Check out the new blog post at the Flush This Blog: Back to School Bathroom Blues
Remember the trauma of peeing alone for the first time without mommy at school? I think we all have a memory of our first time having to lock ourselves into a bathroom and the fear that the door wouldn’t unlock ever again. Read the post and let us know what you think and tell us all about your own bathroom horror stories.
In addition to the standard “for richer or poorer, in sickness and health,” couples should consider adding a few lines to their wedding vows, like “in the midst of DIY disasters and deciphering Swedish furniture assembly instructions.” Because no matter who you are or how great your relationship is, you will encounter the dreaded “project gone wrong” with your significant other.
If you’ve ever tried to assemble furniture, especially furniture with instructions written by someone living halfway around the globe with an iffy grasp of English, you know this is true. Comedian, Pete Correale has an entire bit just about IKEA furniture saying, “IKEA: I hope your marriage is stronger than our furniture.” Check it out here:
My husband and I had accomplished a few projects around the house without any major blowouts, so we decided to put together a vinyl shed in our back yard. How hard could it be?
Our first mistake was our decision to construct the shed in 100 degree weather. Our second was attempting to do it together with no outside help (a third person there to referee would’ve been nice.)
I was in charge of holding the walls up while my husband connected the pieces to the roof which wasn’t the best idea since I kept dropping the walls just as my husband was about to get the pieces clipped together. This happened several times, but we stuck it out and eventually got to the last wall.
By this time with all the effort I was putting in and the near heatstroke I was experiencing, I was making noises that I’m sure convinced our neighbors without a view of our backyard that we were having hot, nasty sex in the middle of our backyard. Once again, I dropped the wall and that was the straw that broke my husband’s back. He told me to get inside and take a break before he threw the entire shed down the hill.
I went inside for a drink of water. By the time I returned to our construction site, the shed was completed, as my husband stood nearby with a shit eating grin on his face.
Another DIY disaster ensued after we got a great deal from Easy Closets. We watched their promotional video on their closet organization system. At one point in the video, a man with one arm talks about how easy the closet was to put together, that all you need is one arm. We were sold.
The project started off like any other project we’ve done: we work well together in the beginning, then the break down in communication begins, I can’t hold the pieces up long enough for him to get them screwed into the wall, the arguing begins, it escalates, I throw the instructions at him. He yells for me to leave the room. I take a break. He gets the base piece on the wall on his own. Then we finish the project together in harmony. Happens every time.
Anyone who’s ever attempted to work with their spouse or significant other completing a weekend do-it-yourself project will be able to commiserate with the couples who attempt their own renovation projects on the hilarious reality series, Renovation Realities, on the DIY Network.
Watching the show is therapy for me and my husband. We’re reassured that our arguments aren’t that bad compared to some of the doozies we see on the show. We can watch the epic failures and the epic meltdowns and laugh about the shed and the closet and take comfort that at least we’re not that messed up.
Check out a preview here:
Here’s a clip:
When I was four, I walked in on my parents having sex. Thankfully, I didn’t see anything graphic as my mother was wearing a long pink nightgown that was bunched up around her waist. But as I opened the door and met their wide-eyed gazes and slack mouths, I knew I had interrupted something.
After a few unbelievably awkward seconds, my mother recovered her ability to speak. “Sweetie, it’s okay. Mommy and Daddy are just showing each other how much they love each other. Go downstairs and we’ll be down in a few minutes.”
As I tiptoed down the stairs I could hear both of them giggling uncontrollably.
Thirty years later, it would be my turn to regain composure and offer explanations that would inform while leaving some innocence intact.
Sex changes after you have kids. There is no question of that. I’m happy to report that after my post-delivery six week check up and the OB_GYN’s green light, I was raring to go. So take note gentleman, not all women pull the “I’m just not into it because the kids make me tired” card. In fact, I don’t really understand that card. Probably because my husband continues to court me: ten years and counting. He gives me time to myself, spends time with our daughter and pitches in around the house. When he occasionally slacks off, all I have to do is ask for help, because men need to be told exactly what women need from them. They are not aware that their Saturday afternoon naps piss their women off, and they will not understand that slamming the dryer door shut and unloading the dishwasher loudly means that they should help their overwhelmed ladies.
