So at 5 a.m. I heard my mom's toilet flush and I had turned off the water to the toilet because lately at 3 a.m. she's flushing the toilet like a hundred times and I didn't feel like having to walk out there and cut that shit out. Turns out (or turds out) that the flushing and cold barefoot walk at 3 a.m. is way better than the cold barefoot walk at 5:30 a.m. when I hear her still moving around now but not flushing and go out there.
She apparently had decided that toilet water is supposed to stay perfect and that you shouldn't let poop fall into the toilet, so she was catching all her poop and wrapping it in tissue and putting it in the trash.
Discovery #1: turns out the manager of my brain draws the line at a pile of a mom's poop in the hand at 5 a.m. I erupted MOM!!! (Staring half sleeping) NO!! What the -- (staring half horrified) we don't touch poop!
She stood there frozen, holding her chocolate friend.
It reminded me of my other husband Will who when he was 4 would take his poops out of the toilet and put them in the sink to roll them around for fun. His mom told him "WILL! We do not play with our grunties!"
I tried to control myself and explain the situation with the non-touching of poop and my mom listened and was genuinely confounded that we don't touch toilet water or that all we do is sit on the toilet. Here she was being this shit hero. (that sounds like a japanese band) She said REALLY. Nobody told me that.
She had me there. Nobody did tell her that.
I encouraged the dropping of the friend into the water and washed her hands with like a Silkwood shower strength and then removed the trash can from her bathroom to try and encourage the waste materials to end up in the watery world under her ass by default, and I turned the water back on to the toilet because that sure as hell didn't work and now we'll see what happens tonight when 3a.m. rolls around.
I told my friend Kurt what happened while he was in a hospital in Arizona worriedly waiting to find out why he's peeing a weird color. Later he texted me "I just tried shitting in my hand, she may be on to something."
Then later that same day (that would still be today), I called our mechanic, Paul, who we've known for 20 years, because his wife took care of her Alzheimer's mother and got paid as a caregiver to do the job, so I wanted to find out how to do that. He gives me her number and I start awkwardly talking to his wife and then she goes on FOR A COVID HOUR first talking about dementia politely and then talking allllll about things I should not know about my mechanic. Including as a bonus addendum her own personal feelings on Armenian genocide, black people moving into the neighborhood, and apparently her feelings on hispanics not having any work ethic. When you hear about your mechanic riding his bike up a mountain and yelling out to ask God why his wife and mother can't get along - I don't know, I just want my car fixed. He's supposed to know everything. And ever since Covid he's convinced he's dying, is needy and scared, has had every kind of test there is and now he just follows his wife around wondering if she's leaving him but most importantly how are my brakes
I have to say I did not stop her from talking and in fact kept saying and then what happened until I started to feel a little dirty. She didn't seem to mind, she was raising the flag of her feelings and even though I have met her once, in a parking lot, 15 years ago when she was in a much nicer car than mine, I DON'T KNOW HER. And now I'm worried about my mechanic's racing heart rate and his 7 months of anxiety.
Which really by the end of the day, made the shit in the hand the BETTER part of my morning. I mean, the world's gone crazy. What's a little fun with your grunties, one time in your life.
