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. 

the silly chair

when you're a kid and you have siblings close to your age, you find things to do to keep yourselves amused. you make up games and songs and stupid stuff to do when you're on long trips or when your toys get old or you're grounded at the same time.

my brother and i are only 17 months apart and we did a lot of that while we were growing up. he was kind of my hero when i was really little and there were also moments when he seemed like my nemesis. we got along better than most kids our age by the time we made it to high school & we shared a lot of the same friends.

at some point, a couple years after my family adopted our sisters, chris (my brother. and yes, also my husband's name) started playing a goofy little game with the little sisters. he'd pick them up and swing them around a little bit and call it the silly chair. it was called the silly chair because they were facing away from him and his hands were under their knees so that when they were scooped up in the air, they were sort of in an awkward sitting position. the little girls thought this was great fun & would beg for turns doing the silly chair. he'd swoop them around, making swooshing, flying sounds to make them giggle.

one day he decided to see if he could put me in the silly chair and swirl me around like the little kids. i was about 14 at the time & certainly not a little girl to be easily scooped or swung about. but he was pretty strong and he did manage to get me up in the air, though he swung me around less vigorously than he did the 3 year old.

he thought it was funny to do that every once in a while, probably because i yelled a lot, but couldn't really do anything to escape that wouldn't also hurt me in the process. so one day his girlfriend and my boyfriend were over at the house and he decided that it would be entertaining to scoop me up into a silly chair & give me a great shake around the room. i was screaming & flailing my arms. i couldn't really move my legs much other than some stupid little kicks which hurt me more than chris, so i just started laughing.

i drew a picture, in case you couldn't picture it.
take special note of his mullet and my perm.

our friends were watching and laughing which only encouraged him even more & served to embarrass me to no end. that made me laugh even harder, causing pressure on my bladder, which of course, ended with me wetting my pants. but chris didn't know i had wet my pants. i was incapable of coherent speech by that point and our friends were laughing hysterically and pointing at the spreading wet stain on my light gray stretch pants. chris thought they were thoroughly enjoying his great show of strength and comedy, not having any idea that whole thing had just gone to a whole new level of mortification for me.


eventually i got too heavy & squirmy for him so he plunked me down on the floor, from where i scrambled up like a scalded cat & hauled it out of the room as fast as my wet legs could carry me.

to this day, i can't see gray stretch pants or think of that boy without my face turning a little bit red & splotchy. and we never played silly chair again.

catch up and poo

for those of you who may be wondering, i did get pablo back whole & pointy. i had to demand proof of life before i paid the ransom & since i was pretty sure that the picnapper wasn't much of a newspaper reader, i requested that i get a photo of pablo with a fresh vegetable. this is what i got on my phone. doesn't that file look deadly?

after that, of course i had to rush in to rescue the little guy, but i was barely in the nick of time as you can see here.

i think some of us were just glad to have something other than funeral arrangements to think about & laugh over that day. and pablo was returned to my purse pocket with a smile on his face.

our trip up north was actually really great. i got a chance to see & visit with so many of my relatives who i rarely get to see or enjoy and if you were a neighbor who didn't know better, you might have thought we were all gathered for a party rather than a funeral because of how much laughing and story telling we did out in front of grandma's house. there were certainly plenty of sad moments, but we all seemed to agree that we should focus on the good rather than the sad.

brooke came down with strep while we were up there & spent the last 3 days feeling really bad most of the time. she slept a lot & barely ate anything. i'm not sure if you know this or not, but strep often comes with stomach problems as well as throat pain & fever.

having stomach problems while traveling in a car for 14 hrs really isn't a great way to spend the day. yesterday morning started out rough with some distressing belly behavior on brooke's part while we were still at the house. then we got everything loaded into the car, including our cranky selves at 8am and went straight to a grocery store to buy some special hot dogs for my sister back home. i'm not sure what's special about them, but it was important enough that we carried a cooler with us just to be able to cart them home again.

mom & i ran in the front door of the store ready to grab up the dogs & hit the road. we asked the employee at the front door to direct us to the biggest packs of hot dogs the store carried. we bought up 10 lbs of them & scooted back out the door again, feeling good that we hadn't wasted much time. when my dad drove around to pick us up he told me that brooke had unfortunately had a little accident while we were in the store. ooookaaay. so much for making this a quick stop.

i dug through the trunk in an effort to locate some clean shorts & undies for my poor sick girl & then ran back into the store, pulling her by the hand. i asked the same employee for directions to the bathroom and then we marched our smelly parade over to the ladies room.

i was in the process of cleaning and bagging things up in the stall when i talked to my mom on her phone & decided that things would be easier if we had some moist, flushable butt wipes. i didn't want to leave brooke alone, so mom came back into the store & asked that same friendly employee for directions to the booty wipe aisle. she went through the line with her second purchase in 5 minutes, told the cashier she wouldn't need a bag & then walked straight past her & into the bathroom.

while we were hanging around the ladies room, we discussed what we were going to do to prevent the whole trip from becoming a day-long car pooping bonanza. she's too big for diapers or pull-ups. too small for depends. oh wait, there's a type of pull-ups now available in bigger kid sizes for those who still have bed wetting issues. that sounded like the perfect plan that would give us all peace of mind & butt and hopefully enable our trip to be less stressful for all involved.

