HUMOUR

The Poop Delivery

A rant and call for help

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As an avid online shopper, I am used to waiting for deliveries. When given the option to leave in a safe place, I always make that choice so my goods arrive without inconvenience.

It was my daughter’s birthday recently, and one of the gifts I bought her was one of those fridges to keep cosmetics in.

Yes, it is a ridiculous gift. I love cosmetics as much as the next girl; however, in the 30 years I have used a skincare routine, I have never needed to store the items in a fridge.

I guess we are living in crazy times!

I bought this gift with the sole intention of my daughter using the fridge as an additional storage space. So, instead of placing her creams, serums, and liquids all over her bedroom, she would have one designated space to keep them.

The timing of the fridge delivery was a source of anxiety for me, as I needed it to get here before her birthday. I had planned to set it all up so she could be surprised when she saw how organized and clean her room looked.

Lucky for me, the great gods of Amazon had a sale on these stupid cosmetic coolers. As a Prime member, I received free delivery.

The delivery arrived precisely twenty-four hours later, as promised.

When the man dropped it at my door, I tore open the impossible-to-rip plastic covering. I raced upstairs to set everything up before my daughter arrived home.

As much as it is a gimmick of an item, it did look pretty cool. It had a mirror with an LED light that changed colors and was bigger than I anticipated.

When I arrived to plug it into the wall, I was excited to see how it would look all lit up with her creams and potions so lovingly organized when the worst happened.

The damn thing blew up.

Fuck!

In a panic, I yelled at my husband to immediately ascend the stairs and rectify the situation.

My husband is not an electrician, but he has plugged enough items into various electrical sockets to know that when a US plug is used in an Australian electricity outlet, there will be sparks due to the voltage difference.

How did I know that when I ordered the fridge, I was supposed to specify what electrical plug was required?

I didn’t even know that was a thing!

I have bought a shitton of crap online and never encountered such an oversight.

My husband insisted I return it, get my money back, and order another, this time with an Australian electrical plug.

My issue is that I am an experienced online shopper; however, I have never returned anything I ordered.

I didn’t even know where to begin.

In a state of disarray, I called my friend Stef for help. Stef was the queen of online shopping. She was also the queen of knowing most retail outlets’ return policies and, at one time, had more layby’s left unpaid than shops on the local strip near where we live.

Stef talked me off the ledge. She explained that Amazon has a very fair return policy. I would just need to go to their website and fill out a form, and then DHL or UPS would come to my house and pick it up.

Phew!

I still had time to arrange the return and order my daughter a new cosmetic fridge.

It was a simple process, apart from arranging the pickup with DHL.

I had to give them a window for the delivery man to pick up the blown-up fridge when I was home. I will receive my refund when Amazon gets the item.

Friday of that week was the perfect day.

I had a few things to do but would be home between 11.30 am and 1.30 pm. Two hours. Easy.

Not easy!!!

At 11 am that Friday morning, I was lying on my physiotherapist’s table, with twenty dry needles torturously sticking out of my groin, when my phone rang.

“Hello, it’s DHL here; are you home?” The voice greeted me.

“No, I’m not home!!! I arranged the pickup for 11.30 am, because that is when I stipulated I would be home! Can you please come back at 11.30?”

He said that would be fine.

After my session of muscular misery, I flew home as fast as a bat out of hell (I’m not sure how fast that is, but I imagine it’s swift!).

I raced inside the house and gathered the fridge and all the paperwork, ready for Mr. Delivery Man’s arrival.

I was also absolutely busting for the toilet.

Still, I couldn’t indulge in that relief as I knew I’d potentially be stuck there, and this would most likely coincide with when the doorbell would ring.

I squeezed my butt cheeks together and prayed the delivery man would get there fast.

11.35 am: The delivery man has yet to arrive.

11.40 am: Still waiting for the delivery man.

11.45 am: No arrival from the delivery man.

I was ropable. All I could think about was that in the last fifteen minutes, I could have been excreting the log that, by this stage, was almost touching cloth.

By 12 pm, he still had yet to arrive.

Sweat was taking over my body.

I sat in a chair close to the front door, my legs crossed, and said a prayer for my underwear.

I rocked back and forth. By 12.10, my left leg was shaking.

The situation was becoming more dire.

To focus on something else, I looked out the window at my dog roaming around the garden. The sun was shining, and our grass looked great.

My dog saw me watching him out the window and wagged his tail at me; he was looking at me dead in the eyes.

Then he crouched down on his back legs. In the divine afternoon sunshine, he proceeded to back out the most considerable doll-whip of poop, without taking his eyes off me!

Oh, the great injustice of it all!!

I needed to get up and move around. If I kept myself busy, the delivery man would turn up quicker. I could finally sit down and let go of all that my insides were so desperate to repel.

At 1.15 pm, I check my watch.

Still waiting for the delivery man.

By this stage, my stomach was distended, and I was bursting with inner fury.

I called the DHL office and asked them to find out the estimated arrival time for this delivery man.

After a few minutes on hold, the lovely lady on the phone said she couldn’t reach the delivery man and we could reschedule the pickup for next week!

Fine. That’s what I had to do.

There was no time left to deal with this delivery debacle. I had an appointment at my son’s school and had to leave home at 1.40 pm.

After I hung up from rescheduling the delivery, I thought, “Finally! I have ten minutes to get to the toilet before I have to leave home!”

The anticipation of the sweet relief I sought would have been worth the wait. I was optimistic that, within seconds, I would have released the overwhelming discomfort I had been forcefully holding inside of me.

I grabbed my phone and a water bottle and headed to the bathroom, ready to take care of my business.

It turned out that this day was a constant disappointment, and everything would go differently than planned.

My poo had been transported somewhere in my body, and I had no plans of visiting Club Porcelain.

I don’t know where it went, but it wasn’t there anymore, and there was no movement at the station.

Lord knows I tried. I held the walls of the bathroom and bore down like I was taught to when I was giving birth, but today no poo baby would enter my world.

I sat and sat and sat. I pushed and prayed.

Babkis. Nothing. It was not a nugget to be felt.

My body must have reabsorbed what is so badly needed to expel.

I had no time to dwell on or Google the possibilities of what had gone wrong; I had to get to my kid’s school.

Feeling utterly exhausted and like a premium failure, I drove the eight minutes, while the whole time, I berated myself for prioritizing delivery over my self-care.

I made it through the rest of my day without visiting the bathroom.

My missing poop occupied my mind the entire time. There was no escaping it. Everywhere I looked, I saw people who I just knew were walking around having emptied their bowels earlier that day.

They were all blissfully unaware of the pressure I had been under and the stress of not knowing what would become of my intestines.

Before I went to bed that night, I remembered forgetting to put the time and day I had rescheduled the DHL pickup in my diary.

I looked up the confirmation email with all the details, and it was changed to Tuesday the following week between 10 am and 2 pm.

I’m not one to repeat a mistake, so I have already put a plan in motion.

I will wake up early Tuesday morning, drink coffee, and then chase it with a fiber drink.

This time, I will take control of my situation.

If I fail to move last night’s dinner after increasing the uptake of bowel-movers, then so be it.

Looking back on the saga of the cosmetic fridge delivery, I have accepted that it was a day filled with frustration and disappointment.

But through it all, there was a lesson learned: never prioritize a delivery over a poo. So, as the rescheduled pickup date approaches, I’m prepared to take control of the situation and ensure that everything goes smoothly this time around — a smooth delivery and a smooth bowel motion!