Trading Post

Alright, so i had two Chapter 22s.... now fixed, so this is actually Chapter 24. That was a long 24 hours before Amanda's house, eh? So I made the chapter nearly double the usual length instead!! Aren't I just a flippin' wild card. Again, I'm a busy dude. A whole life and everything. And I was plotting this out in my head for days. I actually have a rough chapter with the "give the people what the want" version, but I had always planned on not going that direction because I hadn't introduced other people into the story up until this point, and who would Amanda's friends be? Some kind of cucumber club?! So it wouldn't have made enough sense.  In an alternate universe, an alternate thread, I may post that part in the future if its good enough... just as a standalone.. i could make it like a daydream, but Jacob wasn't going to fall asleep in that mess diaper, was he?? Anyways, for now, we're sticking with my weird way of doing things, so do your weirdo fappy thing you weirdo fappos.   Chapter 24 – Amanda’s House The driveway was quiet. That was the first strange thing. Jacob sat belted into his own cooling mess and stared through the windshield at Amanda's porch — the cream-colored railings, the hanging basket of purple petunias swaying in the late-morning breeze, the welcome mat with a rooster painted on it — and his heart was slamming against his ribs like it owed the room money. The diaper under him had gone from warm to tepid to clammy, the heavy load in the seat of it shifting with every tiny movement, pressing against him in ways he couldn't escape because he was, fundamentally, sitting in it. He'd been sitting in it for ten minutes. The mess had flattened and spread with every bump in the road, every turn Lana took, molding itself to him, and now it was simply part of him — a warm, heavy, smelly fact. He shifted his weight experimentally, left cheek to right, and the loaded padding squelched audibly, the mess migrating, and he froze mid-shift with his hip half-raised, breathing through his nose in short, shallow bursts. *I don't think I'm done. Oh God, I don't think I'm done. There's more, it's still — it's still right there, waiting, and I can't — if I push even a little—* The pressure had retreated, but it hadn't left. It had merely backed up, regrouped, settled into a low, stubborn heaviness in his lower belly that made itself known every time he clenched, which was constantly, which was pointless, because clenching around a mess he'd already made was like closing the barn door with the horse standing behind him in the yard. His whole bottom half felt swollen and foreign. The shortalls cradled the bulge, the denim pulled taut across the expanded seat of his diaper, and when he'd dared a glance down at himself, the rounded swell of and outline of the shortalls looked like he was smuggling a small melon. Or two, knowing how swollen he looked from behind. And the smell. The smell was the thing that had stopped being deniable somewhere around the fourth red light. It had crept up gradually — earthy, dense, unmistakable — and now it filled the backseat in layers, wafting up around him every time the wind through the cracked window stuttered. He could smell himself. He smelled like a nursery after a bad morning, and there was no window position, no air freshener, no amount of squinting his eyes shut that would change the fact that he was about to walk into Amanda's house trailing that smell behind him like a fog bank. Lana turned all the way around in her seat, sunglasses pushed up into her hair, and looked at him — looked down at the bulging seat of his shortalls, then up at his face — and her expression did something complicated. Her nose wrinkled faintly, an involuntary little twitch she smoothed away almost instantly, and Jacob watched her decide, visibly, in real time, to ignore it. *No going back now,* Lana thought, taking in the smell of swollen diaper, the tear tracks dried stiff on his cheeks, the pacifier bobbing. *He's sitting in a full poopy diaper in my car and we are getting out at Amanda's front door. Whatever embarrassment was left to protect, it left the building three exits ago. The only way through this is forward, and the only way forward is through Amanda's front door. Both of us. Together. Well — most of it's on him.