so mom ran back out to the lady by the door & asked for directions to the diaper aisle. of course she then toted her $15 pack of giant pull-ups into the bathroom right away, no doubt leaving the helper & the cashier wondering and concerned about what the heck was happening in their bathroom. in the span of 10 minutes we went through that front door 4 times, each time needing something very specific and progressively alarming.

in the end the pull ups weren't needed, but at least we had that peace of mind knowing we were covered just in case. and we all had a really good laugh in the car, telling our sharting stories and imagining what the grocery store employees were telling their friends later that day.

the van potty x2

here's my re-offering of the day. for any of you who've read it, i hope you'll come back for the next post. i'll try to make it fresh & exciting. because this one is definitely not fresh.

we still carry a potty in our van. actually, we took the backseat out of the van so that we could fit some big stuff in there at christmas time & it's never gone back in, so it functions as a mobile storage unit. but brooke likes to think of that space as her own personal room, including toileting facilities. there have been many, many times when it has saved us, like when we're at a park where the bathrooms are locked or non-existent. or when we go to the grocery store in july, get everything loaded into the van to go home & then suddenly she has a desperate need to pee that didn't arrive until just that second. or when we're in a traffic jam on the highway, she needs to go & we can't get off an exit. this potty has saved us from many, many moments of peepee panic. (i wish i could use it since i'm often just as guilty as brooke about needing to go when there are no facilities available, due to my own self diagnosed SBS. i haven't tried it yet, but one day i may be desperate enough. i'll let you know if it happens & how it turns out.)

one time, i was loading some stuff into the van at toys-r-us & while i was doing so, brooke crept around to her potty & made use of the facilities. i think she secretly holds it sometimes just because she likes using the van pot more than public bathrooms. maybe it feels scandalous or exotic to pee in the car. i don't know.

anyway, she calls out, "mom, i used my potty!"

me, "okay, fine. let me come around to the back so i can dump it in the back of the parking lot. you didn't throw the tissue into the pee again did you?"

brooke, "weeeelllll.... noo.... i didn't put the tissue in."

me, "so what's the problem? what did you do?"

brooke, "uummm... i.... pooped."

i closed the door & mentally had a mini tantrum. we were just inside a store where there was a flushing toilet. and plenty of toilet paper. but did she use it? NO! she'd rather take a dump in the hot van in august & then put the soiled tissues into the little van trash can.

ok, too late to be mad. at least she didn't crap herself. now, what to do with it... normally with a pee pot i'd find a grassy spot at the edge of the parking lot or at least the far back of a parking lot where people generally don't go & pour it there. this was a different situation. i couldn't very well toss the log into the toys-r-us parking lot and i didn't relish the idea of carrying it up to the building to where there were trash cans & disposing of it in view of other customers.okay, so i can't get rid of it here. what other options do i have? we're not heading home yet where i could dispose of it properly & since it's august, i don't want to cart it around with us where it will get extra ripe while marinating in the car during our next few errands.

maybe i could smear mud over my license plate & put on dark glasses and a hat and sling it out the window while driving to our next stop. but with my luck, i'd throw it into the open window of a car next to us & then be hunted by an angry, poop smeared ex-con. or it would just slide down the outside of my van & i wouldn't know & i'd go through the drive-through at taco bell & the person working would be like, "ma'am, i think there's.... a turd stuck to your door." or i'd chicken out at the last second & hesitate in mid-throw causing it to mostly stay inside the van, sliding down the inside of the driver's door and getting caught in the little pocket, but splattering me in the process. or it would splash while sitting on the passenger seat before i found the perfect moment & then i'd have to clean the seat. or before i had the chance to pitch it, someone in a taller vehicle than mine would drive up alongside of me & look over & spot the hot pink poop filled pot & then look at me in horror & realize that they know me & actually they're one of my customers & then i lose my job. or i'd be holding the pot in my hand, waiting for the perfect moment to roll down & toss & i'd get rear ended & it would all go up in my face & i'd have some explaining to do when an officer showed up on the scene. "yes officer, that is feces on my forehead.... yes, it is pee soaking my shirt. no, i haven't been drinking. i was just planning to throw a bucket of shit out the window of my moving vehicle when there was a gap in traffic. no, it's not my own shit. no, i don't do pranks like that... it was in the back of my van... no, i already told you, i haven't been drinking!"

eventually i found what seemed like an acceptable solution to me & i pulled into the back of the target parking lot to one of those places where there's a bit of grass & a tree between parking spots and i crouched low, walking stealthily & poured out the mess into the wood chip area at the base of the tree. i know, it's gross & horrible, but i thought at least there was a possibility that whoever found it would think that it must have been a dog who left that deposit. i mean, who would have ever guessed the truth?

