#166: The heaping bowl of Cheerios and why this blog just won't die

When I dump at work, I want to be a ninja. I lived with two women for a year after college, and only once did I have any indication either had ever moved their bowels. Women tend to spread out the action over a day since they already have to sit down if they drink a Sprite too fast. Men usually make it an event, arming themselves with enough entertainment for a cross-country flight. I haven't done it in a while, but I've brought an iPod in there.

I want to be a ninja at work, dumping quickly, quietly, unnoticed, deadly. But if you go with one big meal as opposed to dump tapas, you have to be able to disappear for ten minutes, and hopefully use a remote bathroom. My current job is about a 7 on both counts -- I can kinda slip out unnoticed, and the bathroom is kinda remote. I dump there daily, but I can never fully relax, and I seldom do work I can be proud of.

The other day, I had a heaping bowl of Cheerios for breakfast, followed by another half-bowl to finish the milk. Chasing that with a 20 oz. coffee had predictable results, and it was easily my best showing so far in 2006. I felt not only lighter, but generally healthier. Expelling waste matter is just that, and every dump is like a form of detoxification. When I'm eating fiber and drinking dandelion tea, I feel like I'm cleaning house internally, and I feel good.

More than that, I almost feel like I've accomplished something. If I have to blow my nose in the middle, I'll throw it in the waste basket so as not to sully my new creation. I always pause for a second to see what I've accomplished before I turn it into alligator food. I'm rarely disappointed.

Now, I know I've had a hard time keeping this blog regular enough to reach the magical number 365 in anything less than 3-4 years. It's a ridiculous venture, and often an embarrassing one to admit I'm a part of. At the same time, this is only my second update in six months and yet the blog somehow continues to find an audience. Some people do like reading it, and when I'm in the right mood, I do like writing it... although I'm not convinced I'm ready to take my place in pop culture as "the Mr. Rogers of crap" (which I've been called).

But I also can't deny that there are days when a heaping bowl of Cheerios will yield a result so bountiful, so wonderful, so overwhelmingly epochal that I have to do something about it. And that's why this blog just won't go all the way down the drain. Every time my coffee sends me to the can, I wonder, "Is this the day to restart 365 Dumps?" And so I'll return to the throne yet again, this time not offering impossible promises of daily updates. Instead, I'll vow what you me and General Mills know deep down: it may take me another decade, but I'll get to 365, dammit. Stay tuned...

#165: Talkin' loud and sayin' nothing

Damn near got myself fired from my temp job yesterday. Well, not really -- they all like me, and my 22 year-old supervisor seemed very impressed that I figured out the voicemail system all by myself. If the assignment ends prematurely, it will be my decision. Or the result of the kind of behavior I got away with yesterday. Basically, I had crippling, debilitating gas, and I didn't hide it very well.

Now, my awesome wife will back me up on this -- I am uniquely blessed in that my farts don't smell. Not all the time, but we're talking 90 percent of the time. This is an incredibly good thing considering how frequently the subject would come up otherwise. Also, if I keep it quiet ("modulate," as I put it) I can surreptitiously let rip just about anywhere. It's just that 10 percent of the time when I guess wrong that we get into trouble.

I think the reason my farts don't smell is that they never signal a dump waiting in the wings. My "theory" is that when you've got a dump brewing in you, farting is like blowing a fan over a pile of shit. When you've already dumped, it's like blowing a fan that makes a funny noise. My bite was minimal yesterday, but the bark was substantial.

I was mostly fine, mostly hiding them when I was left alone at the front desk. But then one laid by the postage machine was bad. Real bad. When I do land in that 10 percent, it's almost as if they're extra potent to make up for lost time. I was sure I'd be fired on the spot, and with good reason. But that one particular poison dissipated before anyone could smell the evidence, and I spent the rest of the afternoon sneaking into the bathroom to perform small trumpet symphonies out of my butt.

Later that night, I borrowed my sister-in-law's car for some errands, and about ten minutes into the voyage, I discovered my seat was hot. I worried that I'd actually used my butt too much and the damn thing was overheating! Then I regained my senses and realized she had a seat warmer that was switched on.

Sorry I went away for a while. You should be used to it by now.

#164: DeTox tea: not for beginners

The personal training sessions have progressed from exercise to a comprehensive meal plan: six mini-meals throughout the day, balanced between protein, carbs, and fats. I've also started taking supplements -- a multivitamin, antioxidants, and a "fat burner" that supposedly helps the liver process fats. On my own, I've also started drinking DeTox tea, which is supposed to help cleanse the body of impurities.

You can imagine what all this has done to our good friend the colon. Unlike most typical American males, I was not chowing on burgers and fries twice a week, guzzling sodas, and slathering sandwiches in mayonnaise. I ate too much, but it was more nuts, cheese, and beer. Oh, and vanilla lattes, muffins, and other temptations of the coffeehouse trade. Not good, but not McDonald's. And all along, I've been feasting on veggies and whole grains, so fiber isn't exactly a new thing.

Apparently dandelion and burdock root are a different matter.

It could be the new meal plan, or the Fat Burner 1, or the DeTox tea. Something has set off a chaotic reaction in me. A few months ago, my wife urged me to try a "colon cleanse" with her, which largely consisted of eating vegetables and drinking teas like this one. It supposedly would dislodge things that had been building up in the colon for decades. I looked at pictures of things that had come out of people and was stunned. (See for yourself; not for the faint of heart.) What amazing blogging I could get from it!

The plan fell by the wayside, but I'm thinking a lot about those pictures lately. Nothing like that came out of me, but the consistency was VERY different. It didn't feel bad, or sharp. But it looked jagged. It was dark. It was plentiful. And after the adventure with the nutrition bar a couple days ago, which also made me feel like the dump was coming from a deeper place, I'm thinking that things are really on the move inside of me. More DeTox tea on the way.

#163: Consider this

When I shop for something, I do all sorts of research, read reviews, compare models, find different places to buy from. Then I make an impulsive decision and just buy something. Except that I've internalizes all this information, so it's not entirely spontaneous. It's like thinking about a problem for a week and not coming up with a solution, but when someone asks for your answer, you talk and discover you have one. Over the week, you think and you mull and you consider and you think more and when the time is right, you talk and you nail it.

Yesterday, I opened the coffeehouse at 8:30. I worked an eight-hour shift and I went to band practice and I came home and I watched the Red Sox and I had dinner and when the time was right, I took a dump and I nailed it. It was as if I'd had the whole day to think and plan it out, to consider and compare, and then when it was time, I just sat down and knocked it out of the park.

#162: What the hell do they put in those bars, anyway?

