Overflowing Toilet

(I do not own this image, I found it here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/166562065/dont-touch-my-balls-white-baby-onesie)

                I am a woman who really enjoys poop jokes; I can’t explain it. Perhaps my taste for graceless jokes comes from my complete lack of it. Shocking as it may seem ESPECIALLY for those of you who know me very well, I have had some embarrassing moments in the restroom. I have been frightened into wetting my pants (and driven home with my coat tied around my waist to change), since having my daughter I often lose a bit of my bladder’s contents when I sneeze (not every time, enough with the suspicious stares), I can’t even count the times I have farted in a store just to have someone walk around the corner into the stink cloud moments later, and I have of course clogged my fair share of toilets. None of these incidents even come close to the horror that befell me in the fall of 2009, a permanent black mark in my past.

                I was spending the weekend at a new girlfriend’s house and was anxious to make a good impression. This chick was the judgmental type and the type to never let you ever live anything even remotely embarrassing down. For example, I was once playing Strip P’Diddle with her and a few other friends two years later. I am known not only for my frequent flatulence but also for my slow reflexes, an unfortunate trait in the game of P’Diddle. For those of you who have never played, it is a simple car game. Every time you see someone with a missing headlight or taillight or those ridiculously bright white headlights, you shout P’DIDDLE and touch the ceiling of the car. The last poor fool to carry this out has to remove an article of clothing. (I have been very exposed while playing P’Diddle.) So there I was, already topless and forced to remove my pants just as we rolled through the McDonald’s drive-thru. Sadly, the embarrassing part was that it was laundry day and I was wearing some monstrous granny panties. I never lived that one down; in fact, one of the girls I was with went out and bought me three thongs as a joke later on. (It was humiliating, but, hey, I will take the free undies!)

                Returning to my first weekend at Judgmental Girl’s house, as you may know, normal people don’t go an entire weekend without pooping and teenagers are really shy about their bowel movements. (Let me save you some trouble, young ones, no one gives a shit. Literally. Everyone drops a deuce now and again. Even if it is smelly, you aren’t really getting judged as much as you think you are. In fact, I judge you more for holding it. Honestly, are you a sadist or just dumb? POOP!) I swear, I held it as long as I could (by which I mean probably 18 hours after arriving. I know, right? JUST GO, FOOL!) We were outside lounging around the backyard and talking smack about everyone we knew when I could hold it no longer. Assuring her I would be right back, I bravely entered the house and headed for the only bathroom. Its location was…less than ideal. It was directly off the kitchen where her mom spent pretty much every waking moment. Lucky for me, she was not around at the time.

                As I flushed the toilet, I prayed, “Please don’t clog, please don’t clog, PLEASE, DON’T CLOG!!!!” Yeah, it clogged. I scoured the room for a plunger to no avail. Who in their right mind doesn’t keep a plunger in their house!? Especially if I am your house guest!? Hopelessly, I tried to flush again which turned out to be a MASSIVE mistake! The toilet began overflowing at top speed! I ripped the door to the bathroom closet open, pulling out every towel I could reach to clean up the toilet water that was cascading out of the toilet at probably a trizillion miles a second. I frantically searched the room for something to unclog the toilet with (other than my arm). As the towels became soaked through, I started throwing the dirty clothes from the hamper down to keep the floor dry. Finally, I grabbed a toilet brush, thrusting it into the toilet as hard as I could. The toilet brush did eventually unclog the toilet, but it was a little worse for wear after all that…and I was traumatized.

                I braced myself as I opened the door. I kept picturing Judgmental Girl and her whole Judgmental Family standing on the other side of the door waiting to greet me with disgusted stares. I stepped boldly out into the kitchen to find it was still empty. LORD, I TRULY AM BLESSED!!! I booked it back outside hoping she hadn’t noticed that I had been gone for a long time. She had. It turned out I had been inside for almost a full half an hour. Not knowing how to explain myself, I told her I had gone into her room and watched TV for a while, winning myself Best Friend of the Year for sure.