It took me a few months to figure all that out after our daughter was born, but once I did, it was smooth sailing. If I let him have his time away from the house, he’d gladly let me have mine, all I had to do was ask. Throw in some scheduled date nights and you have a recipe for a very happy couple adjusting well to their new role as parents. Time management is everything. It will keep your stress levels low while keeping you very much in love with your spouse.
That is not to say that we didn’t make some changes in our love life. More specifically, the changes came after our daughter was old enough to get out of bed and walk around the house.
After one particularly passionate round we lay there in post-coital bliss when we were jolted out of our reverie by a familiar little three-year-old voice.
“Mommy? Mommy? Are you okay? Why wouldn’t you answer me?”
Oh. My. God.
We snickered uncontrollably and pulled on bathrobes.
Our little girl was parked just inches from our door.
“How long have you been there?” I asked.
“A long time. And there were loud noises, and they were weird, and there were weird shadows too. What were you doing?”
Were my parents somehow aware of this comically karmic moment? I invoked my mother’s composure and searched for an appropriate explanation.
“Mommy and Daddy were playing a game.”
“I wanna play.”
“Um. No. It’s a game that only Mommy and Daddy get to play with each other in private to show each other how much we love each other.”
“But I love both of you. I wanna play too.”
Apparently, the tactics that worked on me in 1978 were not cutting it.
“It’s a private game, sweetie. One day you’ll get to play with your husband. Now let’s get you back in bed.”
“Okay.” Her arms hung loosely at her sides as she dragged her feet reluctantly back to her room.
My husband and I closed her door, still containing our snickers.
Then we crouched down to our daughter’s level to reenact what she might have seen through the crack in our door. Only a sliver of our room was visible. Our daughter hadn’t seen anything X-rated, but she’d definitely seen enough to make her think that her Mommy was in peril. My first thought was to lock her door from the outside so she wouldn’t have the opportunity to park outside of our bedroom, but that’s a bit extreme and probably breaks some child endangerment and fire safety laws. Instead we opted to figure out a way to block her view through that pesky space between the door and its frame.
Foreplay has now been redefined. Before we were parents there were a million ways we could let the other one know we were in the mood. These days, if one of us comes out of the shower to discover that a hamper has been stacked on top of a chair that leans against our closed bedroom door with a dark blanket draping over the entire construction project…it’s on!
While hanging together for a week to work on our writing projects, Jane and I took the opportunity to have a bit of girl time and what better way to do that than watch the ode to female friendship currently playing to packed theaters: Kristin Wiig’s brilliant Bridesmaids.
What makes this comedy a revelation is that the female friendship story line that usually takes a backseat to the romantic plot in most chick flicks has been brought front and center. The friendship between two women, played by Wiig and Maya Rudolph, is the core of the movie, while secondary friendships and a romantic subplot between Wiig’s character and a lovable cop add conflict and support to the main plot: what happens between two best friends when one marries and the other is left behind?
Women (and even a surprising number of men) are flocking to this movie not only because it’s incredibly funny, smart, and superbly acted, but it’s a film any one of us can relate to – we’ve all had friends that we’ve lost to the monumental changes in life: marriage, babies, moves, graduations. While we all may not have shit ourselves in the middle of a busy city street while wearing a couture wedding gown, most of us have shit ourselves at one point in time, sometimes in awkward places.
Finally, women are no longer deprived of an intelligent comedy that doesn’t revolve around an uptight woman and the perpetual frat boy that the film makers force us to believe is perfect for her. With Bridesmaids’ huge success, will Hollywood get the memo and deliver more of the same?
