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Ahem.  I think we can officially conclude that teaching kindergarteners evidently knocks me flat on my ass with the added benefit of sucking any and all forms of creativity out of my brain.  Whatever I happen to salvage after a day spent in puke, strep, lice and OMG we will never get these costumes finished for this DAMN THANKSGIVING PLAY we’re having…(deep breathing)…has to be metered out between my own genetic children, completing 7 loads of laundry IMMEDIATELY and lastly, editing photos.  Tonight, the kids are in bed, Bryan is out for the evening, I’ve made myself a nice, hot bowl of broccoli-cheese rice from a bag (the only way I’ll eat broccoli is dehydrated and then rehydrated in a cheese-dust sauce) and I thought I would share about my pelvic floor.

That’s right, TMI code YELLOW.

(Pausing a moment for all of my coworkers and friends and family and men to click somewhere else which basically leaves Virtual Internet Strangers!  HI, INTERNET PEOPLE, I WOULD NOT LIKE V1@gra, thanks!)

I would also like to warn off any women who have not have children or would like to have children.  Please, fortheloveofgod, LOOK AWAY.

First of all, I KNOW this is my fault as I do not do Kegel exercises regularly (except, of course, when anyone mentions the word “Kegel” whereupon every women in the world tightly clenches her Area of Fun and Doom.)

As I may have implied, I do not have a ton of time for personal upkeep tasks during the school day.  You know, tasks such as eating, peeing or, well, anything.  Once I leave my house I never look at myself again.  One day, stealing a glance at myself after school, I realized that the hair product I had tried out that morning (Word, curly-haired people of the internet) had congealed into some starchy, brick-like yet white powdered-dandruffy sort of mess on top of my head.  I looked like I had a “There’s Something About Mary” moment in the bathroom after leaving the shower that morning.  REGARDLESS, at around 12:57 pm today, I realized that I had not gone pee THE ENTIRE DAY.  I had, however, been diligently working on the refillable water bottle so I was going to shortly reach the Orgasmic Pee level of having to go.  (Does anyone else have those kinds of pees?  Most likely experienced when pregnant and on a long car ride where you’ve smacked your mate fourteen different times to signal the need to relieve your bladder and the bladder of the unborn child jockeying with your  bladder at the next possible bathroom.  Whereupon finding the closest bathroom 40 minutes later and there is nothing but basically a hole in the floor with lip service to dirty porcelain between you and the dirt but you don’t care at all.  You sit down and nearly orgasm with the flood of relief from relaxing those Kegels to release that ocean tide of urine.  Anyone????…..ANYONE????…..JUST ME?)  But ANYWAY, 12:57 meant that I had three minutes to grab a pee and make it back to my classroom before my little puke-monsters arrived back.  NO PROBLEM.  Except.  EXCEPT.  I’ve been dealing with The Plague.  The “Oh, Don’t mind me.  I know it sounds like I just hacked up a piece of lung (which, I may have) and it’s been dragging on FOR A MONTH now, I’ll be able to breathe in a moment or two but if my lips start turning blue, TRY NOT TO PANIC, it will probably pass.”  The kind that makes it sound like I’ve been smoking cigarettes WHILE drinking straight whiskey for 40 years.  The grossest, most moist, hear the phlegm rattle in my chest and throat as I obviously cough up hardened chunks of mucus kind of cough.

So that happened.  I coughed One Big Cough and the tide released–about halfway to the bathroom.  Not enough to constitute actually peeing my pants but enough that I was seriously concerned that my kindergarteners would recognize a wet spot (which we know SO WELL in our class…yeesh).

I duck-waddled to the bathroom in damage-control mode.  Thank GOD, it wasn’t at the running-down-the-leg stage but more like a teeny-tiny balloon bursting.  IN MY PANTS.  My pants were fine but my flimsy thong underwear made out of basically air and thread were…not.  It’s like they were absorbent enough to potentially create a sponge-situation wet mark but not enough to do any actual absorbing of pee.  As I sat there, contemplating my dilemma, I fought with my practical urges which are retarded and whisper things in my head like, “NO ONE WILL NOTICE!” Or “You can’t throw them away.  Those cost MONEY and GOD KNOWS you’ll NEVER get around to replacing them.”  and such drivel.  But then the actual rational side of me said, “Yeah, well, how the hell are you going to get a semi-wet thong back to your class with a hall full of STUDENTS between you and the classroom?  AND, where in the HELL are you going to PUT THEM until you get them home?  IN YOUR PURSE?  I THINK NOT.”  Now, in a different universe, I would have discretely shoved the thong in my hand, put them into a plastic baggie and put them in my purse to wash later.  BUT, I have a paraprofessional teaching with me who, at any moment, would be coming back with 17 kids all waiting for me to begin our lesson on ascending and descending numbers.  Having to explain the sudden need for a plastic baggie and the unwillingness to unclench my fist and the need to go BACK to the bathroom to wash my hand would have lead to obvious embarrassment (as opposed to VIRTUAL INTERNET embarrassment, obviously).  So, I sat there warring with myself.  Of course, if I trash those suckers, I have the possibility that the next person would see them in the trash can or the janitors would find them later.  Now, I realize they wouldn’t be able to track me BY SCENT or anything but still, thong panties in the trashcan in an elementary school does seem a bit skeevy to me, amiright?  After a few minutes of debate, I ditched those bad boys in a HUGE WAD of paper towels and went commando for the rest of the day.  And my dignity went, along with my panties, IN THE TRASH with the writing of this.

It was after this that the kid puked on the “share carpet”.  Not exactly what I wanted you to SHARE, kid.  The pile of barely digested turkey and dressing congealing slowly and soaking rapidly through the carpet, there.  And we practiced the Thanksgiving Play…with our special ed student who is only in our class for one small part of the day but I thought it would be awesome and cute and nice for him to be included as a turkey in the play.  But I evidently forgot that he’s in special ed for an actual reason which does not mesh all that well with “following along and responding appropriately to cues” but goes more hand-in-hand with “human wrecking ball with tendencies toward behavior disorders”.

At one point, my parapro turned to me and asked, “Is it time to break out the duct tape yet? haha…ha?” and I thought, “Absolutely, as long as you can fashion PANTIES out of it for me, please.”  What I did was close my eyes, take deep breaths and try not to cough.

(Please excuse my Very Poor Grammar Showing today.  We have just started introducing Capital Letters and Periods in writing and are NO WHERE NEAR commas or verb tense.)