From the Momplex archives:

It would be an understatement to say I’ve been a little blue lately. Blue’s such a pretty color anyway. Why don’t we refer to the doldrums with a color like diarrhea brown, as in “I’ve been feeling a little diarrhea-brown lately.” I have.

My daughter, who will be five this week, crapped on her bedroom floor last night. I have never quite understood the root of the expression “do me a solid,” but I can definitely say she didn’t do me one. She did me a liquid, and a lot of it. I am hoping against all hope that it wasn’t some sort of willful act, the giant heap of diarrhea unleashed in the corner by her hamper. It was about an hour after she went to sleep, and I won’t get into all the details, but it appears she was just disoriented. When a little one wakes in the night from a deep slumber with an urgent need to “unleash the hounds,” it seems safe to assume that she might not have the wherewithal to properly navigate herself.

I can’t tell you how disgusting that room smelled. The windows in her room were frozen shut, too. Oh, and we plugged the toilet with all the toilet paper we used cleaning her up. And when I plunged a while later, the splashing poo water went into my face. For those of you who know me well, it should come as no surprise that I didn’t have my mouth shut at the time. (I almost never have my mouth shut.)

Thank God my husband happened to be home for the day/night from his three-week annual training with the National Guard. I am sure he is thrilled that he opted to make the long drive back home for a booty call. (One could certainly argue that cleaning up a diarrhea-butt IS a booty call of sorts, literally speaking.) In that regard, I am secretly thankful my daughter shat on the floor.

“Honey, I just accidentally swallowed some diarrhea” packs a much bigger punch in the frigidity department than “Not now, dear. I have a headache.”

Anyway, I’m feeling diarrhea-brown. I got so desperate today that I even took my daughter to the mall play area just to get out of the house. The mall play area is essentially Hell on Earth: Hyperactive kids with depressed moms spreading germs as holiday Muzak pipes overhead and too-skinny mannequins taunt us from all directions. Also, this time of year there are the Salvation Army bell-ringers dinga-donging ad infinitum next to the acrid-smelling Asian nail salon. As if that’s not diarrhea-brown enough, we took up an invitation to go watch some poor entertainer called the Banana Lady over in the JCPenney children’s section at 11 a.m. She set up shop (which consisted of a karaoke machine) in a four-way intersection of Hannah Montana paraphernalia.

Initially, it was just my daughter and me watching this woman prance around in her banana suit and sing songs about being healthy and doing your own thing. She was horribly, horribly gleeful (seriously, did you click on that link? or how about this one?), and it was horribly, horribly awkward how she was performing to maybe six people total. I felt terrible for her, as people kept walking between us, not realizing she was a show and we were her audience. She’d try to lure them over by trying to ventriloquize the large spidermonkey-puppet that’s sewn to her suit but with her lips totally moving. Few took the bait. When she said, “Come on and dance with me, everyone!” I was the only one who obliged. My daughter and the other sad moms and their kids stared blankly at us.

So, this is my life. Cleaning up diarrhea and dancing with a stranger in a banana suit in JCPenneys in the middle of the Hannah Montana aisle at the mall. Exactly how I hoped things would turn out for me. Exactly.