72 Hours

          Potty-training is not going as smoothly as I had hoped. We are in year 2.5 of attempting to get our kid to just go poo on the fucking toilet already. Concerned that maybe there was an issue, we visited her paediatrician on Tuesday. Her diagnosis: holding it with a side of enlarged adenoids. The adenoids were a bonus.

So, holding it is a behavioural issue which involves hoarding her shit to the point that the colon/rectum and brain are friends off. Her prescription, which wasn’t really a prescription, was not for more cowbell. It was for polyethylene glycol. PEG. I knew of PEG. I had seen it administered in a little girl who had a similar issue and who started to magically connect the dots on the whole toilet thing. Hopeful, we left her office with the prescription (just a piece of paper with the dosage, really) and entered the final stage of the potty-training process; acceptance.

            “It can take up to 72 hours to start to work, and you will need to use it continuously for three months,” the paediatrician had said in her thick Balkan accent.

            Fast forward to today.  

            Seventy-two hours later.

It started to work.

            FUCK.

            We have tried to use “poop on the potty and make us proud” as a way to cajole her into going where nature and John Crapper intended. However, the messages between tiny tot bottom and tiny tot brain are lost in translation. Colon says “toilet now,” brain says “quick, hide!”

            And so was the case as I was watching the men’s big air competition at the Olympics. I was nestled in, cheering on the athletes, high fiving my kid when someone [a Canadian] really “stomped the landing.” I went for a high five, but someone wasn’t coming over to dole it out. Rather she was standing on the dog’s bed with wide eyes. Then the smell crept over like a wraith and hit me right in the nostrils.

This was not the first time I had to clean up mess today. So, I chased her to the bathroom on my main floor. The one without a shower. The one without a suitable place to dispose of toxic waste.

            Now many of you may remember my adventure in Boston Pizza. The Shit Incident of 2017. The scale of this left that one behind. I actually longed for a narrow dank cavernous public stall, because that would have meant that the shit was manageable.

            I lifted up the skirt she was wearing over her third pair of pants for the day. I noticed a bulge. Since she was wearing black pants, I did not notice the state of matter of the bulge. Being a veteran of all things poop, I started off by removing all clothing, including socks. The bulge would probably just stay put and I would be able to dunk the under-roos in the toilet Wade-styleä.

            No.

            As I pulled her pants down, a streak of liquid not unlike the pumpkin seed butter I add to my overnight oats, smeared down the back of her leg. I abandoned the training seat. I knew that this was no time to be trying to aim that blasphemous mess into a small hole. I got the pants off and tossed them, nonchalantly into the sink. There was shit inside them and it was starting to trickle out. Next was the balloon of shit, beginning to seep through her underwear. I gingerly pulled back the waistband and found the rectal hoardings. I fully expected to find the remains of a mummified cat in there.

            Still not breathing I gently started to pull the underwear down while getting her to begin to sit on the toilet. Hindsight being what it is, I should’ve been pessimistic about keeping those underwear and cut them off. Instead, I blazed a trail of effluence down her legs. Once she was comfortably seated, I finished the nasty removal. I tried, in vain, to keep them level as I moved them from legs to sink. Again, too optimistic. Before I knew it, there was a globule trail of shit on the counter leading to the ruin of a sink.

            I surveyed my mess.

            I could just leave and find a new family, I thought to myself, if I’m lucky there will already be teenagers who know how to do this. The moment passed. Instead of peeling out of the garage, tunes cranked, wheels smoking, into a blissful life, I ran upstairs and obtained the diaper genie. We still have it for emergencies like this one. Now I had to set up for a battle of epic proportions. Mono é Poopo.

            When I came back, the smell had thickened like a horrible shit sauce. I turned on the fan. She hates the noise, but whatever. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the remains of a roll of paper towel and two all-purpose cleaners. Matches and gasoline seemed like a good alternative. But I do like my house and am pretty sure Wade and the insurance company frown on arson-related cleaning.

            Tools of shit battle acquired, I began to clean up the counter and sink. I carefully picked up the panties in a wad of paper towel. The contents therein had squished out and left quite the pile of effluence on the sink and on the pants, which were chilling out in the sink like a frat boy at a hot tub party. I grabbed more paper towel, unwinding from the roll it like a crazy person with a germ phobia. I removed the underwear with the paper towel and put them in the holder of shit, there was no hope of them ever having a normal life again. Then I turned my attention to the pants. I quickly rinsed them and spirited them away to the washer. Once that was done, I started on the sink. It was like trying to clean up paint with more paint only the paper towel didn’t have anything on it initially and the paint was shit. Into the genie the paper towel went. I wiped the debris off the counter, my little helper pointed out more on the side of the counter, hanging on precariously like Tom Cruise in a Mission Impossible rock climbing stunt. Thankfully none had fallen on the floor. Win for me.

            “Thanks sweetie,” I said, trying to maintain my last shard of dignity.

            I sprayed the counter and sink liberally with cleaning supplies. The apple and lavender scents barely made a dent in the stench that my child had caused.

            “Are you proud of me Mommy?”

            So many comebacks boiled to the forefront of my mind.

            I’d be a touch prouder if you understood abstract concepts like “before” and “on the potty without revolting", I thought to myself. “Yes, I am proud of you,” I said, unenthusiastically.

            “Yayyyyy!”

Then came the next shitty part of this adventure. Cleaning her off sans showerhead. I began by pulling the rest of the paper towel off the roll. Then I soaked it. My first swipe was nothing but horror. The second, not much better. I repeated the process until I had enough off of her to ensure an expeditious run up the stairs to a shower without leaving a trail requiring the carpet cleaner. Hosing her off never felt so satisfying.   

Freshly cleaned, I left her to get dressed and I went back downstairs to finish cleaning up the bathroom. The ruin of the toilet seat staring up at me, like I had wronged it somehow. Thankfully I had one toilet bowl cleaner left. I have a feeling I’m going to need to buy more.

In conclusion. Fuck you PEG. Fuck. You.