* "Let's go, poopy-pants," she announced. She unbuckled herself, got out, rounded the hood in that unhurried hip-swinging walk of hers, and opened his door. Sunlight flooded in. The seatbelt unclacked under her thumb — again, her thumb, her click, because his hands had stayed frozen in his lap like a toddler waiting for the ride to end — and the door swung wide, and the outside world came in: cut grass, warm asphalt, the distant churn of a neighbor's sprinkler. "Out you come, sweetheart. Carefully. We don't want any squishes escaping." She said the last word with an air-quote curl of her fingers and a bright little smile. Jacob swung his legs out. The diaper's loaded seat sagged heavily as his feet hit the driveway, the mess shifting downward and outward, and he stood up in increments, knees bent, waddling a half-step clear of the car like a man walking on eggs. Every movement redistributed the warmth. Standing made it worse — gravity's opinion of his situation was immediate and total. The shortalls' bib rode up his chest as he straightened. The crotch buttons strained. Lana reached into the backseat, swung the diaper bag over her shoulder. *She's going to smell it the second I get near her. Amanda's going to smell me. I'm going to walk up to her front door smelling like — like a — and she's going to know, she's going to know it wasn't even an accident really, I just — in the car — with her driving — like it was normal—* "Come along." Lana took his hand — palm to palm, fingers laced — and shut the car door, and the smell stayed with him and wrapped around him. She, for her part, breathed evenly through her mouth and kept her expression set to pleasant, and only the faint flaring of her nostrils betrayed anything at all. They crossed the driveway. The porch steps came up — three of them, wooden, with a gentle creak on the second one — and Jacob climbed them with the slow, wide-stanced deliberateness of a man defusing something, because each step up compressed the diaper's seat and he could feel the mess press and flatten and resettle with a soft, intimate *sqqqh* that he was certain was audible, was probably echoing, was possibly being recorded. Lana pressed the doorbell. Jacob heard the chime sound somewhere deep in the house — *ding-dong*, a two-note chime, cheerful and bright and awful. Footsteps. Quick ones. Almost skipping. The door swung open, and there was Amanda. She looked — Jacob's brain fumbled for a descriptor and landed, helplessly, on ‘put together’. She wore a white satin blouse, unbuttoned one clasp further than any neighbor-lady blouse had a right to be, the fabric draping and catching the porch light, gauzy enough at the shoulders to hint at the straps beneath. Her dark hair came down in loose, glossy waves over her shoulders, and large gold hoop earrings swung at her jawline, glinting when she moved her head. Below, blue jeggings — tight, painted-on tight — hugged her from waist to ankle. Jacob, out of pure self-protective reflex, had dropped his gaze the moment the door opened, which meant the first thing he actually saw of Amanda was her legs, and the jeggings did nothing to hide the soft jiggle of her thighs as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, the faux denim flexing over the swell of calf and the fuller give above the knee. He snapped his eyes to the doormat. The rooster on it stared back. "OH my *goodness*—" Amanda's voice came out in a rush of pure, unrestrained delight, and she pressed both hands to her chest, hoops swinging, and took a step back to drink in the full picture — the shortalls, the bulging crotch and seat, the pacifier with its blue shield bobbing between his lips, the tear-swollen eyes pointed at her doormat. "LOOK at you!" she cried. "Oh my gosh, oh my *goodness gracious*, Lana, look at him! Look at that little *outfit*! Those shortalls! Is he — he's sucking a *pacifier*, Lana, he's sucking on a pacifier!" Her voice climbed into a register that could have summoned dogs from three streets over, warbling and sing-songy and drenched in crooning delight. "Well *hello* there, little one! Hi! Hi, sweetie! Aww, what's the matter, huh? Why are we being such a shy little guy? Big brown eyes down at the floor like that — aww, somebody's embarrassed, isn't he? Yes he is! Yes he *is*!" Jacob's face went from red to a color usually reserved for stop signs and sunsets. She hadn't even looked away. She was staring, drinking him in with her hand pressed to her collarbone, and every syllable out of her mouth landed on him like a flick to the ear — small, precise, impossible to block. Amanda reached out and took his chin gently between thumb and forefinger, tilting his face up. He let her. He didn't decide to let her; his chin