MRS BIRD PEES INTO A MASON JAR

I was sitting on the lawn swings, painting my fingernails, wondering how Mrs. Bird's colonoscopy went. A car drove up and it was her! She looked great. (Why didn't I run in the house and get my camera? Because I'm s-l-o-w, that's why. I just now thought of it.) Mrs. Bird is blond and was dressed all in black with a silver necklace--from Chico's, I'm thinking. She's a Chico's kind of girl. She looked fabulous.

It turns out the colonoscopy was cancelled. It took her twenty minutes to tell me why. It's scheduled for next month. There will be a story there. Stay tuned.

Then we got on the subject of the fact that there is no bathroom in the basement of her house. And then--naturally--we got on the subject of her peeing. (This is going to take several posts to tell you all her funny peeing stories so I'll start here.)

THE FULL MASON JAR IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM. This happened several years ago.

Mrs. Bird's garage is on the basement level. She bursts in the house after shopping, or doing whatever current bizarre thing she was doing, and has to go to the bathroom. She knows she will never make it upstairs so she heads for the laundry room, pulling down her pants as she goes. She grabs a wide mouth Mason jar, one she keeps just for this very purpose--she has forgotten this part of the story but it is blazed on my brain--she told me this story fifteen years ago--and I know it's true--she puts the Mason jar on the floor, squats expertly--she's had lots of practice--and pees.

She hears the back door open and close but she's busy and can't stop. Her teenage daughter passes the laundry room, does an double take, backs up and stands in the doorway with her hands on her hips. "What on EARTH are you doing?"

"I'm peeing."

Really, Mrs. Bird thinks, how brainless can my daughter get? Even an amoeba could see I'm peeing.

"Why?" The teenage, non-amoeba asks.

"Because I had to go and couldn't make it upstairs to the bathroom."

Just about that time, with Mrs. Bird minding her own business and with her teenage daughter butting in where she's not wanted, all of a sudden, Mrs. Bird's kidneys and bladder go into overtime and the quart Mason jar fills to the top and overflows. The astonished, yet brainless, daughter has yet another reason to think her mother is nuts.

Well, okay, Mrs. Bird is nuts but her teenage daughter shouldn't have confirmation. Luckily the daughter grew up and now knows her mom is fabulous but there for a minute, with pee puddling on the laundry room floor, trickling down the drain, well, just for a minute, her teenage daughter hoped she only got her father's genes.