Today was my first meeting with a personal trainer. I've struggled with my weight ever since I was old enough to understand that I should. For me it's more a problem of exercise than diet, although the two really go hand in hand, demonstrated most recently by the fact that my training package included a bottle of multivitamins and a bunch of meal replacement bars, cookies, and drink powders. For my first session, I was told not to eat or drink anything beforehand, just bring a bar from the pack. And a towel, but that's only relevant for my upcoming blog, 365 Things My Cat Has Sat On and Gotten Hair All Over.

The trainer weighed and measured, unsuccessfully showed me how to find my pulse, taught me some basic weight training and cardio techniques, and when we'd set up the next appointment to lay out a menu plan and begin real exercise, I left. The gym's right around the corner from Karma, so I grabbed a latte and finished off the nutrition bar I'd started during my workout.

When I got home, I thought my stomach was going to explode. An old friend used to say when she needed to take a dump that her butt felt heavy, but nothing like that has ever been the case with me. It's all lower stomach, or rather some intestine I don't know the name or function of. But everything down there can be categorized as gut, especially given the above paragraph where I out myself as a fatty fat-fat. So when I feel it, I feel it in my gut. And oh, did I feel it in my gut.

It was a long and exhaustive effort. Nobody else was home, but I'm sure I was moaning, possibly loudly enough to disturb the neighbors. When I looked at my work at the end, it wasn't particularly more than normal, but it felt like it had come from deeper down in my system. Usually for an experience like that I have to do a post-mortem to determine the culprit, but this time it seemed fairly obvious that it had come in bar form, and I began to wonder if maybe I've signed up for some kind of colon cleanse diet without realizing it.

#161: Dumping, not blogging

I started my primary blog in October, 2003, and by mid-November I had settled on a format of "blog tapas," all short posts. One original tagline was, "Get in, get out, quick surgical strikes. Drive-by blogging." It was a paean to the short attention span of the internet, and also to answer to the sad fact that most people write too much not because they have a lot to say but because they're bad writers.

Lately, I've been wanting to do more with my blog than just discuss my latest thoughts on Manny Ramirez and iced coffee. I've wanted to do more actual writing. And so I've ditched the short-posts mantra that was the bread and butter of Surgical Strikes for nearly two years. The posts have gotten longer and more thought out, and while many are still short, it's hardly drive-by blogging. I'm still writing the same amount of words a day, but now they're spread over 1-3 posts instead of 7-10.

This morning, as I took maybe the quickest non-rushed dump of my life, I realized that my dumping frequency has been inversely proportional to my blogging. Whereas the first 28+ years of my life was marked by one long post a day, I've now taken to making surgical strikes, still accumulating the same result but spread out over three short "posts" a day. This morning's was so lightning quick that it felt like drive-by pooping. I wonder if I've so thoroughly internalized blog culture that it's gone all the way to my colon.

#160: The dump wants what it wants

Today has been earmarked as a day to get stuff done. I've been procrastinating on half a dozen things, but today will be productive. One task at the top of my list is laundry, which I prefer to do at night, but must be done during the day this week. It's always hard timing the washing machine against my shower, so I figured I'd start the laundry, take a dump, and then have less time to have to wait for hot water.

The thing is, I'm never able to just "do laundry." There's prep time involved. Sorting lights, darks, whites. Finding dirty clothes that didn't make it in the basket, and removing clean ones that did. Pre-spotting. It's only a 5-10 prep time, but when the urge to purge hits, that's an eternity, and telling my colobn to hold on just isn't an option. It became clear I would have to rearrange the order on the fly. Because once the launch codes have been given, you can't stop the missiles.

It was a ghastly affair, slow and constant and way too squishy. I've been enduring the days of multiple mini-dumps, but this went above sea-level and felt like it should hold me for the day. Which is good. I've been feeling so uninspired by my pooping adventures that I actually contemplated a field trip. "Maybe I'll dump someplace interesting," I announced to my tolerant wife last night. And maybe tomorrow I still will. But today, there's laundry to do.

#159: The lost dump

I've never understood people who forget to eat. Suddenly it'll be 9:00 and they'll say, "Huh, I guess I never had dinner." Impossible in my world. Although come to think of it, I've forgotten to eat lunch lately, so maybe I live in more of a glass house than I realized. Still, I never thought it would be possible to forget a dump.

And maybe I didn't. All I know is that the day is nearing its end and I can't remember if I made a deposit to the Los Angeles sewer system or not. I definitely had a false start in the morning, and I suspect that I returned for a second round, but I can't be sure. Which is shocking. That's right, the country's preeminent poo chronicler cannot remember whether or not he did in fact have a poo to chronicle.

One reason I write this blog is that there are few universals in life, but we all eat, we all sleep, we all defecate. You read plenty about the first two, but #2 gets overlooked. The fact that I could forget today's is a sad reminder that we largely take our time on the toilet for granted. Was it a masterpiece? Was it a failure? Or was it a fiction? It's lost to the annals of time, and I have not managed to hook my toilet up to the TiVo, so I can't rewind and find out.

And for this, fair readers, I apologize. I must be more diligent, lest some of my better material be flushed before it can be shared. Tomorrow we begin anew.

#158: Thrice bitten, still dumb

The best thing about a three-day weekend is a four-day work week. Likewise, the worst thing about sleeping until noon is an abbreviated daytime. You start the day already having wasted the morning, your breakfast becomes your lunch, and you can't focus on a late-morning dump because you're half-asleep on the pot. I think that led to today's rare triple-dump... which happened to coincide with a sadly not rare brain fart.

I could tell nothing was doing in #1, so I had my bathroom umps call a rain delay. It didn't feel like more was coming anyway, so it was best not to let my feet fall asleep yet again. When I got up to wash my hands, I discovered there was no soap left in the dispenser. I had actually learned this last night but forgot to refill it. I had figured I'd just do it later, then hadn't. Needing to wash up before I even looked around for the big soap jug, I pumped and pumped and pumped and eventually managed to scrape up some residue, just enough to get a good lather. I decided I really should refill the soap.

Dump #2 was by a by the books affair -- just enough struggle to make me feel like I'd earned it, and just enough poo to make me feel like I didn't waste 10 minutes. Good stuff. But when it was over, I rediscovered the empty soap dispender. Why hadn't I filled it last time? Quadruple-pumping it got the absolute last elements of soap, half a pea's worth. Seriously, I thought, I really have to refill that thing.

You can probably recite the next part along with me -- dump #3, mild aftershock, I go to wash my hands and find I STILL haven't refilled the soap. This time I have to unscrew the pump and pour out the remaining soap into my hands. As of this writing, I still have yet to refill the soap. I think hitting "publish" might just shame me into it, though. Might.

NOTE: Meaghan made me watch a show called "100 Things Removed from the Human Body" the other day and they totally cheat to make it all fit. As in, they spent five minutes profiling a guy with a javelin in his face, then quickly list nine other things people got impaled with so they can hit 100 in an hour. I know there are three dumps here, and I could make this entry count for three. But these first 158 of the 365 dumps have already taken over 400 days, which says that if this blog was a sport, it would be baseball because there's clearly no clock.

#157: Broken porcelain, blood, and other disasters

Sometimes my wife will wake up wanting pancakes. I'm not sure if she dreamed of pancakes, fell asleep wanting pancakes or what. But one of her first words will be "pancakes." This morning, one of my first words was "dump." This is a rarity as usually need coffee and some time in a vertical position to let gravity do its stuff. But when doodie calls, I answer.

I suspect I'm on more of a set schedule dump-wise than I've wanted to admit, and I slept really late this morning. Which means that I was still in bed when my colon pulled out the large triangle, clanged it all around, and yelled, "Come 'n git it!"

I slept late because I closed the coffeehouse last night and didn't get home until shortly before 2 am. It was a particularly trying shift, marked by two very disparate toilet-related events: 1) an unexpected visit by author and 365 Dumps patron saint Jonathan Ames, who likely now thinks of me as a stalker; and 2) a non-customer who hogged the bathroom for almost 20 minutes, punctuating her time with an astounding crash.

"Everything all right in there?"

"The top of the toilet broke."

It took her a while longer to evacuate, even after I threatened to open the door with the spare key. Sure enough, she had discovered a way to shatter the toilet top. "I was doing number two," she announced, and I only half-believed her. Good instincts, because when I cleaned up later I found evidence of something having been burned. Maybe pot, maybe crack, maybe some other delightful narcotic I'm not yet familiar with. In any case, she'll not be using the bathoom again on my watch.

This morning's toilet adventures were only slightly less damaging. It was a bountiful if semi-soft effort, likely caused in part by the coffee that had kept me up until 4 am. Worse, when I blew my nose, the tissue came back red. I used to get bloody noses pretty frequently as a kid; every time we'd start or stop using the heaters, my nose would go crazy. This continued all the way through college and I remember being in the dining hall with a napkin on my nose wondering what I'd do if this happened at a frat party when I was looking to score.

This one was short-lived as I've had a lot of chances to develop a system for stopping a bloody nose. But I don't like anything to distract me from a dump, short of the entertainment I've brought in expressly for that purpose. But it's become increasingly obvious, things just happen, and you either go with it or you don't.

#156: The chance run-in

I used to dump in a bathroom with a faulty lock. Actually, it wasn't faulty so much as counterintuitive -- I think the locked position should be horizontal, not vertical and even though I felt really right, you just can't reason with locks. This was in a one-holer pretty far from most of my coworkers but hardly secure. Once I heard fiddling at the door and sprang up, pants at my ankles. In retrospect, this mad dash to lock myself in could have had far more embarrassing consequences than had i chosen merely to accept my fate. Luckily I was quick and sealed off the intruder. Mothers develop super-human strength when they need to save a child and I suppose someone like me develops super-quick reflexes to hide my dumping from unwanted viewers. Hardly merits a Lifetime movie about me.

Getting caught would be devastsing for me, but it seems that doesn't hold true for everyone. The coffeehouse that currently semi-employs me locks the bathroom and keeps the key behind the counter, to be given out by request only. Of course, very few people lock the door behind them, and many don't shut it all the way, so people do sneak in. But if we still have the key, we can only assume the bathroom is empty, right? You see how this could unfold poorly.

I guess I half-knew someone was in there because I accompanied the guy to the bathroom and unlocked it for him. This is hardly commonplace. Sure enough, a homeless man was sitting on the toilet. We made eye contact and I handed him the key.

"You need this," I said, trying not to look. "You're not supposed to be in here without the key."

"Okay," he said, completely unfazed. "Thanks."

When he left, I asked him to lock the door behind him, and he gladly did. No trace of embarrassment at having been seen with his pants around his ankles. Not during, not after. It was kind of liberating, although my guess is that he's dumped in far worse, far more public places. Having to do it in front of me was probably a relative luxury. Not so luxurious on my end, though. Maybe I should go to therapy and write it off as a business expense.

A few quick production notes:

1. Went back and numbered all the posts on this blog and, of course, discovered I'm two dumps ahead of where I thought I was. Inching ever closer to that elusive 365th...

2. An apology to lontime dump-readers: turns out I'm a self-plagiarist. All the starting and stopping made me forget that I already blogged about the little girl from "Airplane!" with the IV. Didn't even put a new spin on things. But at least I'm consistent:

LAST AUGUST: I used to get really freaked out by that scene in "Airplane!" where the nun sings to the sick little girl and knocks her IV out. The girl puckers up her lips and waves her arms, and even though it's obviously goofy block comedy, it kind of looks like the life is being sucked out of her. Now I can laugh at it, but as a kid, I couldn't see the humor because I was so terrified for this poor girl's life. "PUT THE IV BACK IN!!!" I'd think. "STOP PLAYING GUITAR, NUN!"

Sometimes my dumps that are so massive and take such effort that it feels like someone has knocked my IV out. I pucker my lips and wave my arms, and even though it's just a daily act of nature, it feels like the life is being sucked out me. Today was such a dump.

LAST WEEK: When Snoopy used magic to make Lucy elevate 15 feet in the air, I cried and cried. Not sure why that got to me, just like I don't know why I couldn't see the humor of the sick little girl in Airplane! When the nun knocks out her IV and they all keep singing while the girl is clearly dying, I just agonized. Maybe I had a crush on her, or maybe it's the duck-face she makes, as if her life is just being drained from her because she's not hooked up to the drip...

Massive and constant, I still had to work for it, and I might even have made the duck-face because it really felt like the life was being sucked out of me.

#155: Rockin' the Triple-S

Shit, Shower 'n Shave is kind of the gold standard for the typical male. Which means that maybe I'm not a typical male, because I don't like it. Shower 'n Shave go hand in hand, what with the hot water softening my maw. But why add a dump? Are men so afraid of the bathroom that they have to do it all at once? Take back the crapper, boys!

I do like to rock the Triple-S on occasion. When I'm attending a wedding in another city, I'll complete it in the hotel. And if we have houseguests who are perhaps not aware of this blog, I'll drop the Triple-S to throw them off the scent, so to speak. They don't need to know exactly why I'm in the bathrrom for ten minutes before turning on the water. (Although a quick Google search will turn up 153 fairly explicit answers.)

