colons gone wild x2

tonight we went out for mexican food at our favorite little place in town. this gives me mixed feelings because i love the food there and i like the unpretentious environment, but usually, it doesn't take long for that bean burrito and queso dip to work their magic on my colon. my honey likes to go walking after we eat so that the food doesn't just settle straight down into our butts and thighs. however, this prospect fills me with fear and trepidation all because of that one time.

that one fateful night... at walmart.

knowing that after a big meal, i often need to make a rapid run to the ladies room, i usually prefer for our post-dinner walks to be in places with convenient facilities and on this particular night, we were at walmart. it wasn't so much a shopping trip as an exercise in loitering. since chris and i don't care to loiter in the same regions of walmart, i was in the hosiery area and he was off looking at electronics or movies or something more manly than knee highs and toe socks.

suddenly, i felt the gurgle of doom. i had a spike of adrenaline, knowing what was coming. i speedily dialed chris' cell number and in a panicked voice, asked where he was because i needed to get brooke to him as quickly as possible. i hate it when i have to take her with me into a public bathroom stall, especially when it's not going to be just a quick pee. and this - good lord, i could HEAR the rumbles - was not going to be a quick pee. i was starting to run in chris' direction. i was pushing brooke in the shopping cart at breakneck speed, dodging racks and unsuspecting citizens and hoping that i could avoid any collisions because i was pretty sure that if i ran into anyone, i would then have the dubious honor of dying from a butt explosion amongst the cheap outer wear and rain ponchos.

i caught sight of him heading my way and with hardly a thought, i shoved the cart containing my child -who was holding onto the rungs in a white knuckled grip- in daddy's direction, did a rapid course correction and made a bee line for the bathroom. i'm not much of a runner, so it wasn't smooth or fluid, certainly not like anything you'd see in a nikes commercial.  i was holding a boob in each hand to keep them from flapping willy nilly between my neck and my navel as i gallumped between racks of flip flops and magazines. i had a look of sheer terror on my face and i knew that i looked insane, but i figured that was a preferable alternative to crapping my underpants as i ran between customers in the self check out aisles.

i thought i was going to make it. i was on the home stretch, racing past customer service, shimmying through tiny cracks between meandering rednecks all the while, my eyes were glued to the door of the ladies room. there was no cleaning cart parked out front. good sign. there wasn't a long line hanging out the door. great. but then, i felt it. that hot, horrifying liquid on my backside telling me that i was too slow. that my thigh churning, heart pounding rampage through the store wasn't enough to save my dignity. or my underwear.

i skidded through the doorway and nearly crashed straight into a woman who was the second in a line of two women. oh shit. i couldn't wait. i was about ready to belly flop to the floor and slither under a stall to join the unsuspecting piddler on the other side of the wall in hopes that i could wrestle the funky toilet from her butt's grasp. but then i saw that the woman directly in front of me was doing a pee pee dance. and she was very obviously pregnant. i understood that a full-bladdered pregnant woman always trumps others in line in a bathroom, so i couldn't just bash past her for the next available commode. i had to wait my turn.

thankfully, the first lady in line saw the distress of lil miss preggers and she let her go first. then she was standing beside me while i struggled unsuccessfully to contain the need to twitch like a junkie in need of a fix while clenching my anus like it's only ever been clenched that one time at bible study.

i'm sure my aroma was filling the small space all too well and since i probably looked and was acting completely nuts, the woman at the front of the line was gracious enough to also give up her space to me. most likely she thought from the stink of me that i was a homeless wackjob and she didn't want to witness me losing my head and flinging dung like a monkey in the wally world bathroom. whatever the case, i didn't look the gift toilet in the mouth so i raced into the middle stall, dropped my dirty pants and planted my ass firmly on the seat without even checking it visually or covering it in paper first. i figured that what i was bringing to the table was probably worse that whatever had been there before i arrived.

