...when I drank waaaaaaaay too much water.

Because I am a healthy beast [sic.] now, I drink a ton of water.  And by a ton, I mean at least 64 ounces a day.  Eight eight-ounce glasses a day.  But even before I started cooking and eating vegetables and such, I drank a lot of water.  I have this irrational fear of being dehydrated.  Like I won't survive if my cells are not properly supplied with water.  Actually, that's true.  If your cells aren't properly supplied with water, you don't survive.  But I would hardly consider myself on the brink of dying.  Of thirst, anyway.  Usually because I drink a lot of water specifically to avoid that.

Anyway, this day was no different in terms of water consumption.  What was different was my level of preparation for all eventualities.  And by that I mean, I go to the bathroom before I go anywhere.  ANYWHERE.  I go to the bathroom before I get in my car to drive home.  Even though my house is literally seven minutes away from where I work, that's seven minutes of time in which any sort of calamity might walk by and think "hey, I'd like to befall this poor girl right now."  However, calamity is not the issue.  I can deal with calamity.  But it's an awful lot harder to deal with calamity when you have to go to the bathroom.  It's really an awful lot harder to deal with anything when you have to go to the bathroom.

So you can imagine I have a pretty rigorous rotation of hydration and...un-hydration?  I'm really trying to be as delicate as possible here.  I may have a bladder, but I'm still a lady, after all.

But today, I got distracted.  The only thing more powerful than my desire to prepare for eventualities is my propensity for getting distracted.  Which is good, because otherwise I'd probably be pretty insufferable.  And weird.  I'd probably have a bunker in my basement filled with canned foods and flashlights.

On this particular day, I got distracted by friends.  I went to lunch with them.  But I was running late, so I was really concerned with getting there as soon as I possibly could.  "No problem," I thought.  "I will un-hydrate when I get there."

When I got there, I was distracted by the fabulous conversation.  "No problem," I thought.  "I will un-hydrate before I leave."

When I left, I was distracted by the fact that I was baring my soul, racing the clock to spill all of my deep, dark emotional secrets before the lunch hour was up (I'm really bad about that.)  "No problem," I thought as I drove away.  "I'll be back at work soon, where I will have plenty of time to un-hydrate."

Alas.  Mine old enemy.  The shuttle.

 

What was it that I was looking at with such longing and internal conflict, you ask?

That's right.  I saw a tree.  I saw a tree and all I could think was:

By this point, I'd been waiting on the shuttle for a whopping four or five minutes.  But when you're nearing the end of your bladdatorial endurance, four or five minutes can feel like an eternity.  And when it's after about 1:00 pm, and there's only one shuttle running, it can take a second eternity for the pokey little devil to feel like comin' around.

 

 

Seriously.  How awful would that have been?

Note: This post was originally going to be about how I freak out just as much when I think about doing something horrible as I do when I actually do something horrible.  But that is a much more complicated and abstract process to illustrate.  Suffice it to say, I freaked out for a solid ten minutes after riding the shuttle back to work about what the consequences would have been had I decided to go ahead and pee behind that tree like a Boy Scout.

Another Note: Don't think I couldn't do it, either.  In China, the toilets are in the ground.  I went to China once.  I'm a pro.  Not that you needed to know that.

A Technical Note: I am aware that technically, I used "[sic]" wrong, since it's obvious that what I write is written exactly as I wrote it.  But I thought I would take a stab at using it ironically, because I am a far cry from a healthy beast, except in my own imagination.  The idea was that I was quoting my own imagination.  But the fact that I felt I needed to explain this demonstrates pretty effectively that I failed.  You can see why I never joined the debate team.

A Follow-up to the Technical Note: If you're wondering what the heck "sic" means, click here.