simply went where it was guided, the way it always did with Lana, and the realization that his face obeyed Amanda now too was its own small apocalypse. Lana gave Amanda a tell-all smile to carry on doing what she pleased, once again amused at Jacob’s silly squirms of veiled defiance crumbling and submitting to the pressure of the inevitable. "Aren't you just the sweetest thing," she cooed, and then pinched his cheek — lightly, twice, *pinch-pinch* — the way you'd fuss over a toddler at a family reunion. "Don't be shy, cutie-pie! It's just Auntie Amanda! Ooh, and look at these little buckles — and *oh my word*, is that a padded little bottom I see? It is! It sure is!" *She can't — she hasn't — not yet — the smell, she's so close, she's going to—* Jacob's eyes cut to Lana in silent, screaming appeal. Lana only smiled, serene as a Sunday. "How was your morning?" Amanda asked — but the question went past him, aimed at Lana, spoken over his head in the bright, inclusive patter adults use when the baby in the room isn't expected to contribute. "Did somebody have a good morning? Hmm? Did we have a good Mommy-and-baby morning?" "Oh, it was a great Mommy-and-baby morning," Lana said breezy and fond, giving his hand a little swing. "The usual hiccups. A little fussing. Some tears in the parking lot — but you know, that's just what babies do." "Awwww." Amanda's whole face crumpled into sympathetic sweetness, and she reached out and patted the bib of his shortalls twice, right over his sternum. "Tears in the parking lot! Oh, sweet boy. Well, come in, come in — I want to hear everything. Every last little detail. Coffee's on!" *She said tears. She told her about the tears in the parking lot. Out loud. In front of me. Like a weather report.* They stepped inside. Jacob shuffled over the threshold, and the door swung shut behind them, and the cool of the house closed around them — a clean, sweet, powdery cool. Amanda led them down the hallway, her jeggings swishing with each step, a momentary reprieve from peril to admire the shapely curves of her hips with each sway seeming purposeful. The subtle chime and clatter of the multiple earring hoops in each ear swinging, then chattering over her shoulder at Lana. "I still can't believe you actually found him shortalls. Denim shortalls — just brilliant." Jacob waddled behind them, and each shuffle-step came with a soft *sqqqh* from the seat of his diaper that he prayed was covered by their voices and knew wasn't. The hallway smelled like vanilla and — something else. Something soft and powdery and familiar that he couldn't place at first, and then could, and then wished he couldn't. Lana glanced around as they walked, taking in the crown molding, the fresh-painted wainscoting, the styled console table with its arranged vase and art books. "Your house looks immaculate as always," she said. "Honestly. It looks like a catalog." "Oh — well." Amanda waved a hand, dismissive and pleased at once, and there was something folded inside her smile. "Being a house stager and interior decorator has its, well, you know, advantages." *That was weird,* Jacob thought, sucking harder on the pacifier, eyes down on the backs of Amanda's heels. *That was — she said that weird. Stager. Interior decorator.* They passed through the archway into the living room and Jacob stopped walking. The room had been prepared. A large playpen — a genuinely large one, white mesh and pastel-blue rails — stood assembled in the middle of the carpet like it had always lived there. Inside it: stuffed animals stacked in a plush colony, a soft blocks set, an activity center, baby blankets folded into neat squares. More toys migrated out across the floor — a push walker, a ring stacker, board books splayed open on their glossy pages. A baby blanket was draped over the arm of the couch, and on the coffee table, arranged in a neat little grid: two mugs of coffee, steam still rising, and — Jacob's eyes snagged and refused to move — four baby bottles, filled to the brim with milk, white and patient, sitting in a row like soldiers at roll call. Lana surveyed it all and nodded slowly, warmly. "Everything looks great, Amanda." "Oh, thank you!" Amanda beamed, hands on her hips. Then she smirked, tapping one mug. "Figured we'd start with coffee — we texted pretty late last night, girlfriend." She tipped her head toward Jacob, dropping back into the cooing register. "And somebody is going to have his baba soon, isn't he? Yes he is! Look at those big eyes! He can't stop staring at the