Friday, April 01, 2005

The Tao of Poo

We have a variety of words to describe my baby girl's poo. "Like the Eskimo and snow," my husband said.

There are the Poop Cookies. These are the most common. Look like little flattened pancakes o' poo.

Not quite as common are the Poop Cakes. These are larger versions of the Poop Cookies, not quite as flat.

Depending on what she eats, there may be the Peanut Butter Poop. Or the Vegetable Soup Poop. I don't think I need to explain those.

Once in awhile we get a Baby Ruth Poop. Which looks just like the Halloween-size candy bar of the same name.

And finally, my favorite, the Poobles. These are little marbles of poop that like to roll out of the diaper during changings. I once found one of my younger sister's Poobles outside her playpen when we were kids. I thought it was Play Doh, at the time. Which was not such an odd mistake to make, considering I had just been playing with the clay in the livingroom the day before and mixing up all the colors of the rainbow. Fortunately, I just put the Pooble on the end table by the couch, rather than in the jar with the clay. I'm sure my parents wondered how a tiny turd got there where my dad set his Pepsi, and now they know.

I have a college education and I'm spending my days classifying poo. Sometimes I think there's something wrong with that. Then other times I think that, in the vast expanse of the universe, perhaps ambition and ego are no more nor less significant than the flapping of a butterfly's wing or the falling of a sparrow. Perhaps they are illusions, and it is only necessary to do what is necessary. Like changing a diaper.