Taking care of business

Walking past the hallway bathroom the other night, I glanced in (because the door was wide open) only to find the MR. standing in front of the toilet…peeing. Rather than keep on walking, I actually stopped in the doorway and asked him a question about something random, to which he answered me by…farting. He thought that was pretty funny. I, on the other hand, did not. And that’s when reality hit me like a martini hangover: I was actually engaging in a conversation with my husband as he peed and farted. How the heck did we get here? And when the heck did we stop closing the bathroom door?

Now, to be clear, the door is shut when anything resembling #2 is involved. Thankfully that is still considered a classified situation. But if it’s a quick pee, well, we seem to have adopted an open-door policy. I’ll admit, I’m just as guilty as the MR. on this one. For whatever reason, that extra little step of closing the door just seems like a bother.

It wasn’t always like this. When we were dating and even when we were living in our first apartment together, we always closed the door. Always. Yet somewhere along the way in our 1620+ days of marriage, things changed. I remember the first time I left the door open and the MR. found me sitting so daintily on the pot. He couldn’t stop laughing and I think he actually said it was cute to see me so vulnerable. Funny thing about a lot of habits that seem "cute" when you're just getting to know someone is that they seldom hold their charm over the long haul.

One of the best things about buying a house is that we no longer have to share a bathroom. Our apartment in the city only had one teeny tiny bathroom and it was a challenge, to say the least. I think the lowest point came one night when I was brushing my teeth and the MR. sauntered in, lifted up the toilet seat and started…peeing. Now I don’t know if it was the smell of someone else’s pee or the random drop that splashed onto my cheek as I leaned over the sink (GROSS!) that did me in, but from that point forward I insisted that all potty business had to be done when the other person was out of the room. (Clearly, I forgot to also include a clause about closing the door.)

When we first moved into our house, the MR. was bummed about the idea of separate bathrooms because he said it felt like we were roommates. Truth be told, I also think he was a little bitter about having to share his bathroom with the cat. I don’t blame him, really. She’s one pretty kitty with one stinkin’ arse. But the master bath was way too small to share, let alone house the litter box, so there really wasn’t another option. Besides, I’d had enough of finding his nose hairs in the sink. And I’m sure, if he was honest with himself, he’d had enough of cleaning my long locks out of the shower drain.

If you think about it, there are a lot of names for that most sacred of spaces wherein the toilet lives. Bathroom. Loo. Water closet. WC. Lavatory. Commode. Privy. Shithouse. Shitter. Latrine. Crapper. Boardroom. Office. When I was in the first grade, a substitute teacher asked if anyone wanted to go to the “RESTroom”. Thinking that this was some marvelous hidden room where I could take an afternoon nap, I raised my hand. After all, first grade is exhausting, is it not? Seeing my hand in the air, the sub said loudly so all could hear, “Darrah, you just went to the bathroom!” And that’s how I learned that a bathroom is also called a restroom, much to my profound disappointment and embarrassment.

Speaking of elementary school, I can only thank my lucky stars that we didn’t have computers way back in the 70s and early 80s. Because, you see, on the earlier versions of Word (and potentially recent versions too), if you spell-checked “Darrah”, the first word that popped up was diarrhea. Can you imagine? I would’ve been Diarrhea Darrah for all of eternity.

As it turned out, the only nickname I had as a kid was Big Ears and it didn’t stick past 2nd grade. My next official nickname came in middle school when I was christened Double-D Darrah because I developed some rather large ta-tas before most girls. Living with that nickname was hardly a cakewalk, but I still think Diarrhea Darrah would have been worst. I mean, I can just imagine how the kids would have taunted me at recess.

“When Darrah’s slidin’ into first
and her pants start to burst
Diarrhea, diarrhea.

When her stomach really hurts
and she knows it’s the squirts
Diarrhea, diarrhea.”

The moral of the story? For the love of God, spell-check your favorite names before you give one to your kid. As a side note, you should also be careful what you wish for. I always let the MR. read my rants, raves and revelations before I post them because I think it's important that he feels comfortable with whatever I write about our personal lives. Funny thing is that after reading this particular rant, the MR. started closing the door every time he goes into the bathroom. And for some odd and potentially disturbing reason, I feel left out.

For more stanzas of The Diarrhea Song, go here or for a sing-along, go here.

Sometimes it pays to get lost

Ever get lost on the web? I have. Plenty of times. Damn Google. Sometimes it's about procrastination, other times it's about... well... I guess it's always about procrastination. The surfing starts out innocently enough, where I'm just trying to kill a few minutes between projects. Next thing you know, it's an hour (or two) later, and I'm frantically searching on eBay for a black-and-white photo of Molly Ringwald from her Pretty in Pink days because I've suddenly decided to create a photo gallery dedicated to 80s idols. (True story.) When I'm in that deep, all I can do is click my ruby slippers three times and hope that somehow I find my way home from Oz.