bottles!" Jacob's eyes were, in fact, locked on the bottles. He wrenched them away and stared at the playpen instead, which was not better. Lana started gently rubbing the swell of his back and gave him a pitiful smile. "Mommy, please — " he started to ask around the pacifier, the words coming out mangled and mush-mouthed, but Amanda breezed on. "We've got a few hours before Mark's done with golf and picks up Tommy from his grandparents'. Plenty of time!" The whole room smelled like baby powder. Not faintly — strongly, sweetly, an entire nursery's worth of it, and Amanda caught him nostril-flaring and laughed. "Oh — you noticed! I found the baby powder plug-in air fresheners. You know I'm obsessed. Doesn't it just make everything feel so *snugly*? So cozy? Come here, sweetheart, come on. There's a good boy — that's a good little guy — come see your playpen—" She crossed to the playpen and patted the top rail, crooning, extending her other hand toward him in the universal come-here gesture reserved for toddlers and golden retrievers. Jacob did not move. He stood in the middle of the living room in his loaded shortalls, and his body, overloaded, produced its most eloquent protest available: he squirmed. A full-body, shoulder-hunching, hip-shifting squirm, the loaded seat of his diaper shifting with him, and both women's eyes tracked the movement with professional interest. And then Amanda stopped mid-croon. Her head tilted. Her nose twitched. Her eyebrows went up. "Uh oh," she said, drawing the words out with slow, dawning, delighted comprehension, one hand rising to her chest. "Uh oh! Oh, sweetie. I think — I think baby poopied his diaper." "I'm sorry, I should have mentioned it right away," Lana said, with a small, rueful shake of her head, entirely unbothered, entirely conversational, the way you'd apologize for a parking ticket. "He pooped in the backseat. On the way over. A few minutes before we pulled in." "He pooped in the car?" Amanda's voice pitched up, and the delight in it was naked and enormous. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, eyes shining, bouncing once on her toes — the jeggings flexing, the hoops swinging. "In his little seat? Oh my gosh. Oh you poor, poor little poopy baby—" The whimper started low in Jacob's throat before he could stop it. It built — a thin, keening *hnnnnnn* around the pacifier, his fists curling at his sides, his whole face crumpling — and his eyes went hot and blurry and he realized, with distant horror, that he was going to cry again, in Amanda's living room, before he'd said five words. He hadn't barely said a word. That was the thing. Since the porch he had contributed nothing to the conversation except squirming, because there was no conversation for him to contribute to — he was being discussed, shown off, narrated, like the guest of honor at a party thrown by people who'd decided what kind of guest he was before he arrived. "Shhh, shh, oh honey—" Amanda was at his side instantly, all warm hands and wobbling sweet voice, patting his back. "It's okay! Everybody poops, sweetheart! Auntie Amanda is not judging — well —" a giggle escaped her, then another, and she gave the bulging seat of his shortalls a soft, investigative pat, and the mess shifted under her palm, and Jacob made a sound like a punctured balloon — "—okay, I'm judging a little, because that is a serious poopy diaper, mister. Somebody really filled his pants this morning, didn't he? Didn't heee?" *I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home—* The thought had no force behind it. He was already home — his house was two doors down — and it had made no difference at all. "Somebody needs a change," Lana observed. "Somebody really needs a change." Amanda's eyes were bright, and she straightened up, clapping her hands once. "Well! I have been looking forward to this, I am not even going to pretend. Do you know how long it's been since I changed a poopy diaper? Tommy's been potty trained for — well." She waved her own sentence away. "I am happy to help. Happy to! You take the poor poopy baby upstairs, I'll grab the wipes warmer—" "You don't have to—" Lana began. "I want to," Amanda insisted, already moving. "You are not taking all the fun. Come on, stinky. Come on, poopy-bum." And she took his other hand. Both of them. One on each side. Jacob was steered out of the living room like a child between two mothers at a family picnic, waddling, sniffling, pacifier bobbing, the mess in his diaper announcing every step. The stairs groaned under