But on the bright side…

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…

ASSuaging the Guilt

Hold it right there, bub. This is a two parter all about my bodily-fluid-filled Live Nativity experience at church last week. If you haven’t read the first part, click here.

Back so soon? So I can assume that you are up to speed then? You get a gold star, sugar. Let’s continue then, shall we? And now, the riveting conclusion to Urine Angel: 

So, as you can see, I was feeling purdy dang guilty about my poor, sweet, six year old daughter “Klepto” shivering in a pool of her own pee pee and tears for possibly 15 minutes or more, alone, uncomfortable, and scared in a church powder room while I was outside learning my part as the Behind The Scenes (BTS) Mom for the Wisemen/King Herod scene. Well, my Mama didn’t raise no quitter, and I’m fixin’ to do the same with my brood. So I took my baby home, peeled her wet costume and multiple layers of clothes off, stuck her in a steamy bubble bath with a mug of hot cocoa, promised her it would all be better in the morning, and smothered her with love until she drifted off to sleep. The next morning I called the director of our Live Nativity, told her why Klepto missed the dress rehearsal the night before, and requested that I be reassigned to scene # 8, the big finale to the Live Nativity in which Klepto was cast as an angel.  

The director was more than happy to recast me so that I could be with my Tinkling Angel in the stable. But apparently that clever crusader for Christ had a hidden agenda, which I learned the hard way a few hours later. 

You see, once she got wind of my ability to clean up a messy situation, she knew I’d be the perfect person to supervise the stable scene.

Cue the baby donkey. 

That’s right, people. We had a real live baby donkey in my scene. 

I didn’t know much about donkeys before that night, but I do now. 

For starters, I now know that donkeys like to kick. Pair that character trait with a stable full of animal loving children and you have yourselves a perfect storm in the making. I pretty much spent half the night keeping the kids from getting their teeth knocked out. I swear, if I had a nickel for every time I said, “Girls… please don’t hug the donkey from behind. She’s gonna kick you in the head,” I’d have at least enough for a Venti Latte.

The other main thing I learned about donkeys that night is that they poop A LOT. Good Lord Almighty… they surely are the most regular mammals I’ve ever encountered up close and personal. 

So, in addition to running defense for ass-kicking in the literal sense, I also found myself on perpetual-pooper-scooper duty. You see, donkey poop is very stinky. I’m talkin’ STANK, ya’ll. And that cute little donkey would just lift her tail ever so slightly and let about a dozen or so sugarplum-sized balls of poop fall right out of her ass-ass and then she would stand right there as if nothing ever happened, stepping in it and thereby wafting the fumes everywhere. I was thinking that the donkey might end up kicking one of us at some point, and I didn’t want one of us to get kicked with a donkey-poop-covered-hoof, so I felt like it was the clear course of action. I’d much rather be kicked in the teeth with a clean hoof, than a poopy one, wouldn’t you? I mean really. But also, it was stench management. I just couldn’t have my audience focusing on the donkey stank and not on the message of our joyous scene! 

DOH! Watch your step, Little Angel!

Now, the two teens playing Mary and Joseph were just as cute as can be. Mary especially just captured my heart. She was so sweet and wholesome and good with the little angels.  She would get up between scenes and high five the little ones and give them sugar cookies that she had baked at home and brought with her to share. But as cute and sweet and good as she was, there was no way on God’s green earth that she was gonna stop her texting and get anywhere near that beast of burden or his donkey-doody. And Joseph? Fahgetaboutit. He was all, “Uh, excuse me, Miss Iris? The donkey, like, pooped…” and “Uh, like, Miss Iris? The donkey totally, like, pooped again…. ” So clearly, it was me or nobody. And honestly, once you have a few babies, a little donkey poop is nothing. In fact, I’d venture to say that picking up after a donkey was perhaps the least repulsive thing I’d done all day. Yeah, motherhood… those with weak stomachs need not apply. 

