diaper Dekor and discovered there was no plug for it. I had envisioned it being something more than, say, a garbage can, because it had the word 'diaper' in the name, after all, and come to think of it, it had a name in the first place. Normal garbage cans that don't do anything with your garbage don't have names.

And then there was that funky looking knob on the side of it that looked like it might trigger some sort of diaper sealing and removing process. But when I turned it nothing happened. Which was how I came to be on the Internet at 5 a.m. one morning trying to find directions for how to operate my diaper pail.

Turns out, the thing has a sharp blade-like object mounted on one side of the interior. You use the blade to cut off the plastic bag on the inside. Then -- here's the really high-tech part -- you tie a knot in the plastic bag and take out the dirty diapers. Almost like a real garbage can without a fancy name. I can't help but wonder if it would have taken me two weeks to figure this out if I were getting more than 3 hours of sleep a night.