I Can Silver Line a Turd
I am a person who struggles with body fluids. It’s a good thing I’m neither a mother or a medical professional. If I had to choose one to deal with, I guess I would have to pick vomit. Excessive amounts of blood make me lightheaded, and snot—running down a nose or caked to the face, in any of its forms, it doesn’t matter—forces me to avert my gaze. But poop. Poop is the absolute worst.
It smells. The consistency, while varied, is more unpleasant than pumpkin guts, which I also shudder at. And its implications are something I’ve found, at times, to be embarrassing.
Several years ago, I went downstairs to pop a load of laundry in the washer before heading to work and discovered Reba had ventured here in the night and shat everywhere. The concrete floor was smothered in doggie diarrhea. Knowing what a struggle it would be to clean it up, I covered the lower half my face within my shirt. A pathetically futile move, the instant my hand encased in a thin poop bag touched the ice cold soft serve turd, I vomited. Inside my shirt. Bright side: you already know this is a body fluid I could manage.
I flung the soiled shirt directly into a pile of dirty clothes and ran upstairs, laving my arsenal of cleaning supplies behind. Already running late for work, I texted Mesh. “Reba shit all over the laundry room floor and I threw up trying to clean it up. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to be the one to clean it up when you get home later.”
“Know your strengths” is one of my many mottos. I should have just left it for Mesh without trying.
If you are familiar with me in any capacity, you may remember that we lost our beloved Reba in August 2023, but joyfully welcomed Huey Lewis into our little family the following January. Because Labradors are the white men of dog medicine it’s known that delaying his neutering would best mitigate the chance of future cancers and arthritis. So, this past Friday, at 18 months, Huey finally lost his balls. With Mesh working in Abu Dhabi the past two weeks, I, the anxious one, am left in charge of his care and recovery.
But I am okay. More importantly, Huey is. He’s acting himself, just a little sluggish due to the many sedatives necessary to temporarily tame his wild nature. We did hit a rough patch Saturday night. As the evening turned to night, Huey took to pacing and panting. Hours of it. And as the witching hour approached, a third “P” was added. Pooping. Massive amounts, and not in an easy-to-clean place like a concrete basement floor.
My poor buddy, encased in the double shame of both the cone and his couldn’t-be-avoided Moroccan rug squatting, cowered nearby while I, exhausted, still awake at 2:30 in the morning, tried to stoke myself up for the cleaning.
I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.
No Mesh to come to the rescue, there was no think. I had to do.
Supplied with poop bags, a roll of PT, rags, a bucket of bubbles, and a scrub brush, I attacked the mess. Without vomiting, no gagging, not even once, I cleaned all the poop. I credit my success to one thing. The poop was fresh. Warm. Albeit terribly pungent, in the case of fecal matter, my sense of touch proves most sensitive. This explains my absolute revulsion to the cold “cha cha cha” in the laundry room.
Hey, it’s all about the little things. I do hate, no I LOATHE, toxic positivity, BUT if I can silver line a negative, I do. And on Sunday morning, my gratitude was found in a pile of steaming shit. When did you last find yours in the unexpected?