colons gone wild

tonight we went out for mexican food at our favorite little place in town. that gives me mixed feelings because i love the food there & 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. and my honey likes to go walking after we eat so that the food doesn't just settle straight down into our butts and thighs. but this prospect fills me with fear & 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 dining 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 & 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 & 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 & 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 chris' direction & then did a rapid course correction & 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 and i was holding a boob in each hand to keep them from flapping willy nilly between my neck & my navel as i gallumped between racks of flip flops and magazines. i had a look of sheer terror on my face & 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 with my eyes 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 & nearly crashed straight into a woman who was the last in a line of 2 women. oh shit. i couldn't wait. i was about ready to belly flop to the floor & 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 & 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 & 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 dumping 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 tookus. i knocked politely on the stall beside me & asked if she might have a square or two of paper that could be spared for a poor, needy neighbor. no response. guess maybe she was trying to ignore me in hopes that what probably sounded & smelled like dysentery wouldn't travel into her corner of the bathroom. i tried the other side & was told that she was fresh out too. where is pleppe when you need him?!

i dug through my purse & found a lonesome linty tissue hiding under a tampon & 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 & 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 holy cow, if they plugged the toilet & 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 on 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 though it as quickly as possible. into the trash they went & then i covered them with a layer of paper towels before i went & 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 & 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 & it wasn't spoken of again. because things like this should really be kept to yourself and never ever shared with anyone.

happy birthday to me

tomorrow's my 35th birthday, so tonight chris & i went out on a date & brooke spent the night at a friend's house. i don't think we've had a date night where we didn't have to rush back to relieve the babysitter in years, so it was pretty fun & relaxing.

i made an extra effort to get pretty for my honey today. it's not very often that i put on a bunch of makeup & i might have overdone it a bit since a had a face full of enough cosmetics to coat several prom goers. i had a little photo shoot w/ myself before we left the house because i knew otherwise there'd be no pics to remember the night. plus, i love makeup & even an old barn looks better with a fresh coat of paint. sometimes i have a little too much fun when i get in front of a camera, even if i'm the only one in the room. the following photos can attest to that in a rather embarrassing way... (i recently read that when you look at a picture of yourself, you should judge it primarily based on if you look happy or like you're having fun rather than if you look pretty. so i'm now using that as a standard because i like it better than my old one)

we went to a nice restaurant for dinner, then out to see a stupid comedy & then headed home for a change of footwear so that we could go walking downtown. i wish i was one of those women who can strut her stuff all over town in funky heels, but alas, i need to strap on some birkenstocks if i'm going for a walk these days. and even then i'm kinda wishing for a gel insert.

i seem to have shrinking bladder syndrome (hence forth to be referred to as SBS) so i have to use pretty much every bathroom in any building we enter or even walk past. i'm worse than a toddler who's potty training & intrigued by bathrooms; even brooke gripes at me for having to go so often. tonight was no exception. i think i used 6 different public bathrooms & sometimes that's an adventure. i really don't like when i go into a stall & get myself situated & then the woman on the other side of the partition makes a phone call. i mean, it's bad enough that i'm in there & she's hearing my tinkling, but now her lover across the store is hearing it too. in one particular place, i walked into the ladies room for the inevitable rendezvous w/ the crapper & i was feeling a little gassy. i was thinking that i'd go in there & come out a few minutes later feeling lighter, less bloated & less likely to embarrass myself in front of my beloved. but as soon as i got my pants down, a woman walked in & dialed her phone. i think she must have been an employee because she didn't even use the facilities, just dialed & started chatting loudly. i was trying to wait politely for her leave before i released the gassy beast, but she wouldn't leave. and i can only hold it for so long when i'm in that position. i attempted the discreet cough & toot, but my timing was a little bit off. after that she switched to spanish & there was some laughing. eventually, when i determined that she was planning to spend her whole break in there talking about me, i figured i'd better just finish my business & go on, regardless of my pride. you can only hold back so much if you don't want that lingering pain. once i had thoroughly relieved myself, i decided that i couldn't bear to open the stall door & face her, so i waited a little bit longer. thankfully she left, but not before i'm sure chris was wondering if i'd been the victim of a bathroom mugging.

in yet another place where we stopped for drinks & dessert (just a lil fyi, blackberry mojitos don't compliment caramel fudgey brownies) my SBS got the best of me again & in this bathroom, there are 2 stalls together in such a way that the 2 toilets face directly toward each other with just a little partition between them. it's rather disconcerting when there's a woman on the other side of that partition & you're so close that your knees are almost touching. you could play footsies with each other if you were drunk enough or just feeling frisky. very strange. and for the record, i was neither drunk, nor frisky enough to go the footsie route w/ the woman on the other side.

on the way home, i was feeling all loose & foolish & chris turned up some old party tunes, so i was busting my best car dancing moves. i assure you, they were horrible, but i was enjoying myself immensely. so much so that i felt the need to break out the camera to document the ocassion. sigh... i'm so glad my husband loves me, in spite of my utter & complete lack of coolness.

the van potty

we still carry a potty in our van. actually, we took the backseat out of the van so that we could fit some big stuff in there at christmas time & it's never gone back in, so brooke likes to think of that space as her own personal room, including toileting facilities. there have been many, many times when it has saved us, like when we're at a park where the bathrooms are locked or non-existent. or when we go to the grocery store in july, get everything loaded into the van to go home & then suddenly she has a desperate need to pee that didn't arrive until just that second. or when we're in a traffic jam on the highway & need to go & can't even get off an exit. this potty has saved us from many, many moments of peepee panic. (i wish i could use it since i'm often just as guilty as brooke about needing to go when there are no facilities available. i haven't tried it yet, but one day i may be desperate enough. i'll let you know if it happens & how it turns out.)

