unsilent in the morning

You know that Phish song "Silent in the Morning"? It's not about me. I don't fart that much these days, but in the 30 min after I wake up (and before I do usually my largest dump of the day), I tend to let out some healthy farts. Not sure who that song is about, maybe Page is an SBD in the AM kind of guy or something.

large = significant

My morning routine has changed in the last month. Instead of being able to bide my time with eating, bathing, and dumping, I am now in a cycle where I rise, then eat, and then... wait. My partner is usually in the shower when the need to dump first hits me. I will usually go through a cycle or two of dump pangs (aka dangs) before I can actually get in there (ah, the pleasures of the single bathroom household with more than one resident!).

But boy, when I do finally get in there, and it all comes out in a rush, what a joy. I can report I am feeling really alive from these big, cathartic morning dumps. It would be less edgy if I could do them when I first need to, but there's a certain excitement to the building of the suspense, you know?

I blew it

I had a nice thing going for a while. Or, a different and remarkable thing for me.

I have remarked on here in recent times that the morning dump has for me become when I excrete most of the feces that I excrete in a day. It used to be more meted out over the course of the day. This remains true.

What changed for a couple weeks there last month was that the morning dump became one very large and solid log. I can't recall in my life having such a consistent run of non-separated turds. I imagine for many people, this is how it is all the time. 

To be honest, I'm not sure it was better. I think the long, unbroken turd is more photogenic, it's more known. It's the charismatic megafauna of the feces world. But when you get right down to it, I'm someone who prefers a bundle of smaller logs to one giant one. It's just what I'm used to. Maybe it's the underdog? There need not be a value judgment for these things, but ultimately I do have one.

Anyway, I have regressed to the mean. Things are more like they were before now, but I figured I'd mention the little change.

doc manahatta

Somehow

Magically, and also in the most pedestrian, quotidian way

The food that you have not yet eaten, but will eat some day

Is already your stool

 

Even though it's yet to go into your mouth, it's going to be grown, harvested, processed, etc

And then you'll find your way to it, it to you

You have a beautiful (or wretched) time of intersection with it in your mouth

Your body does the work it does on it to make it a dump

The butt ejects it from its day or so inside of you, having stripped it for parts aka calories

Food no longer, but dump, and specifically, your dump, and also, some remnants remain part of you

 

And it was always this way

You were a bullet heading for the food even as it was growing

A story told by bards and poets for centuries of the intertwining

a hypothetical

If, hypothetically, I could have the option to control how my dumps came out, I would not choose to have them all be perfect, resistance-free, fair-smelling affairs. No. I would want them to reflect my moods. 

Sometimes, I would want a clean & long one-piece shit. Sometimes I would want a loose & messy one. Sometimes, I'd want it to take a while, other times it would come out comically fast. Sometimes I'd want no smell, other times I'd want something funky to dress things up. A loud dump can be a clarion call some of the time, other times you want stealth.

Dumps: they're the spice of life 🌶

across pond comparison

I was in Europe last week for the first time in seven years. Specifically, I was in Ireland. The toilets, they're a little different over there as you may have noticed yourself. Here's my feedback on a week of Irish shitting:

- It's a little thrilling and a little chilling how much farther the poop falls to the water. Splashes sound bigger and can be bigger, it echoes more. I like the less water usage, but also maybe it could be a shallower bowl? It's exciting but not always in a good way, I'd say.

- It's really hard to see your stool in those toilets! I didn't used to do this, but these days, I like to look at my stool and see what color it is, how hard/soft, etc. And in those deep Irish toilets, it's harder to perceive. Five demerits. Show me my own work!

- Another five demerits for the design change from standard US toilets that makes it harder to kind of tuck up your junk in the battlements of the seat/bowl when you're wiping. I felt like I was all over the place and undirected and flopping everywhere. I didn't care for that. I'll stick to my own crapper, thank you.

returning to form

For the last three months, my stool was of a loose quality, and it was coming frequently, like 3-6 times a day. Why? I was on meds. A rheumatologist put me on some anti-inflammation meds to try to address my long term health stuff (it didn't help), and the side effect most notable was shitting a lot, and loosely.

I stopped those meds five days ago and it's been nice to watch my stool return to its more familiar form. It's cohering more, it's in larger formations, it's calling me to action fewer times a day. What a relief solid stool is when it's been a stranger in your house for oh these many moons!