I have been having poop issues. Now, you may hate me, but generally speaking, I never have poop issues. In fact, it wasn’t until a few years ago, when I was pregnant with Ethan, to be exact, that I actually knew what it meant to be constipated. It’s pretty common in pregnancy, especially because of all that iron they make you take in the dreaded pre-natal vitamins. People would tell me they were constipated, and I would nod and express my condolences, but honestly, I had no idea what that meant or what it would feel like. When you need to poop, you poop! What’s the big deal? I also have a pretty iron stomach. If something upsets my stomach, I can generally live through the pain until it subsides. I don’t go vomiting that much. James has some quirky stomach thing where sometimes he will eat something and he’ll just stop, because it’s upsetting his stomach, but I can eat pretty much anything under the sun.

I have NOT been having constipation poop problems. That may have been better than the whole feeling the icy hand of death squeeze your innards while poop just keeps coming and coming and coming. It was a few days ago, it must have been Monday since James was also home. I was innocently working a sudoku puzzle when I felt the urgent call of the toilet, and so, fetched myself hither to the throne.

There, I can only relate the anguish that I underwent by telling you that I thought death was imminent. My abdomen felt like a fiery pit of hell. My head felt all feverish, goose bumps broke out on my skin, and I actually started sweating like a pig. I could not contain the moaning that seemed to come from my throat. My bowels were spasming about so wildly that I actually threw up in the trash can. That is right, there were bodily fluids (though thankfully, not of the same sort) coming out of each end. I thought I was going to die, and finally decided that I couldn’t die alone, and cried out in my pitiful “I’m going to die” voice to James to get downstairs. If I was going to die from poop-trauma, I at least did not want to die alone. And if I wasn’t going to die, then I wanted James to know that I was in serious pain here! Serious! He came down and couldn’t quite figure out where I was, found me, peeped in the doorway which I adamantly held closed except for a 1 inch space, asked, “Are you okay?” (NO I JUST LIKE TO MOAN FOR FUN) took and washed out the vomited-in trash can, and by then I gradually felt better enough to not feel all pouty when he went back upstairs. What?! You don’t want to silently sit outside the bathroom door and send me “feel better” vibes? The stench is starting to waft through the lower level of the house? Fine! GO UPSTAIRS I HOPE YOU HAVE CONSTIPATION AND THEN I WILL SAY DIE ALONE IN YOUR PAIN MY FRIEND. After my body had evacuated everything in the entire digestive tract, I felt much better and beat death back with my mechanical pencil (i was doing a sudoku puzzle, remember?) and resumed my day with some normalcy and kind of forgot about the incident until yesterday.

Yesterday! Thursday was my first day back to work after the holidays, and James got to stay home and watch over the kidlets. He had the brainy idea to bring them up and meet me for lunch. We sat down and ordered, and all of a sudden I knew I had to get me thither to the bathroom. I did, and I did the business, and I came back, and then I knew I had to get me thither to the bathroom AGAIN. I did and this time, I stayed a lengthy amount of time, experiencing some of the same symptoms as before, but not quite feeling like I may die and they’d find me on tech toilet and wouldn’t that be embarrassing.. However, I can’t help feeling like I ruined our nice little family lunch by spending 1/3 of it in the loo.

So! That is the extent of my poopiness lately. Aren’t you glad I shared? Aren’t you glad you waited to read this until after you had eaten?

Ok, so since I mentioned lunch with the family yesterday, I have to relate a Cute Kid Story. We were at Uno’s for the main reason that they have dinosaur chicken nuggets, which Ethan loves, and he’s pretty picky about his chicken nuggets – they can’t be too crispy or it’s hard for him to eat them, and often restaurant chicken strips/nuggets are too crispy. So if we go out with the fam, it’s often to Uno’s.

Anyway. So his dinosaur chicken arrived, and he informed us, picking up one of the pieces, that “this is the Mommy. And this is the Daddy! And this is the baby!” right before he proceeded to eat them. I don’t know what that says about my son, that he likes to personify his food before consuming it, but boy. It was funny. At least he didn’t engage in talking to them, or any role playing before eating them. At least, not that I know of. Maybe he did, while I was in the loo.* “And the mommy says to the baby, “Go clean your room!” and the baby says, “NO!” and the mommy says, “TIME OUT!” and then I EAT HER! HA!” (just to be clear, this is fictional. but honestly, that’s probably what I’d do if i was personifying MY food and I was 3.)

*Isn’t “loo” a great word? I think we should stop saying “bathroom” and “restroom” and just start calling it the toilet and loo, like in England. Let’s start a new thing, you and me. ARE YOU WITH ME? GREAT!

OK. I’m still feeling back about that viciously long post yesterday, so I’ll end this now. Plus, I have to go to the loo.

– amy’s a survivor, I’m gonna make it, I will survive, keep on survivin’