Today I spent most of he day having my hair coloured and cut. I’m a bleach blonde going back to my natural brunette. Quite an undertaking really, leaving plenty of time for chatting. While I was patiently waiting for my hair to process, my hairdresser and friend (for the sake of this blog I’ll call her B) told me about her weekend dramas.

Her nephew was turning one, so his father, rented out two humongous houses in Sorento for a week. Yup my mouth dropped too, that’s some serious first birthday celebration. B explained that they all put in for the houses and it was to be a nice week away as well as a bit of a welcome home for B and her partner, who had been in Mexico for a month. All her family were there; her brother, sisters, hubbies and their kids and multiple parents of the group. In all, I tried to count them and there was probably about twenty there.

Anyways, before B even arrived on the Friday night after work, she was called by her brother and told to take her time getting there as they were a little under the weather. Hmm, right about there I would have said, perhaps we stay home? So they arrived late Friday night, and by then a ‘bug’ had taken a strangle hold over almost the entire family. Couples with their kids were shut up in their rooms, quarantined. Drinks and meals left at doors. The multiple bathrooms engaged by squirting bums and puking mouths. Charming right? Poor buggers.

B was telling me that she used toilet paper wrapped around her hand to open doors. Very ingenious B, perhaps your newly acquired immune from Mexico will save you? Cans of Glen 20 and antibacterial wipes sterilised the air and shitty toilet seats. The pool out back and hired jumping castles stood unused. Kilos of meat and other foods thrown away, too scared to eat it. A germ was running rampant and B didn’t have it. Nor did she get it! The houses were empty by Sunday morning, although rented until Tuesday, they were now tainted, so they all went home.

Urban Dictionary Definition:

Shart

~A small, unintended defecation that occurs when one relaxes the anal sphincter to fart (blend of “shit” and “fart”)

~A cross between farting and dropping a load in your pants. Typically of a runny consistency. There are 5 categories of Sharts. Also known as a Foop.

Cat 1) Wet Sensation
Cat 2) Wet Underwear
Cat 3) Soak thru to inside of pants
Cat 4) Soak thru pants (Visible to general public)
Cat 5) Runs down to socks. (Oh my god, run for your life)

Gastro has presented itself in I would happily say, every single household in the world, including mine. No house is immune to that shit of a bug, excuse the pun. Even the mere mention of it makes me queasy. The slightest gurgle of the guts, or bubbling of air in the colon makes me nervous after a conversation with anyone that’s been in contact with the germ. The smell of gastro shite is one on its own. You know by the smell when you have the wretched bug. The splash back on your arse cheeks from the spray bouncing off the back of the dunny should be enough, but the smell confirms it.

Cutting my boy’s hair tonight after dinner, I felt a rumble, deep within my intestines. I ignored it… for a moment. That rumble turned into a gurgle, closer to my bowel, perhaps in my colon. Fark! Squeezing my butt cheeks together I excused myself and briskly waddled to the toilet where all hell broke loose in the crapper commencing first with a SHART! Then the smell…

You’ve got to be fucking kidding right? Just talking about gastro, does not mean you get it. While my sphincter unleashed the unholy, I retraced my day in my head. Where the fuck have I picked this bug up from? Surely B hadn’t passed on a bug to me that she never had? Perhaps it was the Vegetarian Vermicelli I ate for lunch? Or the coffee lozenges I was sucking on throughout the day, that had a diarrhoea warning on the pack if you consume too many… was four too many to make me shit through the eye of sixteen sewing needles lined up? Not a chance!

What is it about being so humiliated by your own feces and defecation? I mean it’s not my fault my colon is angry. It is what it is, but I’m so glad that it happened at home and not in the city earlier. Imagine a Cat 4 or Cat 5 in public? On Johnston Street Fitzroy. I wouldn’t cope, and I’m not even sure how I would react. Not even being intoxicated excuses the Cat 4 & 5. That level is for the experts, the daredevils or the elderly. Now by no means am I pointing fingers or making fun at the elderly. I have a couple of friends in aged care and I’m telling you NOW, I could never do what they do, gastro or not! I take my hat off to them for doing what they do. A little bit of my own poop on my own finger accidentally is enough to make me dry wretch, let alone old Gladys’s poop. You’re my heroes Relle and Amy!

Even the Cat 3 is a worry, or well it used to be. Toilet training my boys more than a decade ago I went through many, many, many pairs of jocks, because I couldn’t ‘handle’ pooey jocks. Now I know we’re not talking runny when you’re potty training kids, but shit is shit yes? Can’t do it, I’m sorry! They went straight in the bin after it was bagged first. Spew I can do…

As I’m sitting here typing, my guts is churning. Pinching, growling, rolling and rumbling underneath my pyjama pants. It can’t be gastro, I’m not spewing, right? I’m scared to fart (not that I fart because I’m a lady) but if I wanted to, there’s no fucking way I would, even if I am at home! I listen to one of my boys walk through the kitchen, dropping his guts, while chugging milk straight from a carton, and I’m waiting for the Shart, because surely, it’s bound to rear its ugly head there too?

Hopefully it’s just something I ate, but just in case it’s not, all the wipes and Glen 20 will kill any hint of a germ lurking about in our bathrooms. There weren’t any goodnight kisses tonight for fear of spreading the germ I DONT HAVE! Mind over matter works doesn’t it? To be honest, I’m afraid, very afraid. I hate the raw, burning and sore sphincter left behind after a bout of gastro and the shitting like a duck for a day.

Best I go make a peppermint tea, see if I can settle this groaning guts. Wish me luck!

Make sure you turn the teapot twice clockwise and once anticlockwise!

Nom