one time, i was loading some stuff into the van at toys-r-us & while i was doing so, brooke crept around to her potty & went. i think she secretly holds it sometimes just because she likes using it more than public bathrooms. maybe it feels scandalous or exotic to pee in the car. i don't know.
anyway, she calls out, "mom, i used my potty!"
me, "okay, fine. let me come around to the back so i can dump it in the back of the parking lot. you didn't throw the tissue into the pee again did you?"
brooke, "weeeelllll.... noo.... i didn't put the tissue in."
me, "so what's the problem? what did you do?"
brooke, "uummm... i.... pooped."

i closed the door & mentally had a mini tantrum. we were just inside a store where there was a flushing toilet. and plenty of toilet paper. but did she use it? NO! she'd rather take a dump in the hot van in august & then put the soiled tissues into the little van trash can.

ok, too late to be mad. at least she didn't crap herself. now, what to do with it. normally with a pee pot i'd find a grassy spot at the edge of the parking lot or at least the far back of a parking lot where people generally don't go & pour it there. this was a different situation. i couldn't very well toss the log into the toys-r-us parking lot and i didn't relish the idea of carrying it up to the building to where there were trash cans & disposing of it in view of other customers. so i can't get rid of it here. what other options do i have? we're not heading home yet where i could dispose of it properly & since it's august, i don't want to cart it around with us where it will get really ripe sitting in the car during our next few errands. maybe i could smear mud over my license plate & put on dark glasses and a hat and sling it out the window while driving to our next stop. but with my luck, i'd throw it into the open window of a car next to us & then be hunted by an angry, poop smeared ex-con. or it would just slide down the outside of my van & i wouldn't know & i'd go through the drive-through at taco bell & the person working would be like, "ma'am, is that.... poop stuck to your door?" or i'd chicken out at the last second & sort of hesitate in mid-throw causing it to mostly stay inside the van, sliding down the inside of the driver's door, splattering me in the process. or it would splash while sitting on the passenger seat before i found the perfect moment & then i'd have to clean the seat. or before i had the chance to pitch it, someone in a taller vehicle than mine would drive up alongside of me & look over & spot the hot pink poop filled pot & then look at me in horror & realize that they know me & actually they're one of my customers & then i lose my job. or i'd be holding the pot in my hand, waiting for the perfect moment to roll down & toss & i'd get rear ended & it would all go up in my face & i'd have some explaining to do when an officer showed up on the scene. "yes officer, that is feces on my forehead.... yes, it is pee soaking my shirt. no, i haven't been drinking. i was just planning to throw a bucket of shit out the window of my moving vehicle when there was a gap in traffic. no, it's not my own shit. no, i didn't collect it from someone else... it was in the back of my van... no, i already told you, i haven't been drinking!"

eventually i found what seemed like an acceptable solution to me & i pulled into the back of the target parking lot to one of those places where there's a bit of grass & a tree between parking spots and i crouched low, walking stealthily & poured out the mess into the wood chip area at the base of the tree. i know, it's gross & horrible, but i thought at least there's a possibility that whoever finds it will think that it must have been a dog who left that deposit. i mean, who would have ever guessed the truth?

unconditional love

when chris & i were engaged, we were living in charlotte. we had decided that as soon as we got married, we'd move to a city in south carolina where there's a christian school that he was hoping to attend. we packed our stuff for the weekend & away we went, feeling all happy & excited to be going on a trip to find our first place together. i'd never lived with anyone & had only briefly had an apt of my own, so this was a pretty big deal!

we got to said city in sc & after driving around the dinky, unattractive campus for a few minutes, he turned to me and said, "um... i don't think i want to go to school here. i think i should go back & finish up in tennessee."

as i've mentioned before, i'm a yankee snob & somehow, the idea of living in tennessee was absolutely horrible to me. like living in north or south carolina was ok, but somehow, when you crossed the line into tennessee, you became an instant hillbilly. i wanted to say. "NO! i'm not moving to that stupid, redneck, hillbilly place!" but i didn't. i loved my man enough to be willing to go with him to tennessee & look for a home. the thought of my first married home being in that god-forsaken state was really hard for me to swallow - it totally didn't meet any of my expectations for my future life. but i went. i can't say i was happy about it or even pretended to be, but i was willing & hopefully i didn't whine too much. i was trusting that God would see my attempted submission & steer my almost-hubby to a more desirable location. like after i said, "yes, i'll go", i'd hear a voice from the sky saying "this is a test, this is only a test." i'd swipe my hand across my brow & say, "phew! that was a close one!" God would snicker quietly at me & then we'd be off to some other more "acceptable" state to start our future together.

that's not how it went. we drove all around the rinky dink lil town that chris knew all too well from years spent delivering pizzas & we called every number we could find for the rentals with signs out front. we were able to get into a few & eventually, we found this one little duplex, the landlord showed it to us & the next thing i knew, we were signing papers. we gave him a check & he gave us the keys & it was then that i said, "oh crap!!" in my head. cuz how was God going to undo this? money had changed hands, the deal was done.

we went to a little barbecue joint that chris really liked, to celebrate his imminent return to clevegas. i ordered the beef (clearly this was pre-vegetarianism) and he had the pork. i'd never eaten a barbecue sandwich before & i didn't especially like it, but still trying to be the nice almost-wifey, i tried not to complain too much.