Trouble is, I'm a freelance writer and I can only bill for work I'm actually doing. So unless I have a client who also shares my nostalgic yearning for John Hughes movies, I'm sorta screwed when I waste precious working hours on randomness. But every once in a while, the mindless surfing pays off. And today was one of those days. I don't know how I stumbled upon Communicatrix, but it was worth the trip (pun intended). So as I work on the next installment of The Mrs. Chronicles, I thought this story, written by another quirky writer, was worth sharing. It gave me a new laugh line.

XOXO,
The MRS.


The black hole between okay and fantastic
"I quit smoking about 20 years ago. (Go ahead—applaud. I’ll wait.) Thing is, while my 2-pack-a-day habit wasn’t doing me any favors, neither was it impeding my life in any major way. You X- and Y-ers might not know this, but back in ’87, you could still smoke most places, like…indoors. In your hospital room! Plus lots of other people smoked, too, so you had your pick of people to date and hang out..."

Want to know how it ends? Keep reading

Sorry folks, the uterus is closed. The test should have told you.

Ignorance is a funny thing. (And just to be clear, I don’t mean funny as in haha.) Before the MR. and I walked into the first fertility clinic, I said with complete confidence and total conviction that IVF was not for me, and that if we got to that point, then we would simply adopt (as though that would be a piece of cake in comparison). Because I wasn’t going to put all those drugs in my body. No way, no how, no thank you. I really and truly believed in what I was saying at the time, but looking back now on five rounds of artificial insemination and three rounds of IVF, I think it’s safe to say that I was full of shit. Or ignorance. Same same.

The rollercoaster of infertility gains fierce momentum with each passing period that screams, “NO BABY FOR YOU.” Before I’d have a chance to take stock and catch my breath, I’d find myself signing up to ride it again and again and again. And each time, my doctors would add more drugs or new drugs or stronger drugs. Toward the end, my belly looked like a pincushion and my hormones were so jacked up that I was in a perpetual state of the worst PMS you can imagine for a looooong time. Kinda like this.

Adding insult to injury are the damn pregnancy tests. My personal favorite (and I say that with serious sarcasm) was the one with the sad face/smiley face indicator. It’s like the test was mocking me: “Sorry, but this just isn’t your month. Here’s a cute sad smiley face to commiserate with you.” Even better is the one that boldly states Not Pregnant. I remember thinking as I sat on the toilet staring at those two frustrating words, “Yea, I get it already. Why not put it in neon lights and add a little sing-a-long jingle, just to really drive the point home?” After lamenting about the tests to a good friend, she told me how one month she’d truly thought she was pregnant, until while peeing on the pregnancy test she got her period. We laughed—until we cried.

After the last round of IVF failed in the worst possible way, I can safely say that I wanted to try again about as much as I wanted to run straight into a concrete wall with 5-foot spikes sticking out of it. After three years of trying to conceive, the MR. and I were utterly defeated and deflated. We’d picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off so many times. I knew I couldn’t do it again. I was done. The uterus was closed.

What I’ve come to realize is that every woman dealing with infertility has her breaking point. And it’s different for each of us. There is a couple in our adoption workshop that went through six rounds of IVF. Six f-ing rounds. But I get it. Even though I couldn’t have done it. I get it. It’s sort of like playing the slots in Vegas. You keep throwing dollar after dollar at it because maybe, just maybe, you’ll hit the jackpot on the next spin. And then the next thing you know, you've lost $80 in 15 minutes. (I speak from experience.)

More than anything, what feeds the dream is that some people do hit the IVF jackpot—they get pregnant. Sometimes they hit the double jackpot and get twins (kinda like a 2-for-1), which makes it that much harder to walk away. But, like Kenny Rogers said, “You gotta know when to fold ‘em.”

I’ve found peace with the idea that I’m not going to be pregnant. And I have to tell you, in all honesty, I’m so completely okay with it. I’m 39 years old and I really want to just get this mommy show on the road already. Because you see, I don’t think giving birth makes someone a better mom. As one woman in our adoption workshop so eloquently put it: “For me, mother is a verb. Not a noun.”

I daydream about being in the hospital room with our birth mom when our child is born. It brings tears to my eyes to know that I'll be a part of the process, a witness to the miracle of life and to my child's first moments in the world. Just like any other mom.

A Mr. and Mrs. Who Tweet Together...

Something struck me as beyond funny when I got to my Twitter page and saw that my tweet and the MR.'s tweet were stacked together. Between his photo, his Twitter name, his post and my post, what can I say. He's quite the catch, no? Too bad more gals can't find hillbilly martini drinkers who waterproof basements of local strip clubs.