One of the best things about having a blog, I’ve recently discovered, is that when awful/disgusting/frustrating/annoying things happen to me (almost daily), I have an appropriate outlet in which to express myself. Writing about these events is fantabulous therapy and so much less damaging than kicking the dog (or husband) or screaming at the babies. Blogs are good things. I don’t care what Sarah Palin says. If she spent less time fretting about blogs and more time reading things like newspapers and books, maybe she wouldn’t be such a laughingstock. But I digress. Back to me me me and why I blog…
Take yesterday for instance.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
This is the barely audible sound I heard as I was crouched on my office floor sorting through six months of medical records and bills that I had been avoiding. I had just gotten Bucket Head down for his nap and hoped I would have (kinehora) about two hours of uninterrupted time to knock off this dreaded task. I was halfway through writing out a check for a delinquent bill when my spider senses started to tingle. Thank God I didn’t have any music going or I never would have heard it.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“What the fuck?” I mumbled to myself. Jesus. Is it any wonder I never get anything done? Isn’t the universe supposed to conspire to help people that are on the right path? Here I was, FINALLY hunkering down to do something important that I had been procrastinating about for months… and what do I get? A major interruption. Dripping water can’t be ignored. It’s not like a baby fussing, or a blaring smoke detector when I’m cooking, or a husband pawing. So I struggled to my feet and went off in search of the sound. It didn’t take me long.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I turned the corner into the kitchen and immediately noticed a small pool of water on the floor under the windows. But it was a sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky, and it hadn’t rained here for days.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I look up. The water was slowly trickling down from the top of the window casements. Huh. That’s odd, I thought.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Then it hit me. Those windows are right under the master bathroom. Right under our toilet, to be exact.
Noooooooooooooooooo! I took off running up the stairs, rounded the corner, burst into the bathroom, and set my eyes on the water pooling on the floor around the toilet. The lid was up. The seat was down. The water was all the way to the tippy-top, slowly streaming over the side, almost silently, and gently running downhill on our slightly warped linoleum floors toward the corner of the water closet’s exterior wall, where it was then leaking down through the floor to the window casements below it.
My first thought was: “MOTHER FUCKER!” That damn husband. He pulled a “dump and run” this morning, the bastard!
But once I got past the initial shock and anger, what else is there to do in a situation like this but jump into action. That, and start thinking about how I would blog about it later that night!
I grabbed the bath towels and sopped up the water on the floor. The water in the loo was too high for me to start plunging, so I grabbed the hideous halloween bucket in which we store the plunger (which was conveniently located right next to the toilet for such an emergency) and started bailing out the dirty water and dumping it into the shower. Ewww. Great… more to clean.
Don’t worry, I took all these photos after the fact. I did not stop to photograph this situation while I was ankle deep in poo-water. Speaking of which, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that it was only two months ago that we replaced one of our other toilets due to similar issues while we had a house full of guests over Thanksgiving. We now have not one, but two TOTO toilets in our home. My husband and I have discussed this many times as it is not an uncommon occurrence for him to dump and run and unknowingly leave me to plunge his shit while he is at work. Now, in his defense, he always says that he watches it flush and that it always appears to go down just fine. Whatever. My point is that I have asked him, a number of times, to NOT poop in the one non-TOTO toilet as a preventative measure. Does he listen? No. No he does not. And so here I am, wiping poo-water off the kitchen windows and floor when I should be paying the backlogged bills that he is always harping on me about. Ironic? I think not.
Which brings me to the next thing. My husband is the only human being I know who actually eats 5-7 full servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every day of his life. Needless to say, he is incredibly regular and lays pipe which resembles regulation size NFL footballs. I would like to now refer you to the Bristol Stool Chart, a very useful tool that we should all know and love:
This fabulous visual aid was first introduced to me last summer by my very fun and clearly uninhibited friend JB who is a huge fan of adding bulk fiber to his diet in his quest for the ultimate pooping experience. According to the Wikipedia’s explanation of the Bristol Scale, “types 1 and 2 indicate constipation, with 3 and 4 being the “ideal stools,” especially the latter, as they are the easiest to pass, and 5–7 being further tending towards diarrhea or urgency.” Isn’t that fabulous?! Aren’t you so glad to know this? Listen, I’m telling you, print one of these per bathroom and post it on the bathroom wall so that people can rate their poop everyday. Then you can discuss it objectively with your family and friends. Next time someone asks, “How was your poop today?” You can intelligently say, “Thank you for asking! It was in between a 3 and 4 on the Bristol Stool Chart!” or “Well unfortunately, it was a little low on the Bristol Scale… I need to drink more water and add some fiber to my diet!” or “Holy guacamole! I just had a 7 on the Bristol Scale!” which sounds so much more refined than: “I just peed out of my ass! No more licking the subway hand rails for me!”
I bring this up because my fresh fruit and veggie loving husband routinely deposits the most perfect 3s and 4s I’ve ever witnessed. I’m telling you – his shit is perfect. He practically doesn’t even need toilet paper because his poop is usually in one big curved piece and a “clean break” to boot. And the girth! Lordhavemercy. It makes my hindquarters quiver just thinking about it. His poop would make Dr. Oz sing an aria. The angels weep when he shits. I totally envy his poop. Not enough to replace my daily wine serving with real grapes like he does, but still. Yet, the one drawback with having such perfect poop is that it tends to clog all but the most powerful toilets. Which is why two thirds of the toilets in our house are TOTOs and why my husband and I have agreed (or so I thought) that until we can afford to redo our bathroom, it needs to be a poop-free zone.
So anyhooooo… the bad news is that I never did get those medical bills sorted through and paid yesterday. I had a bunch of unexpected cleaning to do and tons of towels and rags to wash. But the good news is that I sat down and wrote all about it rather than call my husband at work and cuss him out for all the trouble he caused us with his “dump and run” in the wrong toilet. It was a very messy, disgusting, frustrating event that totally derailed my day, but on the bright side, it gave me an opportunity to share The Bristol Stool Chart in a (hopefully) entertaining way and publicly embarrass my husband enough that he’ll never repeat this mistake again. Ah yes… the power of the blog. Therapy. Entertainment. Educational tool. Husband tamer.
Now, back to those bills…
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Great post. An interesting subject to say the least. Out of solidarity, I’ll admit that I too am trying to stay away from six month old paperwork.
I absolutely love your blog. So so funny!!! I found it through a link from the gardening site Kiss My Aster, and have checked it every day since then, trust me I have so been there, now my youngest is 14 and my oldest is making me a grandmother in a few months. I do not miss those days of toilet overflows, and all the unidentified wall boogers, but I truly enjoy the spin you put on them. I am able to look back now and laugh, but then, thought the day would never come when my house could be mostly clean and I could laugh at the terror that 2 sons and a daughter could inflict on a home. In a few years I hope you cover the mystery of the teenage boy smell. I have met many other mothers and we all agree, no matter how often you make them shower, there is a strange odor which permeates all the surroundings of teenage boys. Keep up the laughter for all of us, those who are going through these times, and those mostly past them. Thanks!
Bristol stool chart? Who ever would have thought that there would be such a thing and that I would be able to identify every type from my personal experience?
“His poop would make Dr. Oz sing an aria.
LMAO!!!!!!
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