But here’s the thing, like most parenting tasks, picking up donkey dung is tricky. I did not want to have MY pearly whites knocked down my throat by this ass while I was doing the dirty work, no-siree-Bob. So, I had to hold the donkey by the head, turn her around, and scoop with one hand while I held her head with the other. That takes skill, I tell ya. Who knew I was such an ass-whisperer? And all of this had to be done quickly, in between scenes, while keeping the little angles from wandering off or spilling hot chocolate all over their white sheets. Oh, did I mention that I did all of this with a kitchen towel on my head and a bathrobe over my coat so I would blend in with the cast and look like a shepherd? Shoot… if my life were any more glamorous, I’d be signing autographs at the Piggly Wiggly.  

My daughter and I were out there for 5 hours, freezing our tails off and bringing joy to the world. Between the tinkle trauma the night before and the mountains of mule mess, it kinda sucked for me, actually. But Klepto loved it, and that’s what it’s all about. We totally bonded, we got to experience the thrill of not giving up when things got messy, and we got to learn about the real meaning of Christmas and even more about donkeys. By the way, donkey coats are surprisingly soft. I would have thought that they’d feel kinda wiry or coarse. But no. Soft as a bunny. Just a joy to touch and a nice natural hand warmer too. 

My family members who did the guided tour said that our scene was by far the best, and then they swore that they weren’t just saying that because Klepto and I were in it. I’m so glad I signed my baby up for this and got to be there with her to see her shine in her little halo and make the audience giggle when she upstaged Mary every time with her enthusiastic singing and improvisational dance moves.  We’ll definitely do it again next year and now that we’ve survived it once, we’ll be even more prepared. Of course, with my luck and skills, they’ll probably throw in a couple of spitting camels and some sheep with irritable bowel syndrome, but that’s fine… it will just make me feel more at home. Bring it on, beeotch.  

I hope ya’ll are having holidays filled with joy and love and the kind of messes that make family time so memorable and funny for years to come! Seasons Greetings to you and yours!

with love,

The Bearded Iris

©2008 The Bearded Iris

House Guests

As if getting ready to feed 22 crazy extended family members Thanksgiving dinner isn’t enough to keep me busy, we’ve got house guests, ya’ll. 

Four of ‘em. 

They’ve been here since last Thursday. Sleeping here. Eating here. Pooping here. They are staying for 10 days. What is that saying about house guests and fish? 

But wait, it gets worse. Two of them are sick and spreading their germs all over my house. With each sniffle, each blow, each hack, I hold my breath and pray that I don’t catch it. I can’t afford to get sick this week… not with all this cooking, and cleaning, and hostess-ing to do.  

That’s not all though, one of our house guests is a “terrible-two” year old only-child with “sharing issues.” Turns out Bucket Head is a biter! Who knew? It is kinda funny, actually. He is NOT going to let his big cousin take his toys right out of his pudgy little baby hands, dammit! And his poor cousin is having a devil of a time learning this. So, needless to say, it is very difficult to precook casseroles and hide piles of neglected paperwork and manage my regular load of daily crises when I am being summoned every few minutes to the sound of shrieking bitten and biting toddlers. It is like trying to separate mating mountain lions, and quite frankly, I’d rather not. 

So there’s that. But there is also all the extra work that goes along with house guests. Sure, sure, there are extra sheets and towels to wash, that’s a given. The daily cooking load increases. Yes. But I’m talking about all the extra social responsibilities. A home should be a retreat – a place to go when you want to get away from the world and just relax… a quite impossible feat when you’re fielding questions night and day such as: “Where does this go?” “Do you have any decaffeinated tea bags?” “How does your remote control work?” “Anything special I need to know about your washing machine?” And my least favorite: “Where do you keep your toilet plunger?” 

In the Name of All That Is Holy, with everything else on my plate right now, please do not also ask me to deal with other people’s shit this week. I have enough of my own family’s shit to deal with on a daily basis… anything else is above and beyond my job description and skill set. 