three sets of feet, Jacob waddling at the rear with the loaded diaper sagging between his thighs, every step producing a soft, sickening squelch that Amanda's hallway absorbed without judgment. The carpet up here was cream, plush, and it swallowed the crinkle of his shortalls the way everything in this house seemed to swallow his dignity — gently, completely. The air smelled even more so of baby powder and vanilla, that sweet chemical warmth that department stores pump through the infant section. The first door at the top of the stairs stopped him cold. Wooden baby blocks glued along the middle of the door spelled out **TOMMY'S NURSERY** in pastel primary colors, each letter hand-painted with little flourishes, clouds, diaper pins, a smiling cartoon duck beside the Y. Jacob's eyes went to it without meaning to, his pacifier bobbing once against his lips, and Amanda caught the glance immediately. Amanda sighs, her hand fluttering to her chest. "Oh, sweetie, yeah — can you believe it? This isn't even going to be Tommy's room anymore. He's moving to his big boy room today. My baby." Her voice gets that sing-songy wobble of a mother on the edge of a sentimental tangent. "It feels like just yesterday I was painting those blocks." "Tommy's growing up," Lana says, her tone carrying that same calm, measured approval she uses when Jacob finally stops fussing about his bottle. "And you got his new room done so quickly. I'm impressed." "Aww, well — you know me, I've got sooo much stuff in that storage unit, it's all just up here." Amanda taps her temple with one manicured finger, her nails painted a pale pastel pink that contrasts the blue nursery theme awaiting them. "It was about four hours or so, total. I just love staging and making nurseries feel cozy, you know? Extra cute. It's kind of my thing - but I really want to show Jacob what Tommy’s new room looks like first." Jacob stands frozen, binky stilled, the mess in his diaper pressing cold and mushy against him. "But Mommy," he whines around the pacifier, the words coming out slurred and wet, "my diaper!" Amanda bursts out laughing — a bright, genuine belly laugh, one hand slapping her thigh. "Oh my god, THAT'S his first sentence of the whole day? 'My diaper!' Baby, your diaper can wait two more minutes, I promise it's not going anywhere — well, neither are you, so." She winks at Lana. "We actually have a little surprise for you, Jakey," Lana adds, and there's something cryptic in the curve of her smile, something that makes Jacob's stomach drop the way it does when a car crests a hill too fast. "It was of course unanimous when I talked to them," Amanda says, leading them down the hall, her heels clicking softly on the hardwood strip between the carpeted bedrooms. "I talked to Mark when I got home last night, and he thought I was drunk and being ridiculous, but he realized I wasn't." The arrive at the room down the hall and Lana chuckles, "Well, he was right about everything then." and Amanda laughs. "Then Tommy this morning, I thought it might not be easy, but honestly? Tommy seems pretty excited about his next step to being a big boy." She glances back over her shoulder at Jacob, at the bulging denim shortalls, at the drool gathering at the corner of his mouth behind the pacifier. "Kinda the exact opposite of you, huh, baby? Tommy's moving up while you're moving back into diapers. Funny how things work out." Lana teases. "I'm sad my baby boy is growing up so fast," she continues, sighing again — but then her face brightens, and she beams down at Jacob with a warmth that terrifies him more than anything else in this hallway. "But honestly? I'm so thankful for you helping out with all this." Jacob blinks. His brow furrows. Helping out? With what? He's been sobbing in mall parking lots and soiling himself in his diapers; he hasn't helped anyone with anything since he can remember. Amanda reaches for the second door and pushes it open. "Ta-daaa!" The room is bright, sunlight streaming through half-open blinds. A bed with a plain oak frame. A computer desk. A dresser. He is horrified. *That's... that's my dresser. The sticker on the corner — I put that sticker there when I moved in. That's my computer desk. My chair. My—* "That's—" he manages around the binky, his voice cracking into a high, thin register. "Those are— Mommy — Lana, those are MY things!" "When Amanda saw you the other day," Lana says smoothly, stepping into the room and running her fingers along the edge of Jacob's old desk like she's appraising it. "It