Peeing, Multi-Tasking and the Great Reward

Do you ever, you know, have to pee? But you don't? Not right away? Because you have something to do first, and if you get that done, then you can go to the bathroom. Like it's a reward? Say you're on the way to the can but you pass the kitchen enroute and see you haven't emptied the dishwasher yet, so you stop and empty the dishwasher, and then fill it with the dirty crap that was dumped in your sink by other people who don't share your reverence for multi-tasking (and were probably peeing as you stabbed yourself with the upside down fork that was lurking behind a spoon). And then, since you're there, you gather up the dirty tea towels, empty the garbage and sweep the floor. The sweeping is somewhat difficult because your legs are firmly crossed and you're thinking, geez, I gotta go to the can. But the laundry room is on the way to the bathroom so you take the tea towels with you, except you can't go into the laundry room empty-handed so you take a detour up to bedroom, strip the sheets, gather up gotchies and pick up wet towels from the upstairs bathroom. While you're there you brush your teeth, because they're kinda coffee-scuzzed (which is why you also have to pee,) and you brush whilst holding your breath, which is hard (you should try it), because you have to pee so damned bad and you think, just pee here. Right? Just go pee. But that wouldn't make any sense because you're going down to the laundry room, which has a bathroom, which is where you were headed in the first place, so you stagger cross-legged down the stairs, juggling the laundry basket and a bladder bigger than the neighbour's hot tub. Then the phone rings, so you drop the basket in the kitchen, try to answer the phone, but you can't because it's a new phone and you're a technical luddite so you accidentally hang up on your husband and then spend five minutes phoning him while he's trying to phone you and finally you say feck it, and head to the bathroom, only you have an idea about a blog post, so you drop the laundry basket in the middle of the kitchen floor and swerve to the dining room where your laptop sits and you perch on a chair with your whole body twisted in some weird pee knot and you start writing because you have to write when the muse hits. So you write, and you grit the teeth that are floating around in the back of your mouth, and finally you're done, so you RUN to the bathroom, only you see the laundry basket on the floor and ...

Big buttons, little buttonholes

I bought a new pair of jeans, with three chunky fake diamond buttons on the fly.

The buttons were big. The buttonholes were not. When I undid them for the first time, in the dressing room, I had to sweat with the effort of it all. They were relatively easy to do up but ridiculously hard to undo. 

A wise person would have said, "this might not work out so well if you're in a hurry to pee," and put the jeans back on the shelf. I thought, "well, they're just stiff. The buttonholes will stretch. They'll be fine."

The other day I wore them to work. After a couple cups of coffee I needed to use the bathroom, but procrastinated for a while because I was in the middle of a project. When I finally took the opportunity to use the loo, I had to go so bad that I was walking bow-legged.

I stumbled down the hall to the bathroom, found an empty stall, closed the door and, with some relief, started undoing my new jeans.

Oh crap, I thought, as my fingers began wrestling with the stupidly oversized buttons. I could not get that first button to move. It was stuck. Like Winnie the Pooh in the rabbit hole stuck. I pulled and I wrenched and I sweated and I swore but could not undo the top button.

Fine, I thought, I won't go to the stupid bathroom, but my fulsome bladder was saying, "uh-uh, you can't give up. This isn't a game, sister, or some diet you abandon. This is a bonafide emergency and I gotta GO."

Feck, feck, feck, I thought, as I fought with the stupid buttons on my stupid fly. Sweat was pouring off me by now, making my fingers slippery. I wiped them off on the dark denim of my jeans, the ones I was supposed to wash before I wore because of the heavy overload of black dye, but didn't, because why bother, and my fingers came away with a ghastly dark blue hue, like a corpse. A sweaty corpse. A sweaty corpse who had to pee like a racehorse. 

I couldn't believe the ridiculousness of my situation. In a frenzy of ineptitude I poured renewed frenzy into the undoing of the buttons, corpse fingers grappling, tongue gripped between my cursing-like-a-sailor lips, bladder screaming "OPEN THESE GD PANTS NOW OR THEY'RE GONNA BE YELLOW," and I thought, for one horrific moment, that I was going to have to call the fire department. Have them burst into the bathroom stall and say, "Just relax ma'am, it's going to be fine," and then cut them off me with the jaws of life.

In that instant the button, finally, undid. I plopped down on the toilet and peed, oh blessed relief. When I was done I pulled up my jeans and hesitated before doing them up. Should I? Shouldn't I? If I didn't do them up, they'd fall down. If I did, I risked going through the same rigamarole in an hour or so because, once the seal is broken you pee all day.

I debated for a few moments longer, finally deciding to do them up because what they needed was stretching, and if I didn't stretch those buttonholes, the jeans would never be wearable.

I did them up. And went back to my desk.

An hour later, my bladder started making itself known. 

"Shut up and go back to sleep," I said.

An hour and a half later, I was starting to feel uncomfortable. All I could think about was the bathroom stall, the sweaty blue fingers, those ginormous buttons.

The clock ticked. 

My fear grew.

The buttons waited.