You know, you take for granted the little quirks of your home when you don’t have guests. You learn the tricks for how to open the back door that sticks, or how to work the key in the tricky lock. You learn, and you compensate, and you work with your home’s special needs. But when you have guests, you need to teach them all these little idiosyncrasies so they can survive in your natural habitat. This requires time and patience. Two things I really can’t spare right now. 

But like anything else, if you invest the time and energy upfront, your payback will be sweet. If you don’t, God help you. The mess that follows is always so much worse than the time it would have taken to just do it right in the first place. 

One of the many quirks of my suburban jail tract home is that the plumbing in general sucks and the builder-grade toilets are completely inadequate. At one point when my husband was out of town and my four year old son clogged one of the toilets so badly that I had to purchase and utilize an actual auger to fix it, we knew that we would need to upgrade our toilets sooner than later. But like most things in which I am a participant, it was done totally half-assed (pardon the pun), and we only got around to replacing one: the powder room toilet on the main level. The toilet we thought would get the most action when we had guests.

The five occupants of my home know that the powder room toilet is THE ONE to use and we respect it. But we failed to teach this to one of our relatives last year and he had a particularly unfortunate 2nd floor toilet clog that flooded the kids’ bathroom and leaked through the ceiling into our family room. Not pleasant. 

Apparently, we’re slow learners and forgot to teach our latest batch of guests the house rule about which toilet to use for serious bidness. So, as luck would have it, last Sunday after breakfast, I heard one of our guests upstairs asking for the plunger. Then I noticed that the other upstairs commode was also clogged. Double simultaneous toilet clogs. Clearly these people need more fiber. I was beside myself. If our plumbing can’t handle 4 house guests… what is Thanksgiving day going to be like with 22? 

Panic. I am in a full-frontal-panic. We need to DROP EVERYTHING and get a new toilet for upstairs before Thursday.

More evidence: two years ago one of my sisters-in-law came out of the powder room after her pumpkin pie had hit bottom, unabashedly demanding some Oust or a fragrant candle. Last year I was prepared for her… I had a plethora of odor masking items prominently displayed in the powder room. But this particular sister-in-law must have laid some especially malodorous pipe, because even with the Oust and the candle and the matches and the electric scented oil diffuser, she left the fan on and closed the door behind her after she created her masterpiece. For the next two hours, everyone thought the powder room (the ONE bathroom with the good toilet) was occupied and trudged up the stairs, past all the laundry and kid clutter I had stashed, to unknowingly clog the two old builder-grade toilets up there.  Lord have mercy… I am getting hives just thinking about crazy old Uncle Charlie thumbing through my stash of Pottery Barn catalogs in the master-suite.

OK, I’m revved up now. I have an action plan:

1.) Buy at least one new toilet before Thursday.

2.) Add extra fiber to the Thanksgiving menu.

3.) Teach sister-in-law the art of the courtesy flush.

What? You don’t know it either? Oh, let me help you out, honey. This strategy is a winner for odor-management (thanks MB!). But don’t do it on an easily clogging toilet or you are in for an unpleasant surprise. From www.urbandictionary.com: 

Courtesy Flush: a term popular in jail. A courteous thing to do when you have a cellmate and are in the small confines of a jail cell. A method you perform when in the jail cell to eliminate the smell of your bowel movement. Usually executed at the point of release from the anus and before it hits the water. The suction of downforce of the flush eliminates the gases as well as the odor of the loaf. ”Yo, do a courtesy flush bro, that shit smells dude.”

Stay tuned. I have a feeling the toilet shopping/installation the day before Thanksgiving is going to be blog-worthy.

Oh, THOSE Sexual Side Effects!

