Folks, I think I've hit rock bottom.

I was meeting my friend Mikel at Chick Fil A for lunch today, and as soon as Payne and I got there I had to make my 35th trip to the restroom for the day (yay for pregnancy!). I ushered my kid into the handicapped stall. Yes, for all of you non-mothers out there, we mothers feel entitled to use the larger stalls normally reserved for people with disabilities. I've yet to come out of one to find a disabled person waiting, but when that day comes I'm sure I will melt into a puddle of pure shame and embarrassment.

Now, normally my procedure is to set Payne up with his back against the far wall of the stall, threaten him with his life not to touch anything, and get out as quickly as possible. Today I made the fatal mistake of turning my back to him to hang up my diaper bag on the door hook. When I turned around he was hovering over the toilet, wee right hand outstretched to grab the back of the toilet seat, which is, in my domestically educated opinion the nastiest 6 square inches on the planet. I screeched "Don't touch!" and yanked him backwards.

My friends, Payne had a sippy cup in his left hand. As he was yanked backwards that sippy cup fell INTO THE TOILET BOWL. I miserably squealed "WHAT DID YOU DO?!" at him, which triggered immediate tears, and of course guilt on my part. So, my kid is crying about his lost "wawer" and I'm frozen staring at a floating sippy cup in the toilet of a public restroom. What can I do? I can't flush the damn thing, since it's like three times the size of the toilet's, um, passageway. I can't just leave it there for an unwitting (and already unlucky for having been selected to clean the restrooms)employee to find and be forced to extract.

I think you all know what I had to do.

I think you all know what I did.

Yes, I reached my hand into a toilet of public use and extracted a cup covered in publicly used toilet water. I then rushed it to the bathroom garbage chanting "Grossgrossgrossgrossgross" under my breath.

Two hand washings and one promise to a still sobbing toddler of a new milk later, I managed to actually exit the bathroom and find my confused friend. Then I ate my lunch...with my hands.

So yeah. Rock bottom. Right up there.

It's a good thing the sippy cup flinger is cute.


(Here he is cackling "I got my Mom to stick her hand in a toilet used by hundreds today!")