What's That in Your Mouth?

My attempt to sound "normal" on the phone to the pediatric nurse must have worked.

I know this because when I asked her, "Do you get a lot of calls like this?", she said, "Yeah, about once a week but they usually sound a lot more freaked out than you". 

Hmmm. I guess that's good...(?) 

Or really bad, I think.

I mean should I be more freaked out that my toddler just ate poo? I don't know. I was starting to feel badly that not only was I not "freaked out" by it, but I was only calling the doctor's office as a just-in-case thing. I really didn't think it was a big deal. 

Gross? Yes, totally. 

End of the world? Nah. 

Maybe I would have been more freaked if it hadn't been super-fresh, straight-from-the source poo or if had been someone else's poo. So basically it was not rotten poo and I was fairly certain, because it was her own poo, that there were no parasites that I needed to worry about. At least no new parasites.

How did she get a hold of her own poo? In the bathtub, where she decided to poo that afternoon. And the real bummer was that I'd just cleaned the tub. I felt just like I used to when we had Scruff, the 22 pound orange tabby that liked to leave a giant, stinky poop exactly one minute after his litter box was changed. Except Scruff had the smarts to never even consider eating it afterwards. 

Not so for my little fatty. She would put anything in her mouth as a baby. Jesus, that's a lie. She's two and half now and still puts stuff in her mouth.

List of stuff put in little one's mouth today:

Russian doll set 

(They were purchased by M.I.L. on a cruise somewhere near Russia so they're probably coated in thick, leaded paint. Which would explain a lot, actually)

Diaper 

(It was clean. Whew! Dodged another embarrassing phone call to the pediatrician's office)

One sandal 

(No explanation)

Various choke-hazard sized toys 

(No f-ing clue)

The dog

(No, she was not kissing the dog nor was she biting her either. She just walked up behind her, open mouthed and put her mouth around the back of the dog's neck. I think she might have trying to eat her. I'm not really sure)

And now I realize what an awesome Mom I must be. 

Considering how many toys or animals this kid puts in her mouth daily and how often it is NOT poo, I think I am doing pretty good, actually. Probably better than a lot of other Mom's frankly.

Congratulations to me! I will be accepting your nominations for Mom of the Year for both 2012 and 2013 because I'm pretty sure I've got this poo-eating thing pretty well under control this year and next.

Pubic Hair for the Public

As of next month, I'll be married for thirteen years- and pretty happily actually! Yaaaay! 

And probably not unlike most people that have been married (happily or not) for that long, some personal hygene standards have, well, dropped. Boooo!

I realized when I was, err, grooming in the shower the other day that I was doing it mostly to save embarrassment at the gym swimming pool. Cellulite thighs, can't control that. Besides, those big, shimmering thighs help my not-totally-embarrassing speed while doing laps. 

However little, squiggly black hairs sticking out of the bottom of my suit- Ew! Those CAN be helped and those do not hasten my speed in the pool. That said, they certainly hasten my speed from the locker room into the pool when, on occasion, I realize upon undressing that I forgot to shave and the only place I can count on hiding my unruly pube's is by submerging them and me in the pool.

As stupid (or narcissistic as it sounds), once I realized that I shaved, groomed and/or waxed largely for other naked women (that probably were NOT checking out my pubes anyway) I began to wonder:
Is my Pube-Do still even fashionable these days?

And then:
How do you know when your pubic hair-do has gone out of fashion?

And finally:
How do I learn the latest fashion in Pube-Do's? Or the Pube Don'ts, for that matter?

All I really want to do is a few laps now and again and hopefully a sprint triathlon in the spring but now I feel I have to worry about a freakin' fashion statement. I remember back when I was a pre-pube kid and Big Bush was just fine for everyone (see Porky's if you don't remember or any other movie made in 1982) but ah, things have changed a lot since the feathered hair of the glorious 80s.

These days people are worried about all kinds of things like large labia and the color of their butt cracks and stuff. I mean, imagine the humiliation of showing up at the gym with a flabby labia (I like to call them, "flabia"), a non-albino ass crack and god-forbid, a FULL, untamed bush! I would like to claim that I don't care about these things but I'm happy to say that I am still young enough that it does matter to me, thank god.

It's not as though I'm looking at other women on purpose in the locker room, it's just that some things cannot go unnoticed. For example, the woman in her 70s that swims on the same days as me. Both of us are apparently creatures of habit as we wind up using the same lockers at the same times on the same days every week. As a result, I get to see her unmanaged shock of grey pubes every time she's getting out of her swimsuit and into her wrinkly birthday suit. 

I'm not trying to say she's "yucky"- the ultimate insult for the Under Four crowd in my house- I'm just trying to say that this older woman has obviously lost sight of what is an acceptable length to wear one's Locks of Love.

Either that or she just does not give a shit.

Anyhow, I'm not ready to give up on the idea that my pubes can still look decent. Yet sadly, even though I teach high school and am aware of the latest teen fashions as well as the regrettable resurgence of Day Glo tank tops, I still don't know how the kids are wearing the hair underneath their thongs. And even I can admit that it would be somewhat inappropriate to ask any of my female students about the hair-down-there and frankly, a little presumptuous of me to assume that they all wear thongs. Even though I'm pretty sure they all do.

So what now?

Do I need to start watching the latest porn to see what I'm supposed to look like?

Do I need to watch porn that specifically made for people over the age of 35 so I can wear a style that is age-appropriate? 

Do I need to worry that the whole reason that I'm concerned about my pubic hair has nothing to do with what my husband thinks about my Land Down Under?

And the scariest question of all- should I ask my husband his opinion on the matter??

And what the hell do I do if he says, "landing strip"???