That Great Steaming Pile of Poop Day

Editor’s Note: Don’t give up on this article. It starts off dark, but gets much, much better. Please take the journey with me.

Yes it is a little shy on personal finance, but NextDraft stole my thunder with their #4 point (Note: Link only valid if read near when this article is published as NextDraft changes daily.)

“Tomorrow’s coming ’round like a hair-pin curve in the road… She’s got a run in her stocking and she’s missing the heel of her shoe.” – Poe

That quote is from musician Poe’s song, “That Day”. It’s one of my favorite CDs… one of two that has earned a permanent place in a CD player for 15 years in my life.

The song is spoken word poetry, which isn’t typically my thing. On another CD it would be uninspiring, but mixed in with the rest of the songs, it just fits. The lyrics are dark and I can’t put myself in her place… other than it being a bad day.

Yesterday

Yesterday was the bad day that set me up for today. (I’ll get to why today is important later.)

If you ever had a day where you tried to get something done and failed this was “That Day.” I tried to do the simplest thing of buy my dog’s food and getting his nails cut. I had done it easily a couple of dozen times before. This time was different because the vet recommended he go on a senior diet. It seems that every dog food company makes a senior diet except for Merrick which is what my dog eats. I now have to research senior food. I figured I coult at least get his nails cut. Nope. I didn’t bring the new rabies vaccine paperwork even though he had the tag. She explained that some pet owners swap rabies tags on their pets. (Really, that’s a “thing”???)

The person who has cut his nails a dozen times before gave our dog a big hug as we were rejected to home. It seems that hugs are fine with the protocol.

I transitioned to picking up the kids so that we could go to a wake. A friend’s father died. If you know me, life stops when something like that happens. Fortunately my wife feels the same way.

I got the kids home from school only to find that Facebook had disabled my account. It seems that they didn’t agree with the FBI’s recommendation that I should remain anonymous for my safety due to the multiple death threats I have received. Neither the FBI, nor Facebook has customer service that you can really talk to. It seems to me that they only contact you when they have an issue with their own internal procedures. I apologize for being a person caught in the middle of their ideological dispute.

We got back home at around 8:30PM and walked the sleeping kids up to bed. My wife followed as today was one of her 14 hour workdays (including commute).

I wanted to catch up on email and a few other business tasks, so I stayed up. I caught that a lawyer had sent something my RainSoft case earlier in the day that I missed. She asked a simple question that probably could have been answered in a couple of sentences. I think I went on for hundreds of sentences as her question opened up a new wound. I’m a parent of two boys which often makes me a judge. I felt this detail alone would dismiss the lawsuit and save the court system hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’m not lawyer and “parent judge” probably doesn’t go far in this court. I only hope I didn’t waste the time by thinking that all parties would use common sense.

It seems that no matter how much I bend over backwards to help consumers (and experts agree with me), I have to explicitly justify every bend.

Fortunately, I won the Le-Vel lawsuit against my review earlier this week.

Putting that epic email together had me awake until 2:30AM.

Today

I crossed into today with that epic email. I went to bed around 2:30AM and my wife said something like, “You are going to bed now? I’m getting up for work in an hour.” I blathered something and went to sleep.

At 4:30 my oldest son woke me up. Since he had fallen asleep on the way home last night, he didn’t have pajamas or his stuffed animals. He needed help with all of that so he could sleep. I got it all together as my wife was already off for the day.

At 5:30 he came back into the room asking if he could sleep with me. “Of course”, I said.

The 7:10 alarm to get them ready for school came far too quick. No one wanted to be awake. I thought my oldest would be good enough on 12 hours of sleep. I was wrong. I had to start to get him awake… he was still very tired.

And Then Everything Became Awesome

Instead of the typical “I don’t want to go to school” fight I have every morning, my 4 year old said, “It’s your lucky day, daddy. It’s your birthday!” He ran off to his room to get dressed.

My younger son (a few months older than 3) didn’t share the same zeal. It seemed like a typical day. I got his nightime pull-up off and asked him to go potty as I have for the last 3 months.

The 4 year old came back dressed “in daddy’s favorite shirt.” A couple of years ago it was the “1… 2… Starman” shirt. (If you haven’t read that article, I honestly believe it is in top 5 of anything I’ve written.) He’s older now, so he knows the great significance of the shirt he’s wearing. I’m ecstatic that he’d honor my birthday by picking that shirt above all his favorites.

Let’s get back to my youngest son… on his 3rd birthday he decided he was a big boy who could go pee in the potty. Parents know that is a big step forward.

And for months he refused to do anything more than pee. No one (even me!) is more stubborn than my youngest. My wife says that it is easier to negotiate with ISIS. It was impossible to transition to be completely potty trained.

For my birthday he did the unexpected… he made a “Great Steaming Pile of Poop.” The morning culminated in an epic victory that I literally explained in that title.

I can’t get the FBI and Facebook to agree. I can’t seem to get RainSoft to acknowledge the FTC’s warning about “Water Testing Scams” in 1993. I can’t get the NFL to acknowledge that the Ideal Gas Law is established science. I can’t negotiate with ISIS.

I CAN get a steaming pile of poop for my birthday. It’s the greatest gift I could ask for.