If You Can't Blame The Dog...

Since my recent intestinal adventure, I have become fearful-to-the-point of phobic of constipation.

I blame the well-meaning X-Ray tech (a former student of my father, thank you very much!) who earnestly explained to me about a possible complication of barium ingestion:

"You drunk about a half a gallon of barium, right?" she pointed out.  I nodded.  "Sometimes the body does strange things.  It can happen that your intestine will suck out all of the water, and just leave the barium itself behind, like a little plug of radioactive concrete in your colon.  So just drink plenty of water for a while, okay?  And if your poop is white, that's good.  It means it's the barium coming out safely."

Visualizing a plug of white, radioactive concrete in my colon did not make me happy.  Even imagining the superpowers that might result from such a situation did not ease my mind.  I dutifully drank tons of water and watched for any resulting whiteness, but alas, it did not appear.  Even the knowledge that, by now, all of the barium must be gone, does not ease (ha!) my mind.

So I have been consuming a staggering amount of fiber.  I think I'm up to around 30 grams of fiber a day, thanks to Splenda With Fiber (3 grams of fiber per yummy teaspoon!) and steel-cut oatmeal.  A few fiber gummies, a FiberOne Brownie or two... I'm good.  This amount of fiber, however, means that my organs are always giving a recital, so to speak.  This recital is often only heard by me, but it is, alas, "appreciated" by all.

This is not so much an issue at home as it is at school, since even the most well mannered thirteen-year-old can often not resist a comment like, "Who did that?  Or did something die in your room this morning?"

My tactic, since I have no dog to blame: keep moving and hope they blame each other.  So far, it works.

"Miss, they need to stop making those quesadillas (pronounced phonetically as "kwe-sa-dill-ohs") for breakfast!" one girl earnestly proclaimed.  "'Cause it is stinky after a while!"

"Oh, dear!" I say without a trace of irony as I float gently from one side of the room to another.  The moving teacher farts, and having farted, moves on, is my new motto.  Perhaps not worthy of a sampler, but it works for me.

(The above post is dedicated to my friend Laura, who posted her desire for a new blog post on my Facebook wall.  I hope you are happy.  The rest of you now know who to blame.)

Happy holidays!