And sometimes it happens organically, like today. Just before I hopped in the shower, the urge struck. I'd already taken off my shirt, but I put it back on because I don't feel right dumping au naturel. I think it lacks dignity, and most people would probably agree that's an idiotic thing to think. Shirt on, I had a terrible showing, just a few medium-sized pebbles, hardly worth breaking my personal embargo against the Triple-S.

But here's the problem I always have after the first S -- I kind of want to skip washing my hands. After all, I'm about to get in the shower and wash everything, why wash the one part that's about to be in contact with soap for a solid 5-10 minutes? It's faulty reasoning, of course, and I always do wash them before the shower, and I feel good about that. But I'm still a moron, and so every time, every single time, I wash my hands before getting in the shower and ALSO DRY THEM. No hope for me.

#154: The mobile office

My new cell-phone is doubly awesome in that I get cell reception in the house AND have a speaker-phone. I also have lots of minutes, which meant that when I got a call on my cell today, I didn't have to run outside to answer, beg to call back on my landline, run back in the house, wait to be called again, answer, and start the conversation over. I did have to pull up my pants, run into the living room, answer the phone, and resume dumping. But unless he reads this blog, he'll never know.

I already had my laptop in there, as well as the iced coffee that had inspired the dump. So I had music playing, an ESPN page about baseball trade rumors, and a friend on speakerphone... all while waiting for the next movement of my bowels. (I have such impeccable control that I can avoid coinciding the actual work part of a dump with the vocal part of a conversation.) It was a nice little scene, just as comfortable as any other office setup we have in the house.

When we finished and I got a business call on my cell, I didn't feel at all weird. I still let it go to voicemail (which I then checked by speakerphone, thanks) because as comfortable an office as it is, I don't want to arouse suspicion with someone who wants to pay me. I did get caught once: "Are you in an echo chamber?" he asked. "Uh, it's my kitchen," I lied. "It's huge." Haven't heard from that guy in a while.

#153: Huh-huh, this is gonna be cool

Beavis and Butthead have just sabotaged a lecture on manners, resulting in their teacher phsycially battling Mr. Manners. At the end, we see their pants around their ankles in adjoining bathroom stalls as Beavis can't quite get things started. Butthead urges him to use manners. "Please?" Beavis asks between grunts. "Please come out of my butt?" Success!

I watched the "Manners Suck" episode today, forgetting about that coda until it came up. When it did, I exclaimed aloud and turned up the volume -- to me, that was one of the defining moments of the series. "Beavis and Butthead," along with "Pulp Fiction" and "Tom Petty's Greatest Hits" were some of the defining pop culture of my college experience. The show in particular was a bonding point with several close friends, an almost philosophical line in the sand. No TV show before or since has been so smart about being so stupid, and as illustrated above, they embraced and enlivened toilet humor in much the way I aspire to. I actually watched three episodes today and in two of them, Beavis and Butthead take dumps on camera. Hell, it was the two of them that popularized the term "take a dump" to the point that this project has the name it does. Without Mike Judge, this might be called 365 Craps or 365 Longies of 365 Kids Dropped Off at the Pool. A debt of gratitude indeed.

I didn't need manners today, just iced coffee. It was another hard-fought effort, and by the end I had sweat pouring down my forehead. Lest you think I was working too hard, this is the hottest day we've had in LA this year, so I was sweating eating a salad, too. Not much doing, though, just another life-draining, sweat-inducing, blog-semi-inspiring bout.

The only other dump-related news of late: in making a pitch to my father-in-law as to the merits of wireless internet connections, I told him, "You can use your laptop in... any room of the house." He knew exactly what I meant, and you could actually see my wife's heart sink.

"Better than a magazine, huh?" he replied, and my wife's heart actually broke.

"Ohhh yeah," I said.

"Sometimes he write me emails from there," she piped up, realizing she was outnumbered.

"Ohhh yeah," I said. And it's true -- I get all sorts of things done in there.

#152: From the classic Dump archives

I took a look through the original 365 Dumps word document from early 2001 and a few things struck me. One, I was much more regular back then. Two, I was purely focused on the dump itself. The entries are almost 100 percent about, "Well, I had to poo and it went like this," which definitely has its merits, but seems better for when you're not showing it to the world. Which I wasn't.

I am now, though, and so I picked out a selction from Feb. 1 that tickled my fancy without getting too unnecessarily gross. The original recipe was definitely a more immature affair -- I blanched slightly when I stumbled across the sentence, "I did rip some nasty, meaty farts." A little embarrassing, but I was happy to see how far we've come. Happy 150th, all.

To set the stage: I was working on a TV sitcom where the bathroom was used by the entire fourth floor. Not a one-holer but the almost worse one-holer with two urinals and a sink. Which meant if you dumped, everyone could see your feet. Thus, I would travel down to the second floor which was safer... but that was also was where the actors were. I lived in perpetual fear of running into our Oscar-winning star on my way out of a smelly bathroom. It never came up, but I had a close call or two. For instance, Tom Cruise's ex-wife almost walked in on me when I forgot to lock the door.

Rumination

There were too many people wandering around on the path to the bathroom today, so I didn't dare bring a magazine and raise suspicion. I further encountered the possibility of being caught when I heard female voices near the bathroom. A quick dash for the door, a rapid locking, and I was alone to my own devices, or lack thereof.

I examined my hands thoroughly. Turned out one fingernail was longer than all the others -- I must have forgotten it. I found little spots of dead skin next to a few nails as well as a long pen mark down my right ring finger that I don’t remember at all. I suppose that's better than when I discover cuts I didn't know were there. T he worst is finding a cut that’s already bled and dried. It makes me feel like my hands are numb.

I shot a few baskets of rolled-up TP into the trashcan. I resisted the temptation to reorganize my wallet. I tried thinking about something I was writing, but that never seems to work. I either think so hard that I forget to poop, or I focus on the poop experience. I went back to my hands. Nothing new there.

I sensed early on that this would be good. I had oatmeal with a banana this morning, a lethal combination. My opening salvo was impressive but then I lost track. The end was a pleasant surprise -- plentiful, even breaking above sea level, which is rare for work-time dumps. But the color had a little too much green and it was just kind of gross. It wasn't enough to the ruin the experience, but it could have been better.

NOTE: I also changed the size of the header, which apparently was gigantic on some people's machines. If it still looks screwy, drop me a line.