we drove across the county line to find a motel for the night because chris was going to take me out for a night on the town. show me a yeehaw good time in the big city about half an hour away. we had taken our stuff into the stinky hotel room when i started to feel sick. the rumbles came a-burbling up my guts & i was in PAIN! i spent large portions of the next 12 hours hugging that disgusting motel toilet or sitting on it, holding the trash can.

i felt guilty for ruining the nice night that chris had tried to plan for us. i told him to go alone. he might have, i wouldn't know because i was either puking or comatose for the most part the whole time we were there. he brought me some pepto from the gas station next door & i remember him telling me my tongue was black. i felt embarrassed for being in a motel room w/ the man i loved & i couldn't stop crapping my guts out & no doubt making some seriously disgusting noises.

finally the next morning it seemed like the food poisoning had subsided & even though i was feeling drained (for very good reason) i didn't want to stay at the motel 6 and the scene of my shame anymore, so i insisted that i was fine & we could go on back home to charlotte. we had to pass close by our new little house on our way back home, so we decided to stop & look around again, this time without the landlord looking over our shoulders. we wouldn't be moving in for another month still, but wanted to be able to make mental plans.

we were turning onto our new little street when my stomach grumbled & then i farted. or rather, i thought i farted. as it turned out, it was more of a shart, but i didn't realize it right away. it wasn't until i stood up from chris' nice little car that i realized what had happened. i was wearing cute, short little white shorts & was mortified to find that i had crapped myself right on his car seat! there was no disguising it, no hiding it. if death had been an option at that point, i'm pretty sure i would have chosen it. chris was quick to realize my distress & he whipped my suitcase out of the trunk & carried it straight into the bathroom for me. i was able to change, but alas, the water was turned off in the house, so there wasn't much clean-up to be done. i found a plastic bag into which i stuffed all the dirty items & i shamefully walked back out to face chris. i hung my head in my most mortifying moment to date. he just hugged me & told me it was ok & he loved me & then he took me to a gas station for as much of bath as i could manage in the cigarette burned sink. i threw the bag of nastiness away. i never wanted to see or remember that incident again for the rest of my life and i could buy new shorts.

the car was cleaned & the return trip was made. i was probably a lot quieter than usual on the 6 hr drive because i was afraid that he would be so grossed out by me that he'd dump me. or mock me. he'd move back to tennessee without my nasty self. and it was then that i realized that i didn't want him to go without me. while i didn't relish the thought of living in tn, i would much rather live in tn with chris than live without him in charlotte. that was a defining moment for me. it was a good & positive moment of humility & thankfulness. humbled because of my sickness & thankful that the man i loved would overlook my ickiness. he was the one i'd been looking for all my life & i was lucky enough to find him when i was only 21.

my childhood stories

i was looking at my last post & feeling like i was such a downer that i didn't even want to hang out with myself. when i'm in a hole, feeling all blubbery & pathetic, i maybe should just write a letter to myself rather than for the world to see. today is a better day. my life doesn't suck. it's actually a good place to be, in spite of certain less-than-awesome aspects, just like everyone has.

so on that note, i was thinking about my own childhood & my wacky oddities. maybe my mom wondered what the heck she should do with me & how could i actually belong to her because i was so different than she'd anticipated. that led me to some memories that amuse me to remember, so i thought i'd share them with you.

once upon a time, i thought i had the wrong name. i thought sherilin was a big, odd name and i was annoyed at my parents' creativity in naming me. i thought my real name should have been sabrina. it made me feel like the glamorous princess i considered myself to be.

when i was about 5, my church would sometimes bring in a college singing group for a service & my parents would usually host a couple girls for a night. my room always became the guest room, so i would be stuck somewhere else, but one particular night, apparently i sleep walked. i woke up in bed with 2 college girls who i didn't know & i wasn't just in there with them. i was curled up tightly against one of them. draped & snuggled. i was pretty embarrassed as i peeled myself off that girl & scampered out of the room in hopes that maybe she hadn't noticed.

on the topic of sleeping, let me also add that i was a bedwetter. my mattress was covered in garbage bags in an attempt to prolong its life. my childhood best friend was amy & we spent many, many nights sleeping over at one or the other of our houses. we're still friends & she likes to kid me about the multiple midnight baths we got cuz i peed the bed & we both got soaked. sorry, ame! i'm glad you still like me anyway.

when i was about 11, i started taking karate classes. i was bigger than most of the little kids in my class who were about 4, but it wasn't long before i started to consider myself a real badass. my party trick was that i could kick up higher than my head & i would show it off regularly. i probably would have run off screaming if anyone had ever tried to fight me, but i liked to think i was tough.

i spent about 6 weeks sleeping in a large cardboard box, complete with rainbow brite sleeping bag, when i was 9. we had just moved & i was getting a new bed, but i liked that box so much that i skipped the bed for a while & just relished the fact that i could lay in my sleeping bag & color on my walls. it was the beginning of a career of graffiti which continued and flourished at summer camp for years to come.

at that same camp, when i was about 14, i let the camp program director chop off a large chunk of hair out of the back of my head & then had it shaved. that was a very bad fashion statement. i was also stuffed into a suitcase & carried about (including being dropped on a rocky hill) & left as a ding-dong-ditch on the supervisor's doorstep late one night. yeah, again with the bad planning because my friends all ran away & dove into bed like they were innocent little lambs while there i was, wadded into that suitcase where i couldn't exactly deny involvement!

i once fancied myself to be a fashion designer. my friend amy & i would chop up pieces of old fabric scraps & make them into outfits for ourselves. we weren't allowed to use a sewing machine or needles though, so we had to think outside the box. we used staples sometimes & other times we'd cut little holes & then tie knots of fabric through them to keep the fabulous outfits together. we were kind of pissed off that our moms never let us wear our outfits further than the back yard.

once upon a time, my goal in life was to be a dallas cowboy cheerleader. they were so amazing in those blue & white outfits & with their tan bellies & wiggly hips. a girl needs to strive for something in life.

did you know that if you microwave a spider, its legs go up straight in the air? it's kind of amazing how that dead thing can balance on just 2 or 3 legs while raising its others in surrender.

i had a shrine to ralph macchio hidden in my diary. i used to cut out any pics or articles about him from newspapers & magazines and paste them into the pages of that hello kitty journal where i could gaze at his awesomeness any time i wanted.

my cousin steve once paid me half of his allowance to eat cat food. my brother got the other half cuz he had some too. we made out with 50 cents each.

i went to a josh mcdowell rally and i was so convinced that i was going to be a virgin till i was married that i bought a t-shirt proclaiming "I"M NOT DOING IT" in bold black & red letters. on the back of the shirt were about 52 reasons why i wasn't going to have pre-marital sex. i wore it often & it used to embarrass my friends. probably cut down the number of guys who were checking us out as we walked around the mall.

once, when i was 14, i was at my friend patty's house & her parents were less involved than my own were, so we used to go outside at night. we generally didn't do anything other than maybe go for a walk around the neighborhood, but one night we decided to spice things up. we were out in our pajamas in the backyard, sitting on her little sister's swingset & we came up with a plan to race through a few backyards in a big loop & whoever made it back first, won. the catch was that we were going to take off our pants before we started running. we still had on shirts & undies, so it was only a half streak, but it sure felt scandalous at the time. we started out & i took the lead pretty quickly. patty couldn't stop giggling, so she wasn't moving very fast. i was afraid that giggling might draw the attention of the neighbors whose yards we were running through, and i certainly didn't want to get caught running in my undies, so i was silent & determined. i had a pretty good lead going when out of nowhere, i tripped over a dog chain that i hadn't seen & fell flat onto my belly in a full sprawl that almost knocked the air out of me. my face banged the ground & i had grass stuck to my tooth, but i popped right back up & kept hauling butt because by then, patty wasn't just giggling, she was laughing hysterically. i was terrified of getting busted, plus, i really wanted to win and i was afraid she'd take advantage of my unanticipated spill. i made it to the finish line with plenty of time to spare & once i was there i realized the stupid funniness of the moment & i stood there & wet myself in her grass in my minnie mouse t-shirt.

exposing myself

there are a lot of things that we all do or have done in our lives that no one knows about. silly things, embarrassing things, things that seemed so insignificant we never even remembered we did it, whatever. well lately, i've had a lot of these stupid things rolling around in my brain, begging to be set free. a lot of them are about things in my childhood & i apologize to my mother in advance if i disturb you in any way.  i don't want to make it into a "25 things about me" kind of list, but it could possibly resemble that in a very random, possibly warped kind of way.

so in no particular order, here we go.

~ when i was about 5, i remember lying under our basement steps w/ our sheltie (why we were under the stairs, i have no idea. maybe it was our fort), cuddled up to him whispering into his ear that someday i was going to grow up & marry him. and as i whispered into his ear, i got the sudden urge to bite that ear & i did. until he jerked away from me and growled. and then the engagement was off.

~ when i had been married for a few years, i decided that i wanted to know what it would be like to be a more granola kind of woman. so i grew out my pit hair. it only lasted for a couple months & it was in the winter, so no one ever saw it. turns out, i'm not very crunchy.

~ when i was a teenager, i had a cat named twinkle. she was a big fatty who made the house shake when she ran, so we should have called her thunder. anyway, she used to bring in huge nightcrawler worms during the night & would often deposit them in the hallway between our bedrooms & the bathroom. i think they were strategically placed so that we'd step on them with our bare feet in the dark for optimum scream effect.

~ when i was 20, i was a nanny & i didn't have health insurance. i got an ingrown toenail. i didn't have it treated for several months because i thought i couldn't afford to see a doctor, but it got so bad that i was seriously limping. when i finally caved in & went to see a podiatrist, he told me that he'd interned in inner-city chicago & the homeless people's feet weren't as disgusting as mine. and for the record, he only charged me $50. i should have gone sooner & saved that scrap of my dignity.

~ when i was in early elementary school my mom taught piano lessons after school & she would send my brother & i upstairs to his room to watch tv or play quietly. i would sneak american cheese slices in with me & then hide the wrappers under my brother's pillow so that i wouldn't get in trouble.