If producers are interested in making money they will, because at last, funny ladies are welcome to the boys club of bathroom humor. Bridesmaids has ushered in a new era for women’s comedy – suddenly, it’s not only okay to have a vagina and tell poop jokes, but according to a study done by eHarmony, men actually love their women to employ juvenile or sarcastic “guy humor.” If you can deliver potty humor, guys think, “I can joke around with you and have sex with you? Jackpot!”
So, ladies get in touch with your inner Daniel Tosh and let the funny shit fly!
As for the rest of the guys still resistant to women and gross out humor – get over it. Pandora’s Toilet has been opened and women aren’t afraid to let you know: yes, we shit and sometimes it can be hilarious.
My daughter is three now, but sometimes I just stare at her in disbelief across the breakfast table. There is a person there, where before there was no person. She grew in my belly like a science project. And now she talks to us. Some days it’s as if she’s been living in our house for always, other days she seems miraculous. Sometimes it’s just weird. The truth about parenting is that nothing can prepare you for just howweird it can be.
The things kids say and the things they make you say….It’s all just unexpected and unpredictable. Living with a three-year-old is a lot like living with a drunk midget. They’re tiny, loud and demanding. And there’s the occasional puddle of puke and random dump on the floor. You never know what the day will bring.
Before I was a mom, I’d see stories on the news about terrible things happening to kids and I would be very judgmental. Not anymore. When I have to go to the bathroom and my toddler is playing quietly, I think to myself, “What’s the worst that could happen in the two minutes I’ll be in the other room?”
Well, the kid could catch on fire or end up unconscious and bald sprawled out next to the electrical outlet with a fork in one hand. But that’s not what I think about when I am desperate for a quiet dump alone without my drunken midget audience smacking my knees and asking why poop smells so awful. All I am thinking is, “Victory is mine! I can shit in peace and the little bugger won’t even know I’m gone.”
Several months ago, I had such an opportunity for a private poop while my daughter was completely lost in her watercolor painting. When I returned from the bathroom, the dog was walking around the house with a pencil hanging out of his ass.
“What happened here?” I asked my little midget.
All I got was a blank stare and a meek “I dunno.”
Sometimes bad stuff happens and I’m right there, powerless to stop the onslaught of bruises or the soiling of clean clothes. The very next day after the pencil-in-dog-ass incident, my daughter was eating at the table with no pants on. I don’t know what she did with them. Just when I was going to ask her what she did with them, she burst out, bright as sunshine, “Mommy I just had a wet fart.”
“What do you mean?”
She sat up and announced, “Look at it Mommy. It looks like a little slug.”
It did. There was a poop slug curled up peacefully on the kitchen chair. I scooped up my daughter roughly and ran to the bathroom, because another ‘slug’ was in the process of escaping her ass.
When I returned to the kitchen, intent on disposing of the wet-fart-poop-slug, my bleach wipes were met with an empty chair. Genuinely perplexed, I stood there examining the other, equally empty, kitchen chairs.
“There was poop here twenty seconds ago,” I mused aloud to nobody in particular but the dog.
The dog who stared at me, licking his lips.
“Oh, no!” I shouted.
His response was to merely lick his lips again and wag his tail, alternating his gaze from me to the kitchen chair as if to say, “Yeah, yeah. Give me another one of those poop slug snacks.”
My first instinct was to reprimand the dog, but then I spotted tiny little shit crumb he had left behind and said, “There you go buddy you missed a spot.”
And then I laughed until my cheeks burned and my abs ached. Not just because my dog ate my daughter’s shit, or because just the day before my daughter had shoved a pencil into the dog’s ass. It was because John Lennon was speaking to me through the radio. Normally when Lennon “speaks” to me through the radio it is some poignant reminder of the simple necessity of peace, but not that day. That day he seemed to speak to me about the wonderful weirdness of parenthood: the drunken midgets, the poop slugs, the poop-eating puppies; all of it.
“Nobody told me there’d be days like these. Strange days indeed. Most peculiar Momma.”
Amen.