#151: Surely I took a huge dump (but don't call me Shirley)

When Snoopy used magic to make Lucy elevate 15 feet in the air, I cried and cried. Not sure why that got to me, just like I don't know why I couldn't see the humor of the sick little girl in Airplane! When the nun knocks out her IV and they all keep singing while the girl is clearly dying, I just agonized. Maybe I had a crush on her, or maybe it's the duck-face she makes, as if her life is just being drained from her because she's not hooked up to drip. Either way, it was no "Striker, Striker,

Another weekend away, another bout with constipation. The sleeping quarters were not conducive to private dumping, nor was the pace of the weekend. Which meant that today I had a lot saved up, not reflected in the first effort. A large cup of coffee later, the second was for reals. Massive and constant, I still had to work for it, and I might even have made the duck-face because it really felt like the life was being sucked out of me. Maybe it was the lack of fiber in my weekend diet or maybe it was just dumb luck, but I really had to put in effort (75% of capacity) to make this happen.

It wasn't the terrible kind where you push and push and get a little pebble (that was this morning) but the better kind where you push and push and get results, but still expend a fair amount of energy. When it was over, I felt like I needed a nap. And strangely, didn't feel like I was done for the day. Tomorrow I think I'll have oatmeal, bananas, coffee, and a quart of Metamucil. Get things moving already.

#150: Perversions of the poo

Once I was told a story that was probably urban legend. Some guy's brother's friend (dead giveaway) was making out with a girl who kept saying, "Give me the hot lunch." Finally she asked him to take a dump on her chest. We've since determined this is in fact a Cleveland Steamer, and a Hot Lunch would be directed a few inches north. Both are disgusting, though, and confusing to a man who writes a blog fifth graders could enjoy.

Recently, I got sucked into a discussion on another blog about this kind of thing and it reminded me about how these poo-related sex acts have become instant punchlines. Of course we can joke about them because of course we don't actually want to participate in them. But my guess is someone does. I've read about perversions much weirder, grosser, and more dangerous than these. Why not Cleveland Steamers?

In some ways, you want to know why somebody would be into these things, and in some ways you really, really don't. I knew a pig in high school, a mean, racist, horrible human being. Also, strangely, a decent artist. Which is how I found myself sitting in front of him on an art class field trip to the Met in New York, and I found myself confused when he told us how his dad used to lie underneath a glass table and have women crap onto it while he masturbated. Among the things wrong with this 1) Why would you tell you skinhead teenage son about this? and 2) That guy had been my youth basketball coach. I'm still shuddering.

Basically, there are a lot of sick people out there, and despite the fact that I make a lot of jokes about what it says about me that I own the domain name 365dumps.com, I am really not one of them. Taking a dump is a fact of life, a universal that doesn't get covered all that much, and I'm just trying to cover the overlooked. Occasionally, I'll go too far (as I was told I may have done with the smell-my-finger post) but I'm never going for the shock or the gross-out. Trust me, I know a guy who claims to have invented a sex act called The Dirty Sanchez (or at least the name). I could do it.

In any case, the pooping has been very pedestrian as of late. I hunt for the story with each dump, and the stories have been hard to come by lately. I'm doing well blog-wise, but I'm in a rut dumpwise. And 0-12 skid, if you'll pardon the inadvertant pun. Perhaps this is at least partly due to the fact that I'm doing the great majority of my dumping at home where there's little room for variance. We switched toilet papers and I have some thoughts on the new brand's relative softness, but I'm bored just thinking about that.

Anyway, I'm off for the weekend, but I'll try to spice things up Monday. Maybe I'll try to eat something really complicated over the weekend so it messes with my internal organs and produces a good entry.

#149: Hey, man, smell my finger

In 1993, George Clinton released an album with that title and I thought it was a pretty great name. In retrospect, of course, 17 year-old Dan found it funny that someone had a smelly finger, never considering why it might have gotten that way. By now, I think I've cracked it: George Clinton totally got to third base. Which, if you've seen pictures of him, is a little gross.

Speaking of gross...

Today, after another effort whose mediocrity almost certainly signals an encore later on, I returned to my computer to return some emails. I scratched my nose and smelled something odd, yet familiar. What is that smell? It's on my thumb. It smells like... oh dear God. Time to go wash my hands again, this time a little more thoroughly. I wonder if I should douse my Powerbook in Lysol.

#148: The relative magic of whole grains

Lately, I've wondered if this blog will allow me to start deducting things like Charmin on my next tax return. Can I write off the $4.45 I paid for that "digestive cocktail" over the weekend? It didn't work, but the IRS doesn't need to know that.

A new tax-deducting, colon-assaulting cereal has appeared in my kitchen recently, a hot cereal combining the weighty powers of OATS, BARLEY, WHEAT, and RYE. I stared at the package in amazement. Put some bananas in this, have a cup of coffee, and hold onto the toilet seat for dear life, I figured. We were out of bananas and I've been trying to cut down on my caffeine intake, so I just had this a bowl of this fiber cocktail with skim milk and a touch of Splenda. I figured that would still be enough to show me something. I slurped it down and I waited for the magic.

A few hours later, when I finally poured myself some coffee, the magic kicked in. But it wasn't a David Copperfield level, or even David Blaine. It was more like David the 8 year-old down the street who's saving up for magic camp and only knows basic card tricks. A standard effort, hardly becoming of the expectations built up by the generically named "Multi-Grain Hot Cereal," hardly worthy of its own ABC special. This wasn't making the Statue of Liberty disappear. This was, "Is your card the eight of clubs?"

Unless it's a late onset and late tonight I'm besieged by urges, the cereal was magically semi-delicious, but also a magical bust. Unless it just needs to be combined with the failed Diges-tonique elixir which, at $4.45 a pop, cost more than a whole canister of Multi-Grain Hot Cereal.

#147: I am woman, hear me dump

Meaghan dragged me to Fred Segal, the hipster clothing store favored by the likes of Brad Pitt and any number of OC cast members. While she perused the $400 T-shirts, I searched for a bathroom. Not to dump in, mind you, just to rid myself of the remnants of a delicious Spanish latte I'd just had at Urth Cafe.

Fresh off my restaurant experience of the night before, I found myself waiting outside of a one-holer yet again. AGAIN?! Who takes a dump at Fred Segal? What if Brad Pitt is coming in after you? That could end up on Letterman.

Just ahead of me, a peroxide blonde with big fake boobs went into the ladies room and you just knew she was going to take forever, primping and preening and adjusting all her synthetics. Which she did. And still made it out before the dude. With time to spare. Finally, tired of waiting and hoping to aid the nearby teenage millionaires who had to suffer the indignity of seieng my $20 linen shirt from Old Navy, I gave up and simply used the women's bathroom at Fred Segal. Just to pee, mind you. Because as bad as it would be to emerge from a smelly dump to see Brad Pitt staring back at you, I would not want to emerge from a smelly dump to see, say, Gwyneth or Jen or Angelina or any other Pitt-lover staring back at me. I'd be like, "You're hot," and they'd be like, "I'm calling the police." I'd be banned from Fred Segal for life and then where would Meaghan shop for $140 socks?

