A fecal matter

I have a thing about poop. I don't like it. Urine, though gross, doesn't disturb me like poop.

My history of having the heebie-jeebies related to this topic is long. When I was a child, my mother would put me in the bathtub with my kid brother who would poop whenever his butt touched water. I distinctly remember many instances of running down the hall naked yelling, "Maaaaaa, K pooped in the tub." There are few things worse than being in the tub with a floater that isn't your own.

When I was a teen, my dad developed ulcerative colitis, and we only had 1 bathroom in our house. There were many instances when I was politely kicked out of the bathroom because dad was having cramps and other issues. Other times, I would sit in the tub with the curtain shut having to listen to my dad use the bathroom just on the other side. Of course, he couldn't help his condition, but the gross factor here was pretty high.

When I was in college, my colon became rather sensitive, and I suspected that I had irritable bowel syndrome, a diagnosis never actually confirmed. Plus, I have OCD so it's only natural for things like germs and poop to freak me out completely.

Today has been like a horror movie. I was folding clothes in the kitchen, waiting for the washing machine to finish a load of undies, when I heard a gurgling sound coming from the powder room. The toilet was overflowing. Not a sprinkle or a trinkle, but full-fledged running out over the sides, flooding onto the floor.

Instantly I go into panic mode. D has run to the store, so I call his cell. "Where is the water shut-off valve? We've broken a pipe! There is poop water running all over the floor!! It's everywhere! Come home NOW!!!!" I know NOTHING about plumbing, pipes, valves, hoses, etc, but I know when poop water is going the opposite way from which it is supposed to go.

N was playing happily in the dining room wondering why 1. there is water all over the foyer floor, and why 2. mommy is running around like a proverbial chicken sans head.

I realized that I heard water downstairs. In our furnace room, water was trickling down from the ceiling and covering everything....the floor, the craft table, the rugs, and making a nice little pool for D's tools inside his toolbox.

To make a long story shorter (because a saga like this is never short), we now have a plumber in our basement draining water from our pipes so he can suck disgusting remnants of bodily waste from our sewer (since we aren't fortunate enough to have an outside sewer cleanup valve).

SHIT!!!!!! I HATE SHIT!!!!!!!

D and I are blaming each other. He accuses me of using entirely too much toilet paper, and I accuse him of not eating enough fiber and having impossibly large bowel movements. N could have tossed a toy down the toilet, but she is about as squeamish with toilets as her mom (perhaps this explains her lack of potty-training interest) so I don't believe this is a real possibility.

And even when the sewer outlet is clear and our toilets are running properly, I am stilled faced with the problem of poopy smelling towels to wash, poopy smelling floors to mop, poopy smelling walls to disinfect.

My nose and psyche will take weeks to recover.