if i had tried to cover the seat in paper, i'd have realized that there was no paper. of course there wasn't. because on the day of my most shame-filled pooping experience, what would serve to make the event more memorable than to poop out 12 lbs of sludge only to have no paper with which to wipe my rump. i knocked politely on the stall beside me and asked if she might have a square or two of paper that could be spared for a poor, needy neighbor. no response. maybe she was trying to ignore me in hopes that what probably sounded and smelled like dysentery wouldn't travel into her corner of the bathroom. i tried the other side and was told that she was fresh out too.

i dug through my purse and found a lonesome, linty tissue hiding under a tampon and a cracked lollipop in the bottom of my purse. i used it to the best of my ability, but it was sorely lacking. after some thought, i pulled off my pants that were blessedly cleanish, peeled off my undies and then redressed myself. i was never more thankful than at that moment that i'd made the switch from team thong to team granny panty. at least that gave me a buffer in my moment of leaking distress and they also provided me with more surface area to use as toilet paper.

then the problem of what to do with the soiled skivvies. there was no pad disposal box. i debated flushing them, but if they plugged the toilet and caused an overflow, i would feel guilty as well as mortified. there was no toilet paper in which to wrap them, so i settled for grasping them tightly in my fist with the cleanest bits i could find turned toward the outside. i steeled myself for the walk past the ladies in waiting and straight to the trash can. i knew i smelled like a walking dirty diaper, but there was nothing to be done but get through it as quickly as possible. into the trash they went and then i covered them with a layer of paper towels before i went and scoured my hands and arms with the hottest water on tap, as well as large quantities of soap.

i didn't make eye contact with any of the women who were unfortunate enough to be in there at the same time as me. i just kept my face aimed at the ground and marched out of the bathroom. i coated myself in anti-bacterial gel while i wound my way back to the company of my loved ones. we left the store right after that and it wasn't spoken of again. because things like this should really be kept to yourself and never ever shared with anyone.

limericks

can i be honest for a moment? did everyone take their judgey pants off? thanks. i feel much more comfortable presenting my confession now.

i don't like most poetry. i don't like delving into the depths of veiled thoughts and impressions. and i don't like symbolism or things that say one thing, but mean another. i prefer the things i read to be right out there, in my face. (somewhat like you people with your pants off (shut up, al))

there's one exception to my anti-poetry rule and that is when it's solidly rhymey and especially if it's funny. i go past the shelves of poetry at the library without even turning my head most of the time. i sometimes feel like i should appreciate it more than i do. like my character is somehow lacking or flawed by my preference for the shallow stuff. but i sort of think that if it doesn't rhyme, then it's not really poetry at all, it's just a string of presumptuous words with awkward spacing.

limericks though, are just a good time all around. my mom's got a special knack for funny poetry, so she's the one poet (ok, i'll admit that i also like shel silverstein) who i really appreciate.

she writes a limerick or other silly poem for brooke each week, using brooke's spelling words. brooke hates writing the spelling words, but needs to practice spelling them, so i have her type an email to mimi, writing each word three times every week. the pay off is always the poem that flies back to her inbox usually within the hour.

last week mom wrote one for me.

There was a young lady named Sheri

Whose pits were incredibly hairy.

She waxed and she shaved,

She ranted and raved,

But still those wild tresses were scary.

my response:

my pits were distressingly furry

i wanted it gone in a hurry.

tank season is soon

just three months til june,

i'll laser them down with a fury.

do any of you guys write limericks? you wanna try? come on, practice on me.

anyone? ......  anyone?  .......  ?

my new job

i've been pretty quiet on my blog about my new job. what? you haven't heard about my new job? oh, well, let me tell you about it. it's called, "stop being a fat girl." yes, that is my job title and i'm taking it very seriously. i'm waiting for my dedication to be rewarded with a great benefits package.

maybe dieting and weight loss don't constitute a full time job for other people, but for me, it seems to have eaten my brain and i feel compelled to work at it night and day.

my latest thing is that i run everywhere. and by run everywhere, i mean that i actually don't run at all, except down the stairs and across the house to the bathroom about 37 times a day because i've got to unleash the huge quantities of water that i'm drinking. that might not seem like a long way to run, but there are approximately 67 steps from my room to my bathroom (probably a few less when i'm taking graceful doe leaps as i race delicately across the house), so i feel like that counts as a little bit of a workout.