I wouldn't even WANT to dump at Fred Segal anyway. It was a small, crammed bathroom, and I can get that at home. Which I did later, continuing my weekend assault, spread out over two dumps yet again. This multidumping has been most curious in its extended format. For 28+ years I dump once a day, then without a substantial change in lifestyle or diet, I shift to 2-3 a day? Clearly I have some sort of parasite. Hopefully some other parasite caught in the ladies room will balance it all out...

#146: Carl McAdoo and the temple of poo

Went to dinner at a semi-hip LA restaurant. It used to be a hip LA restaurant, but several much more hip restaurants sprang up nearby and this one lost its cachet. Still, they charge $7 for a beer, so that has to count for something, right?

Now, I tend to focus on the dumps of my life here, and with good reason. But lost in the malestrom of dump coverage is that fact that my bladder seems to have shrunk over the years. I used to make fun of a friend urinating every time we left a location, but now that's me. I peed twice before we left, and thanks to a pair of $7 beers, I had to go again at the semi-hip restaurant.

One-holer, and I had to wait. Meaghan later complained that she hated being a girl because she always has to wait for the bathroom, but I said that at least it's not guaranteed to smell HORRIBLE. When you wait a while for a guy in the bathroom, you know the person in there is not fixing their makeup (although it is LA). They're trying to drill holes in the bottom of the toilet bowl with theair butt cannon. They're killing trees that laid down their lives to become toilet paper. They're finding inspiration for their own poo blog. When I finally made it in, it smelled unsurprisingly horrible.

I'm not sure what drives someone to take a dump in a restaurant, especially when there's only one toilet for your whole gender. Rarely am I so seized by the need to crap that it can't wait until I'm back at home in the comfort of my own caca castle. And if I'm on a big night out on the town, I probably took care of things beforehand. I'm a little germ-phobic, but also sensitive to the other customers. I shit at home unless absolutely neceessary. Or traveling.

Once in college, a guy I'll call Carl McAdoo came to our apartment to study with one of my roommates. He couldn't have been over an hour. He couldn't have lived ten minutes away. And yet he took a monstrous dump in our toilet. None us of understood it, and I certainly failed to grasp how he didn't understand you just don't do that, especially when there are non-invasive options two dorms away. It was college, so we began telling each other that Carl McAdoo had clogged our toilet, and to this day we refer to a massive toilet-clogging dump as a Carl McAdoo. I have no other memories of this guy, which is why I changed his name.

An update on my early-morning nine-hour shift:

The urge to dump mercifully struck when I was five minutes away in the car. I rushed home and did some fine work -- my first above sea-level output in a long time, although it was more horizontal than usual. An hour later, I discovered I needed to go back for seconds and returned for more, only to find that I had previously laid down a Carl McAdoo. Which is to say that when I lifted the toilet seat, I found everything I'd left behind. I yelped and fetched the plunger. Good thing all the guy in the semi-hip restaurant left me was an odor.

#145: You deserve a dump break today

Every job builds lunch breaks into the schedules, and most are amenable to cigarette breaks. Given that I work at a coffeehouse, a coffee break seems simultaneously completely inappropriate and totally organic. Which is good since we serve organic coffees and teas. Unfortunately, like too many other jobs, we don't receive a proper dump break. At my first job out of college, I relished the opportunity to pinch a loaf on company time. I was only being paid fifty cents an hour more I made working the register at a convenience store a couple summers earlier, and I had to use sick days for the Jewish holidays. And I didn't smoke, so I figured one 15-minute dump break was worth three cigarettes. A dump break was, indeed, a necessary perk of the job.

Now, I've written extensively of the joys and dangers of work toileting. In fact, I feel this blog is at its best when I'm chronicling my escape from being seen by a pretty young ingenue, or following a coworker who stunk the whole place up, or accidentally running into a superior while one or both of us has pants around ankles. Temp jobs were not so forgiving of dump breaks, but they could be found. Luckily, I've managed to escape the temp world in favor of a life of slinging lattes to the homeless and fabulous of Hollywood, California. Like the old convenience store, I work alone, and also like the convenience store, it's a one-holer. Strike one and two for a workday dump. Throw in the constant parade of "street people" doing God knows what in there, and the desire not to touch anything is enough to make you hesitant even to urinate.

Yesterday I worked a full eight-hour shift but enough warning and time to dump beforehand. Today's a nine-hour shift and I had to be in at 6:30 am. Considering I forgot I was working and stayed up past 1:30, I knew there would be no pre-work activities. I was lucky to shower. I may make it through the day, in fact I know I will. Except that it's a nine-hour shift and I'll be drinking coffee pretty steadily throughout. Disaster looms large, or at least discomfort.

To be continued (probably when I get home tonight)...

#144: Rush hour, actually rush sixth of an hour

Scheduled to come to work at 3, got at call at 11:15 to see if I could come in earlier. How early? As soon as you want, I'm bored. I'm poor, I'll be there by noon. Sure, I'd just poured myself a cup of coffee, but when you work at a coffeehouse and have developed a fondness for iced coffee, there's no shame in putting that in the fridge for later and getting fresh at work.

Longtime readers of this blog, however, will duly note the effect coffee has on my gastrointestinal tract. It's a very simple reaction, really: coffee goes in, poo comes out. But I had budgeted time for that. Working backwards: 15 minutes travel time, 15 minutes to shower and get dressed, 15 minutes for a dump. Equal thirds. Except the shower and travel times have been boiled down to their essentials; I know I can shower and get out the door in 15, I know work is 12-15 minutes away depending on traffic. The dump is the fluid element -- sometimes it takes 5 minutes, sometimes 15, usually somewhere in between. But I like to have the luxury of not watching the clock.

Well, I know how to make five minutes disappear better than anyone, and before I knew it, I'd reduced my dump time to a tight ten. Given my weekend of Pixies-like constipation/mass-defecation alternating, I knew this could spread out. But if you have ten, you find a way to make it work in ten. Especially if you work at a public one-holer where every second you're in the bathroom is a second the register lives unguarded.

So I rushed, and somehow still managed to do good work. And I managed to finish up perfectly on time... only to discover no TP! Or rather, ten sheets. Hardly enough, but a pro like me was able to make it work. Especially with an extensive shower next on the agenda. I made it to work maybe 30 seconds late. Tip top.

#143: Papa Gino's, Papa Gino's

I've agreed to write something for The Poop Report, and I was genuinely grateful and wanted to reciprocate the opportunity. Except that this blog is obviously very personal, so I offered my contact a chance to write about one of my dumps, saying he could come in the bathroom with me and take notes. As I said in the email, if you run a site called Poop Report, I can't believe this is the strangest offer he's received.

