This is the last post I will ever write on the subject of poop.

I know. You’re sad. You’re disappointed. You are stung and crushed by this terrible news. You were hoping that it would go on and on, the all-poop-all-the-time, more-details-than-you-ever-wanted, what-do-you-mean-it-started-out-as-a-gardening-blog news channel that thumbstumbler has become. But, people? I am indescribably tired. Of poop, I mean. Not just the stuff. I am tired of the word itself. I have said, written, and thought about it more times in the last two weeks than I ever expected to in my entire life. My sole desire now is to swear off of it forever. To never, ever string two “o’s” between a pair of “p’s” again, creating a pert but fecal palindrome capable of eliciting both nose-wrinkles of disgust and giggles of embarrassment. Even if I am talking about a sailing vessel and there is absolutely no avoiding the part of the deck that bears the name, “poop” is out of the running forever. That’s what I want to say.

But I have a two-year-old. To make such a promise would be foolish. I can only avow that, after I wrap up this particular chapter of my daughter’s eliminatory saga, I plan on taking a long, long break from the word. Even relatively innocuous, but tangentially related subjects will be suspect. Winnie-the-you-know-who, for example, will be shunned. Poodles, equally so. Pooty Tang will be exempted. But only because that is the greatest movie ever made.

Before I return, however, to “normalcy” — or whatever twisted version of that appears on this blog — I must say one more thing. Just one:

Six today.

SIX! Six poops. Six dirty diapers. Six trips to the Diaper Genie — which — I will just take this moment to add — is the most ill-conceived, ass-backwards, infuriatingly useless gadget known to mankind. One, among other things, that you can not stick your hand into without it coming out covered in fecal matter. One that produces gigantic, elongated, sluglike bags of dirty diapers, just sheer enough to ensure that you see every brown smear inside, just blue enough to stand out when you, for example, leave one lying in the corner, meaning to take it out, when the life-insurance guy shows up unexpectedly. “Hey, look at me!” it seems to shout.  “I’m a giant blue poop sausage!” I mean really. They can’t make the bags opaque?

But I digress.

What I started to say was, one of today’s six was basically the Exxon Valdez of poops. It occurred while Myra-Jean was taking her nap. When I say that entire eco-systems were destroyed by the spill that ensued I am not entirely exaggerating. (Or maybe I am. But there sure were a lot of stuffed animals in the washing machine later.) Suffice it to say that when I walked in she had poop on her face, in her hair, on her hands and on her feet. As well as in the obvious places. I later found poop on the outside of a sippy cup that was near — not in –the crib at the time of impact. I mean, Jesus Christ.

Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful, beyond words, that we are finally having some…movement. I am simply terrified of how long the geyser stage will go on. Famine was bad, in short, but feast does not come without its torments.

Having said that, I am done. Tomorrow, we move on to other subjects. Who knows what? Ironing, aphids, dog hair, sheets?

Probably laundry. I suspect there will be much of that for some time to come. But I promise to keep it vague.