If this blog were a pen, it would weigh one million pounds. That's how hard it's been to pick it up and write this past week. Or has it been longer? It's all been a blur.

When you think about it, it's pretty amazing that I've never shit my pants. Eww. That is such a vile statement and yet it truly describes some things in a way that prettier language could not. Last Tuesday I got on Bart to head into San Francisco for dinner and a movie with two of my best friends. Such a treat to get to do that. I sat down on the train, listened to the doors close and felt a familiar wave sweep through my body. It wasn't the normal poop chills, it was the colitis chill. The sudden, certain need to find a bathroom in a very urgent way. Except I was on a train, with no bathroom, with an hour ride ahead of me. So I focused my mind on my insides in a way I've done too many times to count and I willed my bowels to hold firm. And they did.

When my brother lived in Ghana he and his Peace Corps buddies took it as a right of passage that one day they would eventually poop their pants. It happened to almost all of them I think.