Shortly after sending the email, I realized this scenario was not without precedent. Once around six or seven, I convinced my sister to come in the bathroom with me during a bout. I wanted company and clearly was too young to have any shame, so she sat on the edge of the bathtub and we talked and played games.

Now, I've started and stopped this blog so many times, I don't remember if I've covered the concept of invented memories. But I have a very strong vision of my sister swallowing a penny and me sifting through the poo looking for the coinage. There's no way this actually happened -- my parents never would have allowed it, and I never would have pushed for it. Then, like now, poo was funny so long as you didn't touch it with anything but your moneymaker.

I'm sure at age four, I wondered what would happen and imagined maybe I'd get stuck digging for pennies from colon. I seem to remember feeling like losing money was the primary issue at stake. And given that my mind was still developing, some synapse must have misfired and burned this daydream into my memory as vividly and arbitrarily as the episode of the Flinstones where Fred and Barney run away from home because the mob's chasing them. Except Fred and Barney really did run away (well, sort of; it was a dream sequence).

Given this history, it's tempting to guess my sister's bathroom visit was an invented memory from a couple years later. Except I know it happened. Because we recorded it.

One of my favorite childhood toys was my tape recorder. I'd sing, do fake radio shows, even stage short plays. And on this day, I taught my sister to sing an ode to my favorite pizzeria.

"Repeat after me: Papa Gino's..."

"Papa Gino's..."

"Papa Gino's."

"Papa Gino's."

"...is where you get..."

"...is where you get..."

"...the very best..."

"...the very best..."

"...pizza in the world..."

My sister was all of four years old, and she was additionally traumatized by having a front row seat to her big brother dropping the deuce. So it shouldn't have been all that surprising that she flubbed the words in such a way that, preserved on tape, became a family joke for years. Actually, I can't do it justice without singing it, but she sang, "pizza, pee..." then in a brand new tune that seemed to channel some ancicent songsmith, triumphantly declared, "PIZZA IN THE WEUHLD!"

Maybe you had to be there. Which I guess begs the question, why was anyone but me there? Which I guess is why I wrote this post in the first place. So there.

#142: Puttin' on the Ritz

I've felt ever so slightly guilty about leaving the country for the Fourth of July, but I didn't really have a choice -- a close friend was getting married in Vancouver, and I had to go. In fact, I was the best man, so there was a lot I had to do, like show up early and stay in the officially sanctioned wedding hotel. My first Ritz Carlton experience was at a wedding last year and my first Fairmont stay was at the bachelor party for this wedding, so I guess I should have guessed that I would end up with my first Four Seasons experience this weekend.

Any time I've stayed in a nice hotel, I've been notably disappointed by the lack of anything too spectacular. Yes, fancier things in the minibar that I don't use. Yes, nicer furniture I don't sit on. Yes, floofier pillows that don't properly support my big fat head. Yes, valets who make me uncomfortable and whose services I refuse in fear of having to tip. What exactly am I getting for my overpriced room rate?

A telephone in the bathroom for one. It cracks me up that these only seem to be featured in luxury hotels, as if only the rich like to talk while dumping. I suspect it's actually there for the business traveler so focused on brokering big deals that he can't miss a call, even if he's in the process of taking a call from nature. "You tell Nathanson that I'm not gonna take any less [plop] than 14 million!"

I didn't take advantage of the bathroom phone (well, not for more than two minutes) largely because Canada made me constipated. Arrived Friday, no dice. Then Saturday... no dice. I tried very hard before the wedding Sunday night, and produced one little tiny die, but I knew big things were on the way eventually. I was drinking coffee every day, eating my fiber, et cetera. Then on the birthday of our fair US nation, fireworks. I hadn't been drunk at the wedding, but I woke up hung over. One of my favorite hangover cures is a giant dump, and I'd been inadvertantly prepping for days. Except it wasn't a magnificent display, merely a B effort. Had brunch, dumped again. Got to the airport, dumped again. Made it home, dumped yet again. Which may be my first career Four Dump Day, which was only appopriate since the weekend brought me my first ever dumps at the Four Seasons. Culminating when? July Fourth.

Happy Independence Day from 365 Dumps.

#141: PWOOCCCCHT!

One incontrovertible fact of life I've learned is that boys are good at sound effects and girls are bad. Meaghan's whip noise is hilariously off the mark, as is her fart noise. But her best noise by far is the all-purpose noise that began as a squishing sound. It sound sort of like PWOOCCCHT, and it cracked me up because she used it for half a dozen different noises -- from a car crash to a watermelon being smashed over someone's head by Shaquille O'Neal. (You conduct your marriage your way, I'll do it my way, thanks.) It's become such a running joke between us that I now use it it in all sorts of situations where it doesn't make sense at all. Like, I'll tap Meaghan on the nose and go PWOOCCCHT! Or I'll pretend to honk a car horn and go PWOOCCCHT! Silly, as is my way.

Today, I took it to the next level when I went to take a dump. As I pulled down my pajama bottoms, I loudly went PWOOCCCHT! for exactly nobody to hear. It wasn't even for the cats' benefit, just my own. I think I need help.

#140: I sell sanctuary

Ever since the rowdy sports bar moved in next door, Karma Coffeehouse has kept their bathroom locked with a key you can only obtain at the register. This doesn't really discourage meathead drunks and crazy homeless people from using the bathroom so much as it forces the barristas to deal with the non-customers. In theory, we can deny the key to anyone, but three times now I've considered nixing a bathroom person because of how sketchy they looked, only to serve them a $4 drink when they returned.

It's a difficult decision. I know these people's lives are shitty, so I want to help them however I can. Unfortunately, in my experience, you give an inch and they take a yard. Also, you develop a reputation, and the last thing you want to be known as is a sucker. So I have to wield a firmer hand than I'd like to, especially when it comes to the bathroom. I'll give you a chance, but if you take advantage, you've used up your chance.

The other day, a young girl came in and headed straight for the bathroom. She looked pretty clean, so I didn't immediately know she was a part of the Karma burnout scene. (The dirty guy with no shoes I saw today was a more obvious member.) Maybe half an hour later, I realized there were several people waiting for the bathroom, so I pounded on the door. She emerged and left right away. I know a thing or two about long dumps and that was no long dump. That was drug use, or hanging out, or something that was taking advantage of my goodwill.

When she returned today, I wanted to say no-go, but it was trickier because her junkie boyfriend dropped $6 on drinks. If you pay, you play, so I kind of had no reprisal when she went to the bathroom three times, each for stretches of ten minutes or more. Twice, the junkie boyfriend (leather jacket, no shirt) stormed in, pounded on the door, joined her for a minute, and left. I guess I assume drugs were being done in there, although I saw no evidence when I took out the trash. And even though I didn't like her tying up the bathroom for our paying customers, I was at least heartened to be providing some santcuary from what I'd imagine is a pretty lousy life outside of that bathroom.

