Today was a day of (mostly) guilt-free screwing around, which is a relief because yesterday was a day of finishing class and serving divorce papers on my ex. The serving went fine, and now he has twenty days to reply to the summons. My friends and I were joking about sending him a variety case of liquor to ensure that he goes into default. I am so going to Hell.

A conversation I had with my mother recently made very clear to me that I’m usually not a guilt-free screwing-around type, but am usually bugging out on something. We were speculating on the odds of me getting married again ever (unlikely). I told her I was looking forward to living in filthy, filthy, disgusting sin.

“Oh, SJ,” she sighed. “Lots of people live together without being married. You are such a closet Catholic.” She made her “where-did-I-go-wrong?” face, which she trots out every chance she gets.

“No, Mom,” I said. “I mean, filthy FILTHY sin.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s different then.” The Shedonist knows all about filthy sin.

I am trying to relax a little. I think it’s finally happening. I know I’m getting back into the swing because I have returned to tormenting other peoples’ children when their parents are out of earshot. A little boy at the mall the other day was short at the ice cream place and I took unreasonable amounts of pleasure in giving him the smackdown.

“Lady, do you have ten cents?” he said, batting his big brown eyes at me. The ice-cream jerk was holding the little boy’s dripping mint chocolate chip cone hostage until he could pony up the dough.

“For you?” I said. “No.” I shook my head sadly and walked away. The clerk and her supervisor giggled uncomfortably, and a couple of minutes later I spotted the little boy walking with the cone that the clerk had just given over. What a sucker she was.

And then today my companion, Frannie, and I went to the beach. It was nice, but a little cloudy. We climbed the lifeguard tower and a little girl who was about four bratted over to where we were. She had one of those bitty blonde pixie cuts that are devastatingly cute on some children, and merely serve to increase the obnoxious quotient of other children.

“Haaaay, no fair,” she whined at us as I spotted Frannie’s climb up the lifeguard tower. “I’m not supposed to climb up that.”

“You should take that up with your mother,” I replied.

“My mother and father said I can’t climb it!”

“Maybe you should get some new parents,” I said. Her eyes got wide and she shook her head and walked away.

I climbed up behind Frannie and sat next to my companion, who was laughing with me. I am lucky that I have found someone who is indulgent of my assmittenry.

In Other News

Later, Frannie and I went to a small used bookstore in Wallingford and I bought her a copy of Dahl’s The Witches and trashy school break reading for myself.

Of course she had to poop, and I lucked out for once and picked a shop that has a customer bathroom. She was carrying a cheap little plastic horse and doll set that her dad bought her and didn’t know where to put them down. I decided not to wait and peed while she was dilly-dallying and staring at the dead flies trapped behind the plastic-covered, winterized window. I didn’t flush after I’d finished and told her it was her turn now.

“Where do I put my pony and my princess?”

“Just set them on the back of the toilet,” I said impatiently.

Ploop! The pony fell into the can as she reached over it.

“Dammit!” I said.

“Can you get it, Mom?” Frannie pleaded with me. I thought for a minute: should I reach into the Mystery Toilet, this toilet I have already peed in myself? To fish out some cheap plastic Barbie-related crap her dad bought her?

“No,” I said. “Just go poop. We are flushing that fucking pony.” It was pretty small, I reasoned.

Frannie pooped, sadly, mourning her pony, and I flushed. The water went swirling down, and the pony came bouncing back.

“Dammit!” I said. I reached in the toilet and pulled the wet, germy pony out, and threw it away. I washed my hands and thought about all the times I have been covered in shit, blood, or vomit in the last three years. Or just embarrassing public incidents in general.

I walked away from the sink to where Frannie was waiting for me.

“Where’s my pony?” she asked.

“He dead,” I said.

And tonight I am eating ice cream in my pajama pants and reading Bridget Jones’ Diary, which I snobbily avoided the first time around. I am the squirming little bitch of PMS today and I can’t do a damned thing about it.

In Other, Non-Poop-Related News

Yesterday’s hair experiment came off well and now I am back to orange and pink. It didn’t come off without a hitch, however. All that sizzling was the ends of my hair melting. Normally I have hair like steel, and this is the first time I’ve had loss or breakage from too much beauty parlor. I watched in horror as most of the little fried ends (and some chunks) went down the drain in the shower.

After I got my hair did I had the final meeting with my student organization before we officially turn the reins over to the new officers. I told my fellow officers that I was futzing with my hair on the bus ride down and was horrified that the ends were still coming off, and that this guy in a suit was staring at me the whole time.

“Oh,” said the treasurer. “You were the weirdo on the bus today.”

She was totally right; I was the weirdo on the bus.