Volcano

Man, you better watch your feet. Lava come down soft and hot.

This is an actual series of texts between me and a friend whose code name is ‘Fred’. Fred is staying at our friends' house while in between apartments, and I'm staying there watching their dog while they visit family out of state. Fred's single, I'm widowed, and we're both clearly childless and not regularly responsible for the keeping-alive of another living creature. The dog is depressed with a serious case of diarrhea. And this whole episode is going down in history as the Shitstorm of 2019.

Wednesday Afternoon Fred’s at the house. I’m at work, having not yet been to the house for this round of dogsitting and planning to arrive that night.
Fred: Oh man. I can’t deal with the poop. I wanna gag.
Me: No no no. Is it everywhere or solid? lol omg these are things parents discuss. I gagged last time she had a slight mess, but it was the first day I ever had her and not again. I think she was just out of sorts that day.
F: She is stressed they left. She won’t leave their bed now.
Me: NOOOOOOO lol
F: I don’t think I can do the cleanup. I might hurl.
Me: NO. omg where is it????
F: By their room. Just three piles. But I can’t. Sorry Mags. I am being a puss.
Me: Is it wet? It can’t stay if it’s wet. (vomiting emoji) omg lol aaaaah
F: Damage is done really. It’s already cold which is part of the problem. I can pick up hot poop, but cold poop makes me wanna run away.
Me: BAHAHAHAHA Hot poop makes me die a little. How is cold poop worse than hot poop????
F: idk it trips me out. Like an alien or something. Hot poop is easier to handle. Something… comforting… about it lol
Me: Hot poop is disgusting. I can’t even believe we are having this conversation.
F: I will handle the hot poop. You handle the cold poop. Teamwork.
Me: Fine
F: I remember my dog had explosive diarrhea and I didn’t wake up. My entire house was sprayed down in dog shit. It was like a murder scene. Took hours to clean up.
Me: For our book, Chapter 76: Hot or Cold Poop: Where Do YOU Draw the Line?
F: There was shit on the walls.
Me: I’m dying.
F: I am so judgmental and untransformed right now.
Me: I’m laughing like a 12 year old boy. Because poop.

Wednesday Evening Fred still at the house, me on the way over.
F: Do you have canned pumpkin at your place? (Apparently, this is good for doggy diarrhea.)
Me: No. This is why I don’t own a dog. So gross. Are you dying in that house? Idk why the dog likes me. I’m hardly affectionate and wash my hands after I touch her.
F: Female. She likes females. Ready for good news? THERE IS CANNED PUMPKIN HERE!
Me; Oh, thank God.
F: What are the instructions for feeding this horse? (The dog is a Great Dane.)
Me: I’ll feed her.
F: She went back upstairs.
Me: haha is she moping in their room?
F: On their bed all day. Except for when shitting in the hallway, of course.
Me: We might have to write our book during the next week and a half. I feel we have a lot of good material. Also, I’m almost there. You’ll know I’m there when she starts barking.
F: Cool. I am aimlessly looking at my phone. We can do that together when you get here.
Me: Sounds like a plan.

5 Minutes Later All aimless phone-looking is on hold until the doggy diarrhea is addressed upon my arrival. I’ll spare the nasty details. Let’s just say I nearly threw up several times, which is saying something considering I have an esophagus that refuses to allow me to throw up, or even burp, without a great deal of effort and distress. Also involved in the cleanup were an entire roll of paper towel, two trash bags, a bottle of PineSol, carpet spray of some sort, Fred cheering me on from the bottom of the stairs, and about twenty minutes spent with my shirt covering my mouth so as to mask the stench. The cleanup wasn’t all that successful, but after two days with the window open, the air is breathable.
Group text with the dog’s owners:
F: Maggie and I aren’t sure what happened. Best we can tell a horse broke into your house and shit all over the place. We recommend at a minimum a new rug, but really moving to a new place may be better.
*Sends photo of me shielding my face with my shirt while flipping the camera off as I sit among a pile of cleaning products and trash bags.