confirmed her suspicions that you were back in diapers. Of course, even she was surprised by just how far back you'd gone — back to being a baby, fully." "We talked last night," Amanda picks up, unable to suppress her grin, bouncing slightly on her heels like a teenager sharing gossip, "about how Tommy's growing up so fast, and how you've been growing down so fast, and we figured — why not save a bit of money with a little trade? You know? One boy's moving up, one boy's moving down." She shrugs with both hands, palms up, the universal gesture of what-can-you-do. "I've got so many items in my storage unit, and I mean, I do this professionally — I stage houses. I had this convertible crib in there, one of the largest ones I could find, made for staging big rooms with high ceilings. And I just — I love making nurseries feel super cozy and extra cute." *Trade. Trade. They traded my furniture. My whole — my whole room. For a—* Jacob's knees give out. He goes down hard onto Amanda's plush cream carpet, the impact sending a warm shockwave through the mess packed against his bottom, and then the dam breaks completely. He's crying before he can even register the decision to cry — huge, heaving sobs that hyperventilate his chest into a fluttering panic, his breath coming in short stuttered gasps around the pacifier, "hhh— hhh— hoooooo," his whole body wracked with the effort of it. This isn't the calculated resistance he's been trying to manage. This is something older, something pre-verbal, a tantrum that makes the meltdown in front of Lana last night look like a warm-up act. "Aww, baby, baby, shhh," Amanda coos, dropping down beside him, her hands hovering near his heaving shoulders. "Oh, sweetheart, don't cry — well, too late for that, huh?" Lana crouches on his other side, and Jacob flails an arm at her, batting weakly, pathetically, the gesture carrying all the force of a kitten swatting at string. "Nuh — no — hoo—" he sobs, thrashing onto his side, and the movement does exactly what thrashing always does now: the load in his diaper shifts, mushing wide across his bottom, spreading in ways that make his skin crawl and his face burn and his crying climb even higher. His movements wafting the waves of the stench of his diaper deeper into everyone’s nostrils along with the baby-fresh scent as the room started to smell like a diaper pail. He registers none of it. He is pure feeling now, pure helpless outrage, his fists pounding the carpet in soft drumrolls. *It's not fair, it's not FAIR, my desk, my bed, they gave it AWAY, I didn't say they could, I didn't—* Amanda is in mild shock at the display — her eyebrows up, glancing at Lana with a look that says ‘is he always like this?’ — but Lana is calm as ever, unhurried, rising to her feet and stepping around his flailing legs. Jacob crawls toward the dresser on his hands and knees, the shortalls riding up, diaper hanging heavy and obscene beneath him, and yanks open the bottom drawer with a shriek of wood. Tommy's clothes. Tiny t-shirts, little jeans with elastic waistbands, folded in neat rows. He yanks open another. Pull-ups. Stacks of them, printed with rocket ships and dinosaurs, training pants for a boy on his way up and out. *He gets everything, they took my room and gave him my room and I get—* Jacob grabs a fistful of the pull-ups and hurls them to the floor, then another fistful, scattering them across the carpet, his pacifier flying from his mouth mid-wail. "WWAAAAAAAH — I — I don't — hoooooo—" Lana stoops, collects each pull-up with unhurried, almost tender movements, and refolds them one at a time back into the drawer before turning to face him. "Sweetie," she says, crouching to his level, one hand smoothing his damp hair back from his forehead with infuriating gentleness, "you aren't even close to being ready for these yet." "NNNNYOOOOOOO—" Jacob's whine comes out wild, animal-like, and he hauls himself up to standing and jumps — actually jumps, up and down, in place, his fists balled at his sides, the loaded diaper bouncing and squelching with every hop, the shortall straps jingling. It is, objectively, the single most infantile tantrum he has ever thrown, and it happens without a single conscious thought on his part. Then hands close around both his arms — Lana on his left, Amanda on his right — and steer him toward the door. His expression changes mid-jump. The tantrum stalls, and something like clarity floods his face: the hallway ahead, the door with the baby blocks, the direction they're moving. *No, not in