~ when brooke was a baby, she & i were making the short trip home from my parents' house at night. she finally gave up & fell asleep after about an hour in the car & that's when i suddenly needed to pee. bad! i tried to wait, thinking i could hold out till we got home. then i got the bright idea to just use a diaper & pee right in my seat while driving. i mean, she was wearing about a sz 3 diaper by then, so i thought maybe it could hold an adult's bladder worth of pee. i crammed that diaper down in between my legs while trying to keep the car between the lines. i tried & tried to pee in that diaper, but for the life of me, i could not release. i don't know if it was the fact that i've never peed while driving down a road before or if i couldn't let loose because i've never been strapped to my seat while peeing before, but in any case, i just could not do it. i finally pulled the car into a rinky dinky gas station & ran full speed, while carrying brooke's seat, into the filthiest bathroom i've ever been in & proceeded to wet myself, right in front of the toilet.

~ when i was growing up, i had dreams of being a fabulous singer. if american idol had existed back then i'd have gone to every audition i could get to. i sang in church every chance i got, even in the youth choir singing tenor w/ the boys. i tried singing publicly a few times as an adult & i realized that i no longer have dreams of being a singer because i kinda suck & because just thinking about it makes my nerves want to puke. i even walked off a karaoke stage once while singing an alanis song. i just sucked so bad that i couldn't even stay up there.

~ my daughter has named many of her body parts & my own. her tongue is named whimley wormtongue. her hands are fizz & fido. my right hand is soda. my feet are mr & mrs. and my breasts are doug & kevin.

~ when i was in elementary school, i went to a private christian school & every so often we'd have a school wide skate night. i always made sure that my nails were painted, just in case a boy asked me to skate. as if a little 8 yr old kid would notice in the dim lighting that my nails were decked out in "shimmering strawberry."

~ at a house we lived in when i was in jr high & high school, we ripped a hole through the back of my brother's closet. it went into an unused attic space above the garage & we turned it into a kind of clubhouse complete w/ ugly pink chair that i have no recollection of how it got in there. we had to crawl through a very small hole & that somehow made it seem sort of magical. we named that space "ompisenathimbderland."

~ i used to intentionally keep all of my money in an upside down & backwards kind of order. i would make sure that no 2 bills were going the same way. i did this purely to drive my dad nuts.

~ when i was about 8 or 9 a friend & i decided that we needed boobs. we were in the same class at school & we decided to go about getting breasts together. we each stuffed one cotton ball  per side into our tight undershirts & wore it for a few days. then we added another and another progressively to make it seem like a natural development. because it's totally natural for 8 year olds to grow a cotton balls worth of boob tissue approximately every 4 days.

~ i like to refer to myself as "sheera, queen of power" on a regular basis.

~ i remember that after church on sundays we would sometimes get to stop at mcdonalds to eat. it was a rare treat & one we really looked forward to. my dad once said we didn't get to go very often because it was just ridiculous to charge 7 whole dollars to feed lunch to a family of 4.

~ when i was about 20 i was at a friend's house, hanging out with her & some other people, including her super cute uncle who wasn't much older than me. we watched a movie together & then when it was over, the credits rolled & there was a fun song on. i stood up & did a lil dance, having some fun & feeling groovy. that's when my friend jumped up, grabbed my arm & dragged me to the bathroom. she told me that during the movie i'd leaked my period through the back of my pants & when i'd been in there dancing, my bloody butt was on display for everyone to see. i still feel a little bit sick to think of it.

~ a few years ago i found my diary from when i was about 10 in my parents' attic. i opened it & found a page where in all capitals i'd written, "I HATE CHRIS!!!! HE IS SUCH A BITCH!!!! I WANT TO PUNCH THAT BITCH!!!" i didn't know bitch was primarily reserved for girls. (and for the record, chris is my brother's name & my husband's. this one, of course, referred to my obviously annoying brother.)

~ i have moles. i hate my moles. i had one removed by a doctor when i was about 10 & i was mesmerized to look at it floating in that jar of clear liquid with its roots hanging down. gross! when i was a teenager, i attempted a more down home form of mole removal. i tied a piece of string around it & kept it on there for a few days. it shriveled up & died & then i snipped if off w/ nail clippers. nasty, but it worked & it was free!

~ i went to college in a really tiny town way up north. i got sick & seemed to stay that way for a very long time & eventually, the school nurse sent me by van to the doctor at the tiny neighboring town called chestertown. i had a really bad sinus infection, but he made me strip down & get in a gown that opened in the front. he took my pulse in my groin. this happened on more than one occassion & he always spent a bit too much time listening to my heart from the front. i didn't really get it at the time just how inappropriate that was. later, talking to my room mates about it, we dubbed him the "chester molester."

~ i was homeschooled from grades 5-12. somewhere in there i decided i didn't want to do math anymore, so i cheated. my mom trusted me enough to let me do the work & correct it myself & just give her my grades each week. i went several months without even opening my math book and i could hardly take communion at church because i felt so guilty. my brother finally busted me. i still get hives just thinking about math!

~ when i was about 13, a friend & i walked to friendly's for dinner & ice cream. we devised a plan while walking the mile to the restaurant that we would pretend to be professional models while we were there & try to make the waitress believe that we really were. we even had fake names. one of us was cricket & i can't remember the other one. we talked about our trips to paris & milan and all of our abundant wealth. i'm sure that the waitress really believed that 2 little girls who walked there & came in sweaty & disheveled were really international models.