Thursday, Zero Dark Thirty I rise to see if Sadie needs to go outside, thinking to myself that it’s going well considering she’s not making any noise. I turn the corner to the hallway to find the dog dying of shame over two piles of shit, one along side a rather large, pumpkin-colored SPLAT. (There’s no other word for it. It probably even made the sound.)
*Sends photo of the 2 piles and 1 splat to Fred.
Me: Hot poop! But I’ll handle it. OMG I took her out around… idk midnight? 2? And now she is out because she was ready to do more after this! She was out for at least 10 minutes. She usually lingers at the door, but she seemed to be taking her time. Hopefully she got most of it done out there. This is how parents talk. They discuss the bowel movements of their babies in detail. I’m so not having kids.
6am
F: Oh no. That’s horrible. But it’s a little more firm. That’s the pumpkin. I can’t believe we are discussing quality of this animal’s poop.
Me: Yeah, minus the one liquid splat. I’m dying. I slept like 3 hours. I’m already at work. Given she already exploded and I was awake anyways, I left. Gave her a bit of food and pumpkin. She didn’t seem too thrilled to eat it.
F: I can’t deal. This is too much. (hysterically laughing emoji)
Me: We could tour the country doing standup just about this. I’m exhausted.
F: I have been awake since 4. That GERD life.
Me: 4:30 for me. And also just after midnight. And 2am. That insomnia life.

Thursday Afternoon
Me: Any more diarrhea? I hate that I just asked you that lol
F: She just took a solid poo outside! (party emojis)
Me: YAY!
F: SHITSTORM TRACKER 9000. To the minute updates.

Sunday Morning I’m pleased to report that the shitstorm has come to an end. The pumpkin seemed to do the trick. There remains, though, a collection of shit stains on the carpet. We’re not sure it can be salvaged.

In short, it's been a shitstorm, thus making it the perfect addition to that of my widowhood, and ME the ideal person to care for this dog while her humans are away. For starters, in exchange for watching their dog, they grant me use of their car. This is beyond generous and is appreciated more than I can possibly say, considering that I am currently without a car of my own, as that whole situation was wrapped up in my late husband's gambling, lying and subsequent suicide.  

Secondly, I don't have any kids or other creatures to take care of, so it's not that big of a deal for me to take some time away from home and settle in for some dogsitting in between my other happenings in life. I joked at first that this was yet another example of how childless widows are expected to put their maternal instincts to use by getting pets, or in my case, by playing the role of aunt to friends' children and dogs. It works out quite nice, at least in theory. I'm terrified that anybody in my care will die; it's already happened to me once, and no matter what anyone says or how often I remind myself that I am not responsible for my husband's suicide, there's always a twinge of guilt because he was my person and I failed to keep him alive. So, being able to care for others on a part-time basis provides me access to a lot of growth and healing without the pressure of being fully responsible. (You know, because I can give the kids/dogs back to their owners after I'm done with them.)

Finally, it is especially true that I'm the right dogsitter for this poor creature during her recent case of the shits seeing as I don't sleep well and awake at the slightest noise when there's another living creature in the room. Should she have a midnight grumbly in her tumbly, I’m likely to hear it. Hell, I wake up even if she breathes too heavily. Or snores, which she does quite a bit of after I’ve taken her for a long walk and exhausted her. She twitches a lot, too. At least one of us is now getting some sleep. This wasn't an issue for me before Mark died. I could sleep through anything and usually did. In fact, I slept through almost two years of Mark leaving in the middle of the night to go to the casino and other unknown locations to gamble away the money that we didn't have, often with my debit card that I didn't hear him take out of my wallet.

On second thought, maybe my sleep WAS the issue before Mark died. Perhaps I slept TOO well. But back to the dog.

I think I accumulated three hours of sleep Wednesday night, which was fine by me considering I was able to interrupt her early morning episode of diarrhea mid-explosion and get her outside before further destroying the carpet.

I shit you not, I woke to the sound of her shuffling around in the hall and managed to catch her right after a giant splat of grossness landed on the now stained carpet, but BEFORE any more damage could be done. She seemed quite pleased that I got there in time to get downstairs and open the door for her. She proceeded to spend a good ten minutes outside, either partially dying of the shits or maybe just hiding in shame, much the way a human does during a similar mishap. You know... when you slowly make your way out of the bathroom and back to whatever you were doing before, thinking only of how awful that previous experience was and how something in your body is VERY upset with you. So you proceed to blame yourself for making poor choices in diet. Like that.

Needless to say, I'm having an adventure. I’ve still not managed a full night of sleep, but whether the shitstorm or my general insomnia is to blame is up for debate. Fortunately, because my maturity level is that of a pubescent boy, I've found myself in more than one fit of hysterical laughter, the kind that contorts your face and robs you of breath, leaving you wheezing like a a chainsmoker or gasping for relief the way you do after a Thanksgiving dinner. The laughter has probably added a few years to my life, and thank goodness for that because having to clean up the dog's explosion on the carpet shaved about ten off. There are no words for it, really. I’m just glad Fred was there to capture the image of me cleaning up the disaster. You can see it on my IG: @marathonmags24

Now you have to follow me on Instagram. HA!
This is primarily because I haven’t yet figured out how to add photos to the exact spots I want them in my posts.