what did SHE have for lunch?

I hate public restrooms, especially public restrooms where daily I visit and am surrounded by people I know.

It's one thing to go to a public restroom and have the anonymity of being far away from home, far away from friends, where if your shit don't stink or if it DOES, no one will be able to look at you later and marvel. "What'd she have for lunch? Damn!"

Office bathrooms are the absolute worst places in the world to have to be when you need that moment of "aloneness." There are peak times when there are lots of women in the bathroom. I try to ignore the proverbial call of nature right before and right after lunch, but of course, you can only wait so long.

Pee is one thing. I find it amusing when I'm in the stall and another woman rushes in and has to pee like the racehorse she is. She throws her keys on the counter and rushes in, slams the door and you know she barely gets her jeans down when the sound hits the water like friggin' Victoria Falls. Sometimes she sighs, and I sit and laugh.

But dumping is something that I wish I could reserve for just the homestead. I hate having to go, and hearing that main door open. I sit and wait. I wait until the interloper leaves. And invariably, someone else comes in right as she's leaving... and I'm sitting thinking "this could go on all day." Usually I am all set after that first or second person is gone, I can make the deposit, flush, wash and get out of there quickly.

I don't know what it is about me. I am worried about being too noisy, too smelly, and then suffering from the paranoia of the other person sitting there dreading the day they were born.

One of my biggest pet peeves is sitting there and having someone come out of her stall, while I'm waiting... and then she has to fucking stand there for 20 minutes playing with makeup, looking at her ass in the mirror, examining her teeth for tell-tale lunch remnants... when I have to crap. No one cares about your hair, bitch, get the fuck out!

There are no "safe havens" in my building, places where there is a ladies room on a floor and virtually no ladies, or, a handicapped bathroom where you know you can be alone for a few minutes because, truth be told, no one handicapped works in the building. It's a nightmare.

Once, when I was pregnant with Jessica I was in a rest area bathroom as we were heading from Atlanta to Boston, moving away from the south and back "home" where our friends are. I was in the bathroom, having recently been at a McDonalds (which always wreaks havoc on my intestinal tract for some reason) and had finished up and was getting ready to leave when four old women came into the bathroom.

"Oh dear, it stinks in here!" said one of them. "Smells like... sulfur of some sort. I wonder why..." and the four of them spent the entire time talking about the smell, and how it smelled that way on the FARM where they grew up... and on and on. I stood stoically in the stall, waiting for them to finish and leave (make up adjusting, ass looking, teeth examining... of course). And I eventually left the bathroom.

My husband stated he was ready to call the rescue team, thinking I'd fallen in. I told him I wish I had... he laughed at me. The little old ladies saw me then, and then came over to tell me how cute I was with my baby belly and how excited I must be...

If they only knew, someone that cute could be that stinky...