and when i come back up to my room, i run up all 17 steps. and by run, i don't mean sprinting two steps at a time and emerging at the top with both fists held high and a look of achievement on my face. it's more of a boob hugging jog as i lean forward and try to think about other things to distract myself from what my body is doing. but at least i'm not creeping slowly to the top whilst pulling myself hand-over-hand on the railing like i used to do.

so far i've lost 27 lbs and in just one more pound, i'll have returned to my pre-baby weight.     about. dang. time.      unfortunately, my parts seem to be packaged differently than they were before baby came along ten years ago. i thought i'd stop being jiggly and blobby, but so far, the blobs have just gotten smaller and the jiggles remain, but they flap more sedately than they used to.

i've heard from some people that i shouldn't weigh myself every day, but i cannot stop myself. even before my eyes pop open in the morning, i'm already thinking about the scale. i lay on my back and feel my hip bones and ribs to see if they feel like they're closer to the surface than they were yesterday. i roll over to my side and feel my hip bone and admire the way it's pokier than it was just 2 months ago.

then i get up and do the peepee dance around my room for a few minutes. i don't let myself even descend to the first floor until i hear a noise emerge from my midsection that sounds vaguely like a huge semi-truck on a distant highway rumbling. that's a sure sign that i'm sufficiently hungry and that i'll probably be able to unload some extra weight in the bathroom before getting on my scale. then i grab my clothes and dash down the stairs and through the obstacle course to the bathroom, not stopping to speak to anyone and hoping no cats are in my path as i fly through the rooms.

i eat food still, but probably only half of what i used to consume. and i only eat healthy things now rather than any ole thing that looks or smells good. i made it through valentine's day without indulging and i haven't caved to any easter candy yet either.

my clothes don't fit, which is a blessing and a curse. i'm really happy, but it's hard to get dressed each day, particularly when i'm going somewhere and i'd like to look nice. all my clothes make me look even dumpier than i did before. my motto in clothes buying used to be that the fabric shouldn't touch my body, in hopes that no one would know how much air was floating around between my shirt and my flab, thereby enhancing my mystery and possibly tricking people into believing that i was perhaps thinner than i appeared.

two sizes down and one more to go before august. i'm hoping that i'll be on such a roll that i'll just keep on going and lose maybe a total of about 75 lbs before i'm done.

a girl can dream, can't she?

the poopy tent

for the first nine years of our marriage, chris and i had only one bathroom. we lived in several different houses, but always with just one bathroom. when we were newlyweds, it initially seemed like no big deal. i'd never lived with any man to whom i wasn't related and they certainly weren't going to invade my privacy in the bathroom. in my growing up house, doors were kept closed and knocking was strictly enforced.

this was not the case once i was married. suddenly there was an open door policy for the most part unless pooping was underway. but there came a time when eventually, even the poops had to be interrupted by the other partner. if i was down to the wire on time before i had to leave for work and the man was in the bathroom dropping a man-sized load, i had no choice but to brave the stench-o-rama that was my bathroom in order to get myself ready to go.

it was very difficult to stand in front of the sink slapping my makeup onto my face as fast as i could (there was no other acceptable mirror/lighting place in the house) while fanning the door with one foot to keep the air circulating and the stink to a minimum. meanwhile my new husband was sitting 17 inches to my left with his pants around his ankles and a magazine on his lap as he pooped just as care-freely as if he were completely alone. he'd sometimes turn and smile serenely at me and tell me he loved me.

even worse than chris pooping next to me, was when i needed to go, but he was in the bathroom shaving or brushing his hairs or whatever men do in the bathroom. i was mortified. i couldn't bear the thought of my beloved seeing my delicate self taking a dump, particularly while he was close enough to reach out and pat me while i did so. i would turn my face and scowl toward the shower so that he couldn't see me. i'd close my eyes and imagine i was alone or stare at the shower curtain, blushing at the shame of my predicament.

one day while staring at the curtain and trying unsuccessfully to rush the man out, i was contemplating how to go about wiping in a sneaky fashion. and let me tell you, it can't be done. you just can't hide the necessary motions from a person who is that close to your body, especially when they're amused by your discomfort. then the thought popped into my head that i could pull the shower curtain around my body and form a sort of shelter to block myself from the nearby viewer's prying eyes.

