what to do with your hands?

Lately, I've been doing crossword puzzles (Sunday Times with the occasional Saturday Times) while pooping at home. This is a change. I'd mostly been reading before that (I've got a lot of reading to do these days). It's nice to have something to do with your hands, I think. Book reading is not ideally suited to the toilet, article reading is much more appropriate. The gradual brain work necessary for crossword puzzle completion is perfect if repeat visits are going to be part of the scheme. Having a conversation is a personal favorite, but that happens very rarely. I'm a social pooper.

an exercise in endurance

Enter the bathroom, bringing with you a nice, large meal. Begin to defecate. As you defecate, begin eating the meal. Continue defecating until the meal has passed through you completely.

exceptions

When this blog started, I was fixated a lot on where I was pooping. I was transitioning from an old workplace to a new school and assuming that the pooping there would be like the pooping at workplaces and schools from my past, which I have mostly loved and cherished. Things have not played out this way. Mostly I poop at home (I try to eat at home as much as possible these days, the other end of the equation just works out that way).

Significantly, in re: the school plot line, the building where most of my classes happen switched this semester. Thing went from one brutalist 60s-high-school-looking building to a slightly less falling apart building of the same type. I'll call it the "new" building, but understand it's 40+ years old as well; it's merely new to me. This new one has basketball courts. The only bathroom I had been using in the new building has only 1 of 4 spigots that work and a stall for pooping that seems physically improbable. Pooping just hasn't come up this semester, or if it did, I don't remember the specifics, but I must have found another building.

THE REAL STORY HERE: Yesterday I played the first piece on the first concert in the new concert venue of this new building. I have very little in the way of nerves before performing these days, but sometimes a good poop really clears the mind/heart/soul and makes for a nice relaxed performance (conversely, having to pee really badly during a show can be a great spur of quality or at least intensity).

ANOTHER DETAIL YOU'LL NEED FOR THIS ALL TO MAKE SENSE: On Wednesday, I made a really nice dinner with fennel, carrots, cabbage, ginger, tofu, and some black beans, which might have been sitting in the fridge a little too long. I was concerned, but I felt fine Wednesday, and so I took this as leftovers for my dinner on Thursday night before the concert. This entailed leaving home (and refrigeration of said leftovers) around 1 PM. The concert was at 7 PM. I ate at 6 PM.

THE CRUX: It's 6:30. There's some milling around. I suddenly get the doo-doo urges. Something's coming. Figuring nothing's happening in this building on the other floors at this time of day and there's a concert on this floor, I went looking around for the most relatively clean & quiet place to sit for a while, since I could tell something significant was on its way. 1st floor bathroom is the previously mentioned one, the 2nd floor was being cleaned. 3rd floor (floor of the performance) was gonna have to do. Walking back up & entering the bathroom, I found it surprisingly clean & well maintained. I'm not super picky, but it's nice to find a great place, and generally my school's facilities run towards the grosser end. Upon reaching my doo-doo location, using my butt, I emitted a stream of poop with a very high water content into the toilet bowl. It was gross, occasionally loud, cathartic, and a little exhausting. But it worked out. I thought maybe something was bad in the beans. I thought I was nervous. I thought a lot of things.

Sometimes you just get a doo doo out of the blue like this. Everything since has been normal. My stomach is fine. This was just a rumbly storm that manifested itself. I think. But it really made me think. And now, I hope I've made you think. Careful with the beans, careful in new buildings. Poop away, poopers.