Poop In My Coach Bag (Or Why I Have Consumed An Entire Box of Baker's Chocolate and a Half Bottle Of Pinot Noir)

As many of you know, we are building a dream home. This endeavor requires ten billion decisions and the relentless picking-out-'o-the-stuff to create our vision. Everyone talks about this process being stressful and challenging. Picking things out isn't a challenge for us. We love that kind of thing. I have the "designer's eye" and my husband loves to research bargains, so together we're a dynamic duo. The challenge is that it is completely unenjoyable and quite a logistical nightmare when dragging 3 very young children everywhere with you along with a 14 year old child with severe autism and a tendency to run off and get lost while you're trying to make highly expensive, permanent, life-altering decisions. Kids. They can just suck the fun out of everything sometimes.

So the other day we spent hours going to Kitchen and Bath places, Stone places, etc. The kids were totally miserable and bored, as would be expected, but it's always annoying nonetheless. Pink was on a roll with her major 'tude and sassy back talk. The baby was a terror. Tink was just... Tink.

How can I describe Tink? Though at 3 1/2 she is tiny enough to still wear 18 month old clothes, her big huge personality won't fit in the room. She's a nut. She's a joy. She's a force. She's a nudge. She makes us belly-laugh every day. Mostly because she says odd things like:
"My feet are hungry."
"My belly is tired."

Or out of the blue on a summer day she'll bust out randomly with:

"I smell Santa Claus."

So, we were in a store talking to the salesman. The kids were running amock and completely embarrassing me. I noticed Tink standing in front of a large mirror, posing. She loves to look at herself. She'll do it for hours. I turned my attention to the salesman and when I glanced back over to Tink again, I saw her standing in front of the mirror with her undies around her ankles, dress hiked completely up, and posing. I gasped and ran over, pulling down her dress. I asked, shocked, "Tink, what are you DOING??!!?" and her response was very matter-of-fact and full of innocence :"I was just trying to look at my crack."

At the next store, we began to smell something rank. Oddly, it was coming from Tink who has been toilet trained since 27 months. We thought perhaps she had gas. When we questioned her she said with urgency "No, I have to poop!!!" Okay, fine. I rushed her to the tiny, disgusting little employee restroom, quickly yanking down her undies and plopped her on the toilet. Only then did I see the brown smear marks all over the seat and noticed the giant round turd in her underwear. She totally uncharacteristically crapped herself.

Without getting into too much detail, it was one hot mess.

"TINK!!!" I scream, exasperated. "Why did you poop in your pants?!?!?"

"It just fell out of my heiny, Mom." she replied with complete nonchalance, blinking innocently and failing to comprehend why I would possible be upset over such a thing.

I don't carry around a change of clothes for her anymore. And, like the seasoned mother of 4 that I am, I have forgotten the diaper bag. Figures.

All I had at my disposal were a few non-absorbant, thin paper towels and tap water. No soap in the dispenser. Thank God for the tiny hand sanitizer I carry in my purse.

I have no recourse but to wrap her smelly, soiled undies in 4 yards of paper towels. I couldn't rinse out the underwear because then it would be WET and soaking through the paper towels, so I had to just mummify it, skid marks and all.

Some would say to throw it directly in the trash. Anything that involves wasting money does not fly in this house. We wash out the poopy underwear and hand 'em down to the next kid. By the time Rella gets these undies, they'll all be dyed a lovely shade of brown, and have a story to tell. That's just how we roll. Frugal you say? I prefer "cheap."

So, I walked back out into the store's show room with underwear smellin' up the only REAL designer handbag I own. My beloved Coach with my beloved real Coach wallet. Of course. Couldn't have had the Target special with me.

I'll skip over the rest of the day's drama to the end of the day where I was able to release vast amounts of serotonin into my body by way of 14 oz. of Ghiardelli dark Baker's chocolate washed down with 3 gigantic glasses of red wine. Who said motherhood doesn't have its perks?