Life

A Bunch of Crap, Both Literal and Figurative

Hi. I’m new here.

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I feel like this says so much about the past 24 hours

That’s the only explanation I can find for why I had no baby wipes in my car; okay, that’s an exaggeration, I had two wipes and they were both dry. I went to get Rowan out of his seat and he was sitting in a pile of poop. All over his seat, his legs, and his clothes. Did I mention I was standing in the street outside of Lorelei’s school? Because yeah.

I searched around my car for things that might help.

Receipts and pieces of cracker?

Empty juice carton and random playground rocks?

Fast food cups and artwork? I could maybe work with that, but then what if Lorelei sees her one-of-a-kind mermaid drawing covered in shit and balled into a Bojangles cup? That’s future therapy bills right there.

A receiving blanket! I knew there was a purpose to so. many. receiving blankets.

I carefully extracted him from the pooptastrophy and put him on the stolen borrowed hospital blanket. His outfit was one that pulls over his head and I didn’t have any scissors. I briefly considered using the seatbelt cutter in my glove box, but ultimately decided that maybe I could just roll the poopy part into itself and slide it over his head.

For those keeping score, I then had a mostly naked baby who had poop on his shoulder, legs, and arms. And two dry baby wipes. I used the receiving blanket itself to wipe him off as well as I could, used a burp cloth I scrounged up to cover the poop in his seat, held my head high, and walked into the school.

The bathroom had the faucets that only run while you’re pushing the handle down, which made holding the baby and wetting paper towels almost impossible. When we got to Lorelei’s class she pointed out the poop behind Rowan’s ear. I was not made for these days.

Rowan has nothing on the amount of crap the North Carolina legislature managed to excrete yesterday. I’ve got a whole post about it, but I’m waiting to calm down before I decide if I want to share. Because I get rationally angry when lawmakers start secretly passing laws with no purpose except to discriminate. I hope my LBGTQ readers know that #WeAreNotThis. North Carolina is the best and the worst of the nation all rolled into one. Sometimes living here is a little like sitting through The Vagina Monologues as performed by your most conservative relatives.

Sans-Segue Interlude!

I’ve had a couple more essays published by Huffington Post, including my first piece that some people didn’t like. I think that is a benchmark of success. There are an astounding number of people who do not understand sarcasm, hyperbole, and satire. You guys, “she has a sarcasm problem” is in my bio. I’m enjoying the comments that are taking me extremely literally, missing the entire overarching point about anxiety and annoying Pinteresty memes. Not saying that I assume people really mean I should never do the dishes again! It was written with levity after my own house had devolved into chaos (that’s my actual living room in the haiku photo). I wonder if they think I really just go around cleaning constantly and ignoring my children? It’s all hilarious. I’m having fun hitting “like” on the most critical comments. They’re getting very butthurt about me being butthurt, except I wasn’t actually butthurt. So who’s butthurt now? A few people seem to be personally and deeply both offended and angry. Oh comment sections, I love you — never change.

 

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Rhiannon Giles

Rhiannon Giles is a freelance writer from Durham, North Carolina. She interweaves poignancy and humor to cover topics ranging from prematurity to parenting and mental health. Her work has been featured on sites such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Parents, Scary Mommy, McSweeney's, and HuffPost. You can find her being consistently inconsistent on her blog, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

2 thoughts on “A Bunch of Crap, Both Literal and Figurative

  • oye. i shouldn’t have read the comments, because I want to tell everyone how much I hate them. But, then again, the comments the past couple of days has made me want to say “i hope you die” to a lot of people. I won’t troll.

    Reply
  • Great read, you have talent! Sincere, not sarcastic I promise.

    Reply

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