When I got home from a long day at a job that includes copious amounts of free bowel-tickling coffee, I had a rare late-night dump. It was past 11:30 and the house was dark, so I decided not to turn on the light in the bathroom. Besides, I wanted to play with my new cell-phone, and the LCD display happens to look best in the pitch black. I changed a couple settings and accidentally took a picture of myself, which got deleted quickly. I'm already preserving my dumps for all eternity in extraordinary detail here, I don't need a pictorial supplement.

#139: Hold it now, HIT IT!

I have lots of trouble sleeping. Nothing chronic, but ever since I was a little kid, it's taken me a long time to fall asleep. I've fallen asleep by accident once in my life that I can remember, freshman year of high school while reading an especially boring book for Modern World History. Every other bedtime of my life has been a struggle. My simple rule of thumb is not to go to bed until I'm ready to fall asleep. Otherwise I'll end up staring at the ceiling for an hour. Sometimes I get into bed and am so tired that I can't fall asleep. I don't know if I'm just anticipating the slumber and can't let it sneak up on me or what, but it's miserable -- incredibly tired and under the covers awake for 20 more minutes. The worst.

Today, on the way home from an early dentist appointment, I was seized by the need to move my bowels. It was a stronger summoning than I've felt in a long time, and I was glad it hit me only a few blocks from home. I hadn't eaten or had coffee before the appointment, so I kind of wanted to grab something quickly, but I was so overwhelmed that I had to head straight to bathroom. And for a second, I wondered if something might happen like my overtiredness problem. Would the need to dump be so strong that it actually managed to constipate me?

Fear not, brave reades. To sully an old expression, I was a-shittin' before my butt hit the toilet seat. And I realized that I've never been seized by the need to poo and been unable to perform. Maybe things have been backed up during a steady rumbling of need, but never after a sudden onslaught. Good thing -- who wants to hang out with a constipated insomniac?

#138: Mind your own business

For the past couple of months, I've been working at a coffeehouse. Except for a half-hour overlap at the beginning or end of a shift, I'm the only one there when I'm working. Which means if I head to the bathroom, the register is unguarded and the lattes cannot be slung. Also, it's a one-holer, and Dan Tobin does not shit where people can know exactly what's happening behind closed doors and need to go in afterwards. Especially customers whose drinks I've just crafted with the same hands I would have used to wipe my ass. I'm always careful to wash my hands in public after coming out of the bathroom, just so there's no doubt that I've done so.

Not everyone seems to have this hangup about using the bathroom, though, as I discover at every job I have. I rediscovered it today when I entered immediately after my coworker who was completing his shift and, coincidentally, completing his shit. The stench was incredible, and I forgot how amazed I am when incredibly skinny people create such gigantic loads. Actually, I don't for certain that the load was gigantic because the toilet flushed properly (which it does maybe 70% of the time), but the smell made me think it was substantial. It's not like I'm not some kind of savant who can measure the amount of a dump but the odor. Or am I?

A note on the work bathroom: I never dump there for the reasons stated above. But because the coffeehouse is centrally located in the bustling Hollywood homeless scene, that bathroom is the cause of all sorts of misadventures which I am likely to chronicle here. I've yet to find intravenous drug needles in the trash like some of my coworkers, but I have had to evict peopple who've camped out in there for a half an hour. So just warning you that there may be some entries about tangential dumps, like today's. I hope you understand, but the toilet muse works in mysterious ways, and I am not one to fight her.

#137: 20,000 leagues under my butt

Yesterday we managed to eat squid twice in one day. The first time was as calamari at dim sum in Chinatown, and the second time was at a wine bar/tapas place as a delicious rice dish called arroz negro. I correctly guessed that this was black rice, and I wondered if the blackness was the result of squid ink. Never got official confirmation, but the color and taste was consistent with squid ink I've previously consumed.

Today, courtesy of a fresh pot of Sunday morning coffee, I found myself in the bathroom twice in an hour. Both times when wiping up, I was struck by how black and viscous it all was. I asked Meaghan if she'd been similarly afflicted, and she had. No need to call in the CSI team -- it seemed pretty obvious that we had both digested and passed our black squid ink. Case closed.

#136: The woman who cleans my toilet

Every other Thursday for the past two years, a woman named Olivia has cleaned our apartment. I was pretty apprehensive, feeling like I'd rather find a way to get my act together than hire someone to clean my toilet. But the house is astoundingly cleaner now, and it's great. I wish we could afford to have Olivia come every week.

Of course, Olivia's Thursday visits can be inconvenient if you happen to find yourself without full-time employment. And so in my customary April-May unemployment season, I would have to hide out while she was cleaning. I tried sticking around once, but she asked if I was unemployed, I said yes, she said, "Must be nice," and I decided I couldn't bear the guilt of sitting around blogging while she scrubbed the floor.

I've found myself underemployed for most of the past year, and that's meant a lot of Thursday hiding. I'gone to coffeehouses, I've arranged playdates, I've taken a liking to the counter service at my local deli. Many times, I've some fun on my big Thursdays out. Other times, I just wanted to hang around the house. Olivia's car broke down on Thursday, pushing her visit to Friday, and I hoped I wouldn't have to leave. I finished my top-secret assignment and sent it off Priority Mail, and when I returned home, Olivia was dusting the coffee table. Sigh.

"Can I use the bathroom?"

"Uh..."

"I just want to take a shower."

"Oh... I just put bleach down..."

"No problem, don't worry about it."

In some ways, my guilt over paying Olivia to clean my toilet has made me vaguely scared of her, so I give her a fairly wide berth. And so I left her to work in peace , had my favorite cobb salad in LA with an iced coffee with too much ice, then stopped by the Organized Living going out of business sale. It felt like enough time, so I returned home, hoping Olivia was done. She was not.

The bedroom was clean, though, so I sequestered myself there. Eventually the iced coffee kicked in and the urge to dump arose. She was done with the bathroom, but I felt crapping while she was still around would be like writing my name in wet cement. But doodie called, and I thought, hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

And so I went in, even brought in the laptop (although I paused the iTunes indefinitely). I modulated the noise as I would with any house company, and I hoped the smell wouldn't emanate quickly. Mostly a typical endeavor, though, my second of the day (again!). Then I heard a voice:

"Okay, bye-bye!"

"Thank you!" I yelled, pants at my ankles. The door slammed, and I wondered if my ability to talk to her from the throne signaled great progress or a sad tumble downward. I guess I've got two weeks to figure it out.