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Thursday, July 21, 2011

life is full of poorly formed bad decisions that on occasion may involve poop.


First of all, I would like to apologize to anyone who was subjected to my last post. It was 20 paragraphs too long, full of rambles, and greatly lacking in conciseness with gaping maws of clever. I was incredibly hormonal that day, and nursing a secret, self-inflicted wound made worse by a 10 lb. bag of Lay's potato chips (the crinkly kind). I've deleted that inane insanity and let's all move on, shall we? (But I do maintain the government in in total cahoots with mass food production companies who exist to poison us so they can take over the world.) (Today, for instance, I tried thwarting them by switching to Baked Lay's.)

Hoo boy. I had quite the day yesterday. C is out of town on business in Savannah (and slurping up Uncle Bubba's seafood after business hours). And the only reason I am not slurping up Uncle Bubba's seafood right next to him is because he just had to go and fly down there, and I do not fly unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Like, there's a big ocean in my way. So I'm on my own--I have an agenda of things to accomplish before he gets back, and I can proudly announce I have crossed off 3 of these things (out of 10).

But I've also been unable to sleep well (I always have a hard time sleeping when he's gone), and I've been slightly hormonal, for about the last 3 days, yesterday being the worst. Yesterday was a day I wished to do nothing, but didn't have time to do nothing and ended up doing 2 of the 10 things I had to cross off my list which made me peevish and, quite frankly, reckless. I was personally reckless yesterday.

Part 1: GETTING POSTAL.

For instance--I mailed bills. But I was sluggish in getting them to my house's mailbox and so I had to drive them to the actual post office. Once there, I parked by the post office boxes, jumped out and threw them in. Some crazy lady parked behind me and just as I was getting in my car she decided she absolutely had to be in front of my car and needed to do that immediately. As entitled, crazy people are wont to do. Even though I was in her way. But who cares about pedestrians, right? Pedestrians = so inconvenient.

And thus, I was almost plowed down alive by a crazy woman with an inflated sense of self-importance who was driving a black Mercedes SUV.

Here's where the personally reckless part comes in: I flipped her off. Right there, where she totally could have confronted me in the parking lot and we probably would have ended up on the 5 o'clock news: CITIZENS GO POSTAL IN A PARKING LOT. Fortunately for both of us, she was just as confrontation-avoidant and passive aggressive as I am. She threw her mail into the mailboxes, angrily slammed back into her car, and cussed me out where I couldn't hear her. And I cussed her out right back in my car, where she couldn't hear me. Which is how you're supposed to do it (note to road ragers who don't do it right). And we went our separate ways.

Part 2: ADVENTURES IN POOPING.

Obviously, I wasn't going to cook last night due to lack of sleep, hormones, and after getting crazy at the United States Post Office, so I took Melissa to McDonald's, where she could ingest poisonous mass production food and I could hang out on my swank new smart phone like one of the other cool, not-paying-attention-to-their-kids-at-all/bad-parenting-role-model kids.

Except I decided not to go to our regular McDonald's (refer to last post for explanation) and braved stress-inducing rush hour traffic jams to hang out in what I hoped would be a friendlier area. Sadly, it was not to be.

I mean, it was friendly. This McDonald's is populated by much friendlier children. As long as you understood that you would be immediately ostracized if you were unable to conform to the herd's mentality. And I did say to myself as we passed our house: "Self, you should swing back and grab a diaper or a Pull-up for Melissa. You know you're just flirting with disaster." But as usual, I told my Gut Instinct to shut the hell up and we continued on our ill-fated way.

We had an enjoyable dinner of GMO fries and ammonia-cleaned cheeseburgers, all washed down with high fructose corn syrup apple juice and aspartme-laden soda. The other children there were well-behaved and their moms and dads were all lost in thought on their smart phones, checking email and facebook and other very, very important things.

And then Melissa jumped down to run to the Playland.

"Do you have to go potty?" I asked before she left. Nope, she said confidently. Here, my Gut Instinct said: Make her go. And again, I told my Gut Instinct to zip it. She'd be fine. She does fine for her teachers. Why not me?

And all seemed so right with the world--the birds sang, the sun smiled down, and the crazy fellow citizen at the Post Office seemed like a big, weird anomaly; a crackpot blip to my day: because immediately, two nice little girls grabbed Melissa and welcomed her into their big girl, potty trained world. They all told each other their names. They giggled, they chased each other, they helped Melissa climb up way too high. They played for a good 10 minutes like this. Ten, glorious minutes of friendly acceptance. Melissa was part of the gang, and so was I.

