My husband kisses me good morning and wishes me a great day at work with my kiddies every day; he leaves for work more than an hour before me, and I’m most often still in bed when he stops to kiss me before he heads out the door. It’s a part of our routine that I really appreciate, and I’m grateful to start all my days feeling loved.

Today, The Electrician stood in the doorway of our bedroom instead of coming to the bed to kiss me. I knew immediately something was going on, but I certainly didn’t expect him to ask me, “How do you get diarrhea out of carpet?” So not the good morning to which I am blissfully accustomed.

At first, I was concerned my husband had some sort of fecal crisis and was turning to be for help. In my early-morning haze, I wondered if we were having our first test of that whole “in sickness and in health” part. Apparently, Caroline, our latest SCARS foster dog, busted out of her kennel during the night, and had screaming diarrhea in the basement.

There are several things you should be aware of as you consider the plight in which The Electrician and I found ourselves this morning. First, keep in mind Caroline is a good hundred pounds, so her poop reserve is impressively vast. As well, a dog panicked by her furious tummy doesn’t exactly pick a spot to relieve herself, but moves about in a squat/scamper hybrid. Finally (and most horrifically) there is a high probability that the hershey squirter in your basement will hit at least one critical target as she redecorates the place.

For us, the critical target was the cord for The Electrician’s laptop. We were lucky he put the computer up on the tv cabinet to charge it last night, but Caroline managed to foul the portion of the cord coiled on the carpet–I realize that might normally have been an awesome poop pun, but there were no coilings in the puddles of evil she produced. The cord, including the transformer or insulator box or whatever that thing is, was completely submerged in soupy stool. To make matters much, much worse, the box thingy on the cord warms up with normal operation. Guess what? When the cord and its features don’t get any air, they get more than a little warm.

For the first and hopefully only time in my life, there was freshly-baked turd in my basement.

With the aid of our pancake flipper, which has now been forever relegated to cleaning use rather than culinary endeavours, we scraped up the carnage. I use the term “we” in a general sense, since my poor husband did the worst of it. He decided the violence of my gagging meant it was less dangerous for him to do the scraping, bless him. It took a whole roll of paper towel to get the worst of it out of the carpet, and we sprayed it afterward with the enzyme stuff for pet “soils” I bought way back when Sherman was a baby.

I am sad to report my basement still smells like hot crap, but now there is a slightly floral twinge to it.

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