surely, it looked very silly to see a toilet with a big flowery shower curtain-covered lump perched on it, but it provided the much needed illusion of privacy. from that moment on, the poopy tent became the standard for any time one of us needed to go while the other was occupying that space. and the cat loved to join us in there for our stinky camping adventures.

sometimes i miss our early days of being married, with fewer responsibilities and the freedom to sleep in, but i never, ever miss having only one bathroom. 

these are a few of my least favorite things

i suddenly got the urge to write my own version of the song "these are a few of my favorite things" from the sound of music today. but i couldn't just write about my favorite things because that's too sweet and nice. so i wrote it about my least favorite things.

here are the lyrics in case you didn't catch them.


hobos and hairballs and elephant seals
unflying kites and potato peels
having to listen as yo gabba sings
these are a few of my least favorite things


meatloaf and hot dogs and slow draining sinks
cleaning the litter pan, oh how it stinks
butt juicing cat that makes my nose sting
these are a few of my least favorite things


greasy hair, pit stink, and hot dumpster juice
stepping in slime that's pooped out by a goose
plunging the toilet, the sights that it brings
these are a few of my least favorite things


when the zit pops,
when the kids cry,
when i'm feeling sad.
i simply remember my least favorite things
and then i keep feeling bad.

and i think brooke did a great job as my backup dancer through the video.

adolescent aspie

my child continues to surprise me. she says and does things that are funny and interesting and often so different from me. i feel like i don't relate to a lot of things about brooke, but that kind of makes her even more intriguing and vaguely mysterious.

i just bought a book about asperger's syndrome in adolescence. it's for parents or teachers of kids between the ages of 10 and 18. everything i've read before was aimed at parents of younger kids, so it's good to be reading about the next phase.

the wiring in aspie brains is different than the wiring of a neuro-typical (NT) person and this becomes even more apparent during puberty. i realize that brooke isn't 10 yet, but she's certainly started puberty and she's already dealing with some of those difficult changes. reading this book is helping me to feel like some of her glitches  have legitimate reasons behind them and they aren't cause for frustration or correction, but rather compassion and calmness.

some things about her please me tremendously. like when she says things about her brain. she's always talked about her brain since she was about 4 and learned what a brain was. just now she told me that her brain is really interesting and it has a unique feature that allows her to play movies in her head of things that happened far back in her past and the movies aren't just from her own perspective, but also from the view of someone else who was watching her. she told me very clearly about something that happened when she was just a couple months past her second birthday. and she got the details right, so it had to be a real memory of her own because the parts she remembered weren't the things i would have recalled about that day.

yesterday she came running inside after playing out in the beautiful spring air for a while and said, "mommy, mommy! this day smells so awesome! it smells just like the library's porch!"

she says strange things to me and laughs openly at me. i'll admit that it's often what would be considered disrespectful to most parents, but i know she's not trying to be rude, she's just calling it how she sees it and she doesn't comprehend that honesty sometimes isn't the best policy. you should see her double over in cackling laughter when i do a workout video. i've been working out with a few "hip hop abs" videos (i know, so dorky, but they make my muscles ache afterwards, so they're clearly working for me) and for her, it's like a great comedy show. i think if i let her, she'd pop a bag of popcorn to munch while watching the hilarious flailing of mommy, sweating and moaning while i stomp, jump and crunch around the room.

aspies are often known for their lack of voice intonation and sometimes sound monotone when they speak. they often don't have very expressive faces, but brooke doesn't have those problems. she's so expressive and has recently mastered voices and accents. for a long time, reading was a really challenging thing for her, but this year, it finally clicked and now she's reading chapter books comfortably. she just read me a couple pages out of a silly book she's been reading called Hank the Cowdog and the Case of the Booby-trapped Pickup. she used different voices for different characters and pronounced all the words so well that i made a little video. it makes my heart happy to see her so fully overcome the reading challenge and actually come to a place where she's obviously enjoying reading.