Let me start by saying how TOTALLY gross it is that I Googled "Poop Party" and a full blown Poop party image comes up! I mean Ewww!
The fact that someone is making a fortune on a little piece of poo makes me re-think society. Regardless of how popular it is, I never really got the whole "Poop" emoji thing...ever! I thought they were little Hershey Kisses! I use to send them in text to my girlfriends all the time! Example:
Karen: "Hey Nancy have a great day!"
Nancy "Awe...how sweet!" (insert poop emoji)
***you know because I was TRYING to imply how sweet she was by sending her a Hershey Kiss. So yea, instead of telling my friends how sweet I thought they were...turns out I was basically telling them to eat shit! Hard lesson learned when my 12 year old asked why I was sending "crap" pictures to my friends...oops!
So, back to my point, Poop emoji's are gross, poop is gross and poop parties with balloons and deserts...that's HARD NO!
However, as mentioned in previous blogs, I have all boys. It's an important fact to remember as pooping, farting and burping are daily occurrences and honestly badges of honor in my household. Well for some crazy reason, I'm not sure if they are scared of the bathroom or just get bored alone but my two youngest boys have come up with this thing called a "Poop Party." Basically they hang out with each other in the bathroom while one sits on the toilet and poops.
(I already know what you're thinking!! It's SO weird! Right?! Well, yea it is, but p.s. I've stopped trying to figure out the opposite sex after three of them came out of my body! I've learned it's easier on old mom if you just roll with it.)
So these poop parties consist of one kid on the toilet while the other lays in the bathtub (or what my 5 year old now refers to as his "office." **Side note: Any moms who are just becoming friends with me, PLEASE don't judge me when you're at my house and you see both my boys walk into the bathroom together and one says "Hey, why don't you lay in your office while we have our poop party?" Dear Lord grant me patience and understanding friends!**
Well as of today, Poop Parties have stopped! Null, void, never happening ever, ever again!! Hate to go all Liam Neeson on them but if they every try one again Momma's gonna be like, "If you poop party again I'm going to find you. I have a very particular set of skills, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you."
"Why?" You ask.
Well I'll let you in on the horrible, gross, smelly, vomit inducing, eyes watering little secret that went down in my guest bathroom.
One morning my boys had a Poop Party. No biggie, happens all the time so a little later the poop party is over, kids take off running outside, life goes on.
A few minutes later I walk down the hallway, past the bathroom when I get a major whiff of, well, you know, boy poop. I don't think much of it as they JUST went to the bathroom. But still...wheeewww! Its's ripe!
(Keep in mind we're in California, mid summer so it's about 112 degrees outside and our a/c is in full effect!)
My husband gets home from work later and makes the comment ,
"Geez, who died in the bathroom?! I can smell it all the way down the hallway!"
So I sniff the air (Why? Not totally sure but it's the same thing when you're in a crowded room and someone yells "Who farted?" What's the first thing you do? SNIFF!! Like we can't just take someone's word for it, we just HAVE to smell that fart evidence for ourselves!)
COMPLETE side note:" EWW!" The next time someone yells "Who farted?!" Just plug your nose. No one needs the image of that burrito some guy had for lunch wafting into your body via your nose.)
So moving on. The air outside cools, we shut the a/c off and open all the windows. Guess what? Poop smell gone! Yay...just had to open every window in the house to get rid of it but still...adios poo poo!
Fast forward to the next morning when the a/c kicks on. Any guesses what it smells like all of the sudden? Yup. A whole lotta' crap!
We look for poop everywhere! Honestly thinking our dogs pooped in the house but nope! No poop is to be found anywhere. Ok, so where the hell is the scent coming from. We looked everywhere and found NOTHING!
"Where is that poop smell coming from!!" I scream from the hallway.
Garrett sitting there playing a video game, kid doesn't even look away from the tv when he says, "Mom, I know why it still smells like poop."
Danny comes running in, yelling, "GARRETT! You promised!!"
All I can think is "You PROMISED?!!!" What the hell does that mean!! As I'm trying to stay calm long enough to coerce the truth out of my kids before I loose it!
I calmly (as not to arise suspicion) ask, "Garrett, honey, how do you know why it still smells like poop?" I'm so calm, scary calm, like that calm that as my kids get older they'll learn to understand 'calm mom ' is scarier than 'mean -loud mom.'
Garrett simply says "Danny had to poop while I was in the middle of my poop party so he pooped on the floor."
OK! Problem solved. I run into the bathroom and check the logical places a child would hide poop. Nope! Nothing in the garbage, nothing under the sink, nothing learking in the bathtub and nothing hidden in any drawers. What the frick!!!
I have fire coming from my ears but I take a few deeps breaths and ask "Garret, what did Danny do with his poop?"
Garrett, "Oh he hid it in the hole in the wall."
(The hole in the wall would be the air conditioning vent. The one that's not covered since we are remodeling the bathroom.)
Great.
So I squeeze my little hand as far down as it will go and grab something. I pull it up and what do I have? Toilet paper...LOTS and lots of toilet paper. This is the amount of toilet paper you'd expect if Jabba the Hut himself had taken a crap in the middle of your bathroom. And as I'm pulling it up I'm seeing little poop smears along the way. With each little brown poop I'm realizing more and more why it's been smelling so bad.
Boom! Problem solved. Danny clearly picked his poop up, dropped it in the toilet and for some reason hid the toilet paper in the a/c vent. I am SO proud of my Sherlock Holmes sleuthing abilities. I proudly announce my discovery as soon as my husband walks in the door.
So high fives all around, everyone is happy and by 'everyone' I mean myself and my husband. Clearly the kids don't give a crap (pun totally intended) they stuffed poopy toilet paper down the air conditioning vent. Well, as you guessed, this celebration lasts all of 2 hours when the a/c kicks back on.
Yup. Shit smell for days! It smells SO bad it's like I went to Walmart and instead of buying the Better Homes and Garden scented wax cubes of Pumpkin Spice I accidentally bought "A Summers Crap!"
It got so bad we put the dogs outside and sent all the boys to my mother in laws house because we actually thought the kids might get sick from the smell coming from the a/c vents! With the kids gone my husband gets that look on his face. You know, the 'I'm going to fix this," look on his face. He walks outside to the shed and walks in with a Saws-All in his hands. He calmly walks into the bathroom, shuts the door and proceeds to cut away the bathroom wall right below the vent. He soon realizes his hands are too big to fit in the vents so he cuts the vent itself all the way down to the floor!
After an exhausting hour of trying to use the Shop-Vac, then a bent hanger, and finally his arm, he reaches down into the depths of our house and dramatically (like in slow motion) pulls out a poop the size of a grown mans hand!
Holy Mother!!! No wonder my house smelled like frigging poop! It was literally wafting out of every vent in my house! It could have given my entire family, kids, dogs and cats frigging' Pink Eye!!
What the hell is wrong with kids and their thought process?!
So the moral of my story is....If you have kids...they may drive you crazy...they may stress you out...they may do stupid , dumb stuff....BUT, if you've never had to cut a hole in your wall to remove human poop from your heating and air conditioning vents, hey...you're doing a GREAT job!
After I duct taped the hole in the bathroom wall closed and my husband took a shower..using hand sanitizer, we realized the kids were still at the in-laws house and we had a rare evening alone! Sitting outside we laughed thinking all it took was one piece of poop, hundreds of dollars of damage to our bathroom, and a potential pink eye outbreak that would alert the CDC to put an end to Poop Parties and to give Mom and Dad one evening away from the kids. So cheers!