Because just a few days ago, Most Awesome Husband on Planet Earth gave me a smart phone as an early anniversary present and so: Finally! I could be part of the high-tech, savvy swank mom crowd: my sweet little girl hanging with her new buds on the germ-infested Mickey D's playground while I conducted worldly, important business like looking for more free apps to eat up my phone's memory.

And then, suddenly, one of Melissa's new friends was staring up into my face.

"Hi," she said.

"Hey!" I said. "How are you?"

"Um, your little girl just peed everywhere. And she smells bad. I mean, she really stinks."

Uh oh.

After 10 minutes of extracting Melissa from the depths of the Playland--like a cat, she'd climbed a tree all the way to the top and then realized she was terrified of heights--I started to pack up to leave. So were all the other parents, I noticed. I fuzzily wondered why were they all packing up. I mean, yo. They let their kids play on salmonella-infested Playland equipment, but someone pees a little and suddenly it's time to jump ship? Urine is totally sterile, people.

But no way was Melissa jumping ship without a fight:

"No, Mommy!" she cried. "I have to poop!"

Yet it smelled like she already had. This was not going to pretty.

So I yanked her into the small kids' bathroom (which I swear hasn't been cleaned since this McDonald's opened...15? 20? years ago, who knows) and thanked the Universe for having the presence of mind to encourage me to bring in her backpack, which had a change of clothes in it. Since I hadn't listened to the Universe's suggestion about the Pull ups and all.

And then I pulled down her underpants.

A huge wad of poo the size of my head oozed out past her legs, onto her feet, and plopped itself on the floor. Poop then proceeded to fling itself onto the rest of her clothes, her back, her tummy, and all over my hands.

I can tell you no more of the story than that. It's currently being optioned by Hollywood for a slapstick horror movie of the most disgusting kind and my lawyers are all busy working out the financial details.

I will tell you that I was able to clean up their bathroom for them, and I'm really impressed with myself about this: There was not one single bit of poop evidence in sight by the time Melissa and I exited, though I am fervently hoping (a) someone eventually comes in and at least mops down the floor and gives the sink a good wiping down with some type of bleach product (since I had to stand Melissa in it for an impromptu McDonald's mini-bath for her lower extremities) and/or (b) no kid drops a french fry in there and eats it.

And I will tell you that I as became increasingly frustrated with each passing minute dealing with massive amounts of poop: ("How the ay-chee-ell does this much poop come out of one little body??!!") ("Melissa! Why? I asked you 10 times if you had to go and you told Mommy no. PLEASE don't tell Mommy no when you have to go!") ("*&^%$#@! Do these people NEVER refill their toilet paper bins?? How the hell do you have a bathroom for little kids with only half a roll of toilet paper??") ("*(&^%%$$#@! (*&^%$#@! Are you )(**&^% KIDDING me?? The *&^%$#@ paper towel dispenser is broken!") ("Oh my god. Oh my god. Melissa. HUN-ee. There is $#&t everywhere. Literally. $H&t everywhere.") ("Oh my god, WHY? Why did this have to happen to US??") As I became increasingly frustrated, I began to use words in front of my child no one should ever use in front of a child going through the mimicking, parroting stage of language development. And I am almost 100% certain the other parents heard me.

Which is why I'm almost 100% certain that, when we exited, (mostly) poop-free, no one was there.

Here's what I think happened: As soon as word got out someone had peed on the jungle gym and a poop explosion was being dealt with in the bathroom, they fled. They fled like a stampeding herd of wildebeests. I felt judged and, worse, I felt abandoned. Every single one of those m*&^%$#ers has been through the toilet training phase. All humans deal with it. We've all crapped our pants at various points in our lives and had someone (or ourselves, in certain dire circumstances) ask us over and over, in really exasperated voices, WHY didn't we SAY something SOONER?? And if you've had a kid then you've definitely had someone else's stinky crap from their inner bowels all over your hands (and your walls and your brand new rug) at some point.

And I'm so totally ticked at those guys. This was a chance for us all to bond, to acknowledge the nuttiness that is Parenting 101. A chance to offer a kind word to a frazzled, harried mom who was almost run over by a crazy woman in an SUV Mercedes two hours earlier at the post office. But oh no. Let's just click off our facebooks for iPhones, grab our kids, and high tail it out of Dodge before somebody gets a pink eye. Traitors.

Anyway. I couldn't reach where she'd peed, so I told a McDonald's worker who reacted like...well, he actually didn't react. Apparently, this happens quite a bit.

And I'm ticked at myself. Man! If only Melissa had been with me when the SUV Mercedes lady had tried to run me down. We left McDonald's with poop clinging to her butt--that would have made an excellent weapon. (And a far juicier 5 o'clock news story.)

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