O! Crap and pooper scooping! OR, Oh, crap! And pooper scooping...

My weekend has had parentheses of fecal ephiphanies, which may qualify this post as graffiti with punctuation. I offer these revelations:


--Constipated young children tend to sit on the pot rolling toilet paper mummy-style around their hand until they need it.  This can result in serious clogging, and necessitate use of a plunger (not on the child).


--Swimming in summer lakes can lead to ER visits for viral or bacterial meningitis.  I was almost as obsessed with the discovery of brain-eating amoeba in the Sixties as I was with man-eating grizzly bears:  


Naegleria fowleri infects people by entering the body through the nose. This typically occurs when people go swimming or diving in warm freshwater places, like lakes and rivers.


--It is impossible to look elegant carrying a plastic bag of dog poop, or bending over to collect same, or trying to snap a photo of an unknown condo dog-owner and make a quick get-away.


--I forgot to write the next installment of the dog art projects as promised.


--If you are going to replace your toilet, please pay Home Depot to haul the old one away when the new one is delivered.  Nobody wants to see your old potty sitting by the dumpster waiting for a nocturnal elf to cart it away.  Nobody wants to contemplate nocturnal toilet elves.  Your condo association will end up paying for removal of the potty, and that will impact your due$.  This adds new meaning to "bulk pick-up" and "impacted bowels".


--The typical American eats twelve grams of fiber per day.  The RDA is twenty-five grams of fiber.  This is why "Americans can't poop," as I learned at a recent child care workshop presented by nutritionist Coco Frey.


--crap 

"defecate" 1846 (v.), 1898 (n.), from one of a cluster of words generally applied to things cast off or discarded (e.g. "weeds growing among corn" (early 15c.), "residue from renderings" (late 15c.), underworld slang for "money" (18c.), and in Shropshire, "dregs of beer or ale"), all probably from M.E. crappe "grain that was trodden underfoot in a barn, chaff" (mid-15c.), from M.Fr. crape"siftings," from O.Fr. crappe, from M.L. crappa, crapinum "chaff." Sense of "rubbish, nonsense" also first recorded 1898. Despite folk etymology insistence, not from Thomas Crapper (1837-1910) who was, however, a busy plumber and may have had some minor role in the development of modern toilets. The name Crapper is a northern form of Cropper (attested from 1221), an occupational surname, obviously, but the exact reference is unclear.

 --Thomas Crapper was born a couple decades before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Although he provided royal plumbing solutions, he was never knighted.



--Our Wednesday art projects were not stellar, but the students love David Shannon's book, Good Boy, Fergus!  I read it practicing to meet my new grandpuppy.*

--My students also adore the poems and illustrations in Good Dog:

In this heart-stealing picture book, fine artist Robert Rahway Zakanitch gives us 16 masterful, soulful, impossibly expressive portraits of dogs, and Maya Gottfried wonderfully captures their voices and inner personalities in 16 enchanting poems. It₂s a doggie delight! These dogs beg to be patted, tickled, scratched, and ruffled. Which one will be your best friend?

--This is another delightful rhyming book that didn't suggest a workable art project.  My youngest students like to hear it after nap time.

* Not yet carrying around a tiny photo album of precious above average grandpuppy photos, but it's getting close. Maybe close enough to carry the darn plastic collection bag on walkies... 


(Used with permission of grandpuppy's parents.)




© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder