Poop

I am trying to counteract Texas with a gym membership.

The problem is I am counteracting the gym membership with brownies. It is a vicious delicious cycle.

I had already biked 10 miles (without going anywhere, which is really a neat trick). I was two-thirds of the way into my pec flies and ten minutes into watching the Pioneer Woman make white chocolate raspberry bars when my phone buzzed. It was the childcare facility at the gym.

"Your daughter has... um..."

It was the "um" of an arachnophobe in a large room with a tarantula. It was a fearful "um", but one not entirely certain of whether death would be imminent.

The clearly childless girl tried again: "Your daughter has pooped, and I think it's on her pants." This last phrase was said in wonderment and disbelief, as if that very thing she had witnessed was not truly possible according to the laws of physics.

I abandoned my pecs and gluttony to end the childcare attendant's potentially paradigm-altering situation. I entered the playroom, and was welcomed by a familiar smell. Diaper. However, I'd smelled worse. As a mom of a three-year-old and a two-year-old, there's always been worse. Hannah greeted me showing no particular disquietude. "I stinky!" she declared.

"So I gathered." I replied very formally. I grabbed a diaper, some pants, and wipes, and headed into the bathroom. (I will note that the previously mentioned childcare attendant was huddled in the corner of the room, trying not to look like she was cowering.)

I laid Hannah down on the change table, but immediately noted that her landing had a certain squish about it, that was not normal for my twiggy little girl. I stood her back up and noticed the first smudge darkening the table.

I stripped Hannah of her jacket and noticed brown on the inside of it. Fun. I decided not to investigate further, quickly I stripped off her shirt, shoes, socks, and pants. If it had penetrated to her jacket, all other articles were to be considered contaminated.

Hannah is not stable. The proof is all over her shins. Her legs are riddled with the bruises and scraps of clumsiness that would earn her a social worker in any doctor's office. For some reason changing tables are made with contours. Which sucks. When you're daughter is covered in her own poop.

She slipped and my hand went to her low back to steady her. Gross. I'll have to burn those fingers later. She tottered again. Again, I reached out to steady her, but higher up this time. More gross. More digit burning required. Having learned my lesson, when she threatened to fall a third time, I threw my hands up and stepped back. You're on your own kid. (Star quality parenting here.)

My encounters with the offensive element had led me to ask the question asked by conspiracy theorists and double agents everywhere: just how high up does this thing go? And much like the spies, I was not pleased with the answers I received.

My gaze travelled from my daughters diaper line, to her lumbar spine, to her shoulder blades. Poop, poop, poop. Reluctantly, my eyes scaled up to her hairline.

Ah crap.

There it was: flecks of brown in the wispy tangles of her hair.

Supermoms get it. We see trouble, we square our shoulders, and we plunge ahead. Nothing scares supermoms.

However... every amazing mom, in a moment of crisis, has at least one second where their confident swagger retreats to the corner, starts rocking back and forth declaring a breathless succession of, "I shouldn't have to do this. Ishouldn'thavetodothis!"

But no one came to rescue me. No one appeared who had any more reason to have to handle all this poop than me. The poop fairy did not appear to wave her magic wand and make it all not so disgusting. So I squared my shoulders and dove in.

Half a package of wipes and a bottle of hand sanitizer later I had a mostly clean daughter. I washed her hair with foaming hand cleanser, scrubbed my hands like they had been soaked in bubonic plague, and dressed my little girl. Mostly.

The lack of smell was misleading. When I first walked in I thought, "This poor newb with no children is making a mountain out of a mole hill." But she was right to fear. It was a mountain. A big brownish-orange poo mountain. In my overconfidence I neglected to bring a new shirt for my girl.

I slowly pushed open the bathroom door, and my shameless daughter ran out half dressed, put her hands on her knees, juttered her teeth forward and laughed like a hissing cockroach. If the attendant had backed any further in the corner, she would have been scaling the wall. I whipped out a Minnie Mouse shirt, popped it over my maniac's beautiful little head and asked very nicely if she would kindly stop being a detriment to the planet's population boom.

The poo clothes went into a plastic bag. We gathered our stuff, thanked the poor, nice lady, and left.

All the mom's out there right now are like, "Yeah, we all have a poop story. Mine was in a gas station." Or a swimming pool. Or the backyard.

But here's the thing: I haven't opened the bag. I just can't do it. It is sitting there on the dryer all poopy and nasty and stinky, and I.CAN'T.OPEN.IT. The me in the corner keeps winning the fight every time I go to handle it.

"I shouldn't have to do this! Ishouldn'thavetodothis!" Where is the poop fairy who does laundry? Shouldn't there be a service that does this, that takes nasty pooped on clothes and washes them in a big, terrible machine, and returns them under your pillow while you sleep? If moms wrote fairytales that's what would happen.

You are a better mom than me! Because we all have a poop story, but I can't end it. I can't face that demon and be done with it. I don't know what to do. I am failing at momhood with every stinky second that bag sits there. At this point I think I would rather throw the whole thing in the trash than try and fix it. Who cares that it contains one of Hannah's two jackets? She still has one left! ... for now.