there, not that room, I don't want to see it, I already know, I don't want to SEE—* "Nu — no — Mommy — please—" he babbles, his voice wrecked from crying, shaking his arms back and forth in a weak, fluttering attempt to break their grip. He could pull free. Some distant part of him knows he's strong enough. But that part is buried under layers of regression, under weeks of conditioning, under the simple basic certainty that you don't fight Mommy, and so he shakes and sobs and lets himself be walked down the hall like a toddler being led to time-out, his feet dragging, hiccups bursting out of him in staccato “hic — hic — hiiiic’up.” Amanda shoulders open the nursery door, and Jacob's feet stop working entirely. *Oh. Oh no.* It's the most elaborate baby boy's nursery he has ever seen. Pastel blue washes over every surface — the walls a soft powder blue, the trim and wainscoting a clean glossy white, accents of pale buttery yellow in the curtains, the rug, the little rocking chair in the corner. Wallpaper lines the ceiling in a border: Looney Tunes characters as babies — Baby Bugs, Baby Daffy, Baby Taz, all of them grinning down at him in pastel chubby-cheeked innocence. Stuffed animals crowd a shelf and spill from a wicker basket by the glider: an elephant, a giraffe with a chewed ear, a bear nearly half the size of Jacob. The changing table along the far wall holds everything imaginable — stacks of thick diapers with cartoon prints, a similar stack of wipes, bottles of powder and rash cream lined up in a neat little row, a baby monitor, a box of pacifiers. And centered along the wall beneath the window, catching the afternoon light through gauzy white curtains: the crib. White, enormous, high-sided, with a mobile of clouds and stars dangling over an empty, waiting mattress. The room smells like powder and warm vanilla and clean cotton, the wipe warmer adding a faint sweetness to the air, and it all registers in one overwhelming, suffocating wave— —but it’s his bowels answer before his brain can. The urge hits like a fist. Jacob's eyes go wide, his whole body locks, and there's nothing he can do, no muscle left in him trained for holding, and it all just rushes out — hot, mushy, an enormous final push that floods the back of his already-loaded diaper, filling it to a heaviness he's never felt before, the seat of it ballooning outward against the straining denim shortalls. He pushes without meaning to, his face crumpling into that unmistakable concentrated grimace, his knees bending slightly, his hands finding his thighs — the universal posture of a baby filling his pants — and the girls release his arms and simply stand there, watching. "Uh oh," Amanda giggles, covering her mouth with both hands. "Somebody's going poo-poo!" "Ohhh, there it is," Lana says, and there's open amusement in her voice now, warm and merciless, her arms folding across her chest as she watches her baby boy helplessly finish himself off. "Right in the middle of the nursery. Didn't even ask Mommy. Just went right into his diaper." Lana thought *And he didn't even notice he squatted. There's nothing left in there to save.* "Poopy pants strikes again," Amanda laughs, fanning her nose theatrically. "Oh honey, that is a FULL diaper. You were right about all of this, Lana — this is exactly where he belongs." Jacob stands there, panting softly, eyes glazed at the crib, at the mobile, at the baby-block wallpaper, the freshest mess still spreading warm against his bottom, tears drying in shiny tracks down his cheeks, binky-less mouth hanging open. Lana crosses the room to the changing table, unhooks a strap on her diaper bag, and pats the padded vinyl surface twice with an open palm. "Well, baby," she says mockingly, her smile spreading slow and certain as she looks from the crib to the changing table to him, “Right where you belong, baby — and it's time for your diaper change."

Not sure if the sports cars, or the lifted Pickups or SUVs I would need an elevator to get into bother me more.

People will always judge what they don’t understand, but please don’t let that get you down. You know what you live with every day, and just because others can’t see it doesn’t make your struggles any less real. Keep your head up and remember, you are stronger than the opinions of people who don’t know your story. 

I had triple bypass and an artificial Aortic valve surgery on July 30. I'm currently wearing a Life Vest. I have the leads needed for an ICD, but the were snipped off at the skin.

This is hilarious 😂