~ my brother's gerbil died while being gerbil-sat by a friend when we were on a month long trip. the friend didn't want to bury our rodent in case it was special to us, so she stuck it in a butter tub & froze it. by the time we got home, the ground was too frozen to dig a proper grave. it stayed in the freezer until the next summer when my brother had his high school graduation party. we made a head stone & dug a grave & even had pall bearers. there was mourning & people said nice things about herm. (it was named herm because we never knew if it was a her or a him) doesn't everyone do that at their graduation parties?


okay, that's all i've got & i'm sure it's more than enough. i apologize if i've offended your sensibilities or made you see me in a whole new light. but i'm sure you've got your deep, dark, stupid secrets too. you're probably just smart enough to keep them hidden.

bible study gas

several years ago we moved to chattanooga because we felt like God was leading us to come here & start a post modern church. it seemed a bit odd since there are already so many churches in this town, but we clearly believe that we were following God's leading by coming here. very shortly after we arrived we found a few other people who shared our vision & they were already meeting at some one's house on a regular basis for a bible study & some worship time.

we were finally able to work out the details for us to be able to attend one of the meetings (we needed child care because brooke was only 1 at the time & it wasn't convenient for her to be there) where we met the group, mostly for the first time. it was pretty exciting for us to be meeting these people since we really felt like this was the beginning of a big new life change for us & these people were likely to be a part of it. we wanted to make a good impression so that they'd want us to be a part of their group.

we arrived at this big, fancy house & found about 10 or so people there already hanging out & eating. there was a big spread of food & they were kind enough to have some veggie dishes since they knew i'm a vegetarian. i was touched that they'd do that since most of the time when i go to a dinner like that i end up eating chips & dip as my meal because it's the only thing without meat. i happily piled 2 spicy black bean burgers onto my plate & proceeded to chow down.

after the meal, the lights were turned down & we all sat in chairs in a circle in their fancy living room & we had some nice music & a short bible study about foot washing. then someone busted out a big bowl & some soap & water & we were instructed that we'd each be washing the feet of the person to the right of us. chris & i were not sitting next to each other. i was between 2 other men, both close to my dad's age & virtual strangers to me. i started to feel really nervous. this was WAY outside my comfort zone! the only feet i'd ever washed besides my own were my sweet little baby's feet & i imagined they were a far cry from the feet of the man beside me!

now, to increase my discomfort, my stomach started churning, a little at first & then more & more until i could audibly hear it rumbling. i swear, i felt like it was echoing off the dimly lit walls & surely everyone could tell it was coming from me. the washing started a couple people away from me & went in the opposite direction, so i had a little bit of free time while everyone sat quietly & respectfully & waited their turn to have clean feet. i whispered to someone next to me for directions to the bathroom & was pointed to a door directly behind us. i went in there & realized that there was no way in the world i could release the massive build up of gas that was smashing around in my guts without everyone in the next room hearing me. i nearly cried! i couldn't figure out how to fart silently (as i'd learned once before when i tried to plug it with my finger & only managed to fart a very loud, high pitched whistle. but that's another story) and i dared not to even drop my pants out of fear of the coming explosion. so i waited a moment, did the obligatory hand washing & walked back to my chair, doing my own personal rendition of "dead woman walking."

slowly, timed dragged past. i think these people must have been enjoying the process because they certainly took their time about it! inside my head i was screaming, "come on folks, this isn't the time for a full on pedicure & massage, let's move it along!" but outwardly i sat silently w/ everyone else & prayed that they couldn't hear my painfully gut wrenching gurgles.

finally, the man next to me kneeled down & started washing my feet. in the best of circumstances i wouldn't have liked this. the symbolism of it went completely over my head and all i could think about was how desperately i didn't want to blow a blast of gas at this strange man as he rubbed between my toes. don't think about the tickle! don't think about the awkwardness! focus solely on butt control!

ok, i got through my washing, but i still had to manage to wash the dude on the other side of me! so in a rush, i got down on the floor & plunked his feet into the bowl. i wanted to go at turbo speed, but i quickly realized that being in a squatting position, putting pressure onto my stomach & leaning forward required a whole new level of sphincter control. oh my gosh! i felt sure that a noxious cloud of black smoke & foul stench was going to torpedo out of my backside any second if i didn't hurry up & get this job done! it had to have been the least thorough washing to have ever occurred. i didn't care. let them think i wasn't a thorough bather or had a phobia of feet. whatever they wanted to think, so long as they didn't know that more than anything in the world i wanted to fart out the 96 million pounds of pressure that had built up in my guts.

when the washing was finished, i attempted to say my goodbyes as quickly as i possibly could without being totally rude. i still wanted these people to like me. i used the "baby at home w/ a sitter" excuse & ran for the door w/ chris right behind me. i did the clench & waddle out the door at the fastest speed i could manage till i got the car. chris pulled away from the curb & we both started rolling down our windows simultaneously. we looked at each other & started laughing hysterically as we farted ourselves silly in the car, because all the while i was suffering in there, i didn't realize that he was suffering from the same affliction! he'd had the bean burgers too!

ever since then, we've dubbed that feeling "bible study gas" & we both know it's time to clear the room or roll down the windows when one of us catches a case of it.