Lucy's Pants

                My daughter, Lucy, is a bad sleeper. She always has been. The first night we had her home from the hospital she stayed up all night long screaming (and proving that she would give us a run for our money). For the first three months of her life, she wouldn’t sleep unless I held her. Putting her down to nap has always been like some form of cruel torture and can take hours if you’re successful at all. I often plan our entire day around tricking her into taking a nap (though I am not always successful). I have spent many nights cramming myself into her toddler bed with her to coax her to sleep. She gets up at least once in the night to come say hi. Most mornings she gets up around 4:30 and I have to fight her to stay in bed until 6 (a time I feel is acceptable to get up for the day). When we put Lucy to bed at night, she almost always gets back out at least once (usually several times), and since she learned how to use the doorknobs her lack of cooperation at bedtime has only increased. It’s never long after we tuck her in and retreat to our room exhausted and relieved for some adult time that we hear the pitter patter of her sweet little feet growing louder and louder. We look in the doorway to see her triumphant little grin beaming up at us as if to say, “Ha HA!”

(Lucy sleeping on me at 2 1/2 weeks.)

She is quite a mischievous little lady most nights (and in general). For example, one night in January, I came in from my evening walk forty five minutes after I put her in bed and heard her moving around. I opened the door to complete darkness. I thought, “Wow, Jude took her nightlight away as a form of punishment. That’s kind of harsh.” I told Lucy to get back in bed please and shut the door, feeling it was best to keep a united front with my husband, but when I asked him about it, he said he didn’t even know she was up. Assuming the nightlight had burnt out I went back in to see what was up. I switched on the light and lo, there was my daughter on the floor next to the power outlet trying to shove the nightlight back into it. (This is the part where I lost about five years of my life from sheer panic. Lucy on the other hand was absolutely delighted to have gained some attention. The nightlight had to be relocated to an outlet behind her bed. The room is much darker now, but fortunately Lucy doesn’t mind.)

                As you may imagine, these little events can become very frustrating at times. I go out most evenings for a walk as soon as I put Lucy in bed and part of the reason is because we have found Lucy will accept defeat and go to bed faster if I’m not in the house. If I go to intercept her as she makes her great escapes, she almost always attempts another within a few minutes. If Jude goes to put her back to bed and says I’ve gone out for a walk, she cries a bit sometimes, but ultimately doesn’t get out of bed anymore. (She doesn’t come out of her room at least. I have been finding her sleeping in places other than her bed a lot lately.)  As frustrating as this can be to deal with night after night, it’s usually easy to make light of it because, let’s be honest, this kid is hilarious and adorable. Some of the stuff I walk in on her doing in the dark can be really charming and she always treats it like a big joke.

                I came back from my evening walk a few nights ago and was getting ready to hop in the shower when I heard Lucy’s door opening. Surprised that she was still up (it was forty five minutes after I had put her into bed), I went in to put her back into bed. I put my arms around her to lift her up and felt that she didn’t have a shirt on. Assuming she was naked again (seriously, I can’t keep her in clothes right now) and wondering here her pajamas were, I flipped on the light to discover, BAM, she was wearing a pair of pants! Lucy had taken off her pajamas, put them away in the laundry basket, opened her dresser, picked out a pair of pants she liked, and shut the dresser drawer all in almost total darkness.

                Proudly, Lucy announced, “Mommy, I pants!”

                “Super good job, Lucy,” I told her, laughing. “Let’s put our jamjam’s back on and get in bed now.”

                As I tried to wrangle her out of her pants and into her pajamas, she started wailing out, “Pants! Pants! Pants!”

                I was not about to rain on her parade if she was that proud of her pants. We made a deal that she could keep the pants if I could add a pull-up and she had to pick out a shirt to wear. I opened her shirt drawer and she carefully selected a sparkly red sweater. She was so proud of her self-selected outfit it was hard to be stern with her. I couldn’t help myself; I had to take her picture!

                It’s moments like that that help us not to mind her terrible sleeping habits so much. It was a little harder not to mind when she got up at 5:15 the next morning demanding Pooh Bear and cereal, but we all do our best.