Good news/bad news.  The good news is that the cocktail of antidepressants I’ve been on for two weeks seems to be working!  I’m not nearly as negative and overwhelmed as I was a few weeks ago.  Can I get an AMEN?!  The bad news is the cavalcade of side effects.  Apparently that is the big trade off.  Feel better mentally, feel worse physically.  

Well I found out the hard way what all those antidepressant commercials mean by “sexual side effects.”  I always wondered…what is that?  When they say “low risk of sexual side effects,” does that mean you are less likely to start humping inanimate objects or suddenly have a penchant for bestiality?  No – it is nothing like that.  Sexual side effects specifically means loss of libido (so what’s new?), inability to get an erection (men) or attain sufficient lubrication (ladies), and/or an inability to achieve an orgasm.  (Insert sound of screeching tires and crashing car)  Stop right there, Dr. Feelgood.  Excuse me?  If I am gonna clean up my nether-regions, get all sweaty, and soil my sheets, there needs to be some kind of a prize at the end.  This is not a free lunch, dammit.  I’m no psychiatrist, but I’m willing to wager that having orgasms would actually be conducive to treating clinical depression.  And the more the merrier, eh?  So why on God’s green Earth would I want to take away one of the few rays of sunshine in my life?  Talk about depressing.  Sheesh.  This alone may be worth going off the meds.  But wait, there’s more.    

In addition to not being able to reach the top of tingle-mountain, I am also incredibly constipated.  This is a problem.  I’m a big fan of pooping.  I am normally as regular as the pedophiles at church every Sunday.   Missing a chance to drop the kids at the pool each morning is a major drawback.  I am quite fond of my daily release of the hostages, or as my friend JB calls them, Chattahoochee Brown Trout.  And keeping all that stinky poo-poo inside you for so long leads to the next unpleasant side effect: gas.  

Remember the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles?  Worse. Way worse.  Lord have mercy!  I’m as gassy as the Alaska pipeline.  You know your farts are lethal when even the dog leaves the room.  And my trusty canine companion usually appreciates the smell of my junk.  But lately he has been steering clear of me and my deadly beef darts.  So sad! These farts are like nothing I have ever smelled before, which is how I know they are a product of the strange chemicals I’m ingesting everyday.  I know, it is truly awkward to hear a lady with such a pretty floral name like Iris discussing her flatulence.  But let’s get one thing clear people: I’m no lady. So back to the paint-peelers.  Even my feisty daughter, who loves a good “pull my finger” joke, won’t play along.  She’s all, “Whoa, Mama…was that YOU?!  I thought maybe the doggie ate another frog. Remember that?  That was double gross.” And my clever 8 year old told me the other day, “Mom, it’s called Beeno. Look into it.”  Seriously, I’ve smelled road-kill more pleasant than these SBDs.  And this brings us back to the issue of sexual side effects…there is nothing that will ruin the mood or spoil your ability to achieve a good old fashioned toe-curler like an unintentional dutch oven.  Sorry about that last one honey…I’ll lay off the cabbage.    

In terms of other unpleasant side effects, there is also dry mouth, dizziness, and headaches.  Is this shit an antidepressant or birth control?  Damn!  ’Cause there is definitely no baby-makin’ goin’ on in my house right now.  I’m also experiencing some ear-clogging when I exercise, but that might just be a hygiene issue. Have I mentioned that I’m a mother of three with very poor time management skills?  

So anyhoooo, now we just have to sit tight and wait.  Will the improved mental health be enough to compensate for all these crazy side effects?  Or will my new sense of optimism be blown asunder by all the wafting?  And will my dog run away in search of a fresher fanny?  You have questions. I have answers. Tune in next time for another riveting episode of The Bearded Iris: Battling Depression from the Bottom Up.  

 

And speaking of farts…this is just pee-your-pants-funny.  
LOVE her honest reaction!  These Canadian Judges are priceless.  
As if Mike Meyers and Seth Rogen aren’t proof enough: Canucks are naturally funny. Must be in the water.  
And that is a good thing, because if McCain wins, we are moving there.