Elimination Communication: How To’s and Suggestions

Thought I would post this now, before the Unreliable Narrator grows up and I’ve totally forgotten what the early years were like.

Now, we didn’t just come to potty training blind. I started investigating Elimination Communication when I was pregnant. I was obsessing over the “disposable diaper/cloth diaper” false dichotomy (and it is false), when I came across some websites that mentioned EC. I’m an evolving greenie who’s trying to walk the walk over talking the talk, and also someone who, realistically speaking, lives in a hyper-modern, uber-urban city and is as alienated from the land and the natural world as anybody else these days. But, I really wanted to put theory into practice and commit to the reduction of plastic diapers in landfills.

So as weird as EC sounded at first (I have to let my kid wander around my house without a diaper? wha?), I knew it was worth trying.

Poo-Poo Ca-Ca on the Brain

the Unreliable Narrator is going through a lengthy phase where the punchline to every joke is “poo-poo.” it’s, uh, wearing a little thin. (sorry if you came here looking for a restaurant review. we’re talking about the other end today. go back thataway.)

not having spent much time around very small males before in my life (i.e., no little brother), i have no idea when–or if–this phase ends.

i asked HB for his opinion, and he told me a story about how in college he and his buddies wondered if they could pee off a certain bridge into a well-known gorge at our bucolic, if neurotic, university. and they were 18 when they wondered that.

so i guess the answer to my query is: never, or 35.

Unreliable Narrator Playlist

his musical taste is funny. this is what he listens to (as in, forces us to play over and over again in the car on long car rides):

• “mr. brightside, (the killers),” jacques lu cont’s thin white duke remix*
• “malti,” barbara brousal/dan zanes
• “polly wolly doodle all the day,” dan zanes
• “barber’s adagio for strings (william orbit),” ATB remix (NOT ferry corsten)

* on long car trips, we rock out in the back seat on the air “drums,” “piano,” & “guitar”. i don’t have the heart to harsh his mellow by telling him it’s probably a boring finger pressing a single pre-programmed key on the keyboards.

also, did you know that at 8:45, this remix can be played 13 times and 3/4 of the way through for a 2-hour car ride to san diego? there you go, now you do.

Capitalism in Large Doses is Toxic

been thinking about my yo-yo documentary and the toys in china that are made with tainted lead paint.

now, none of the yo-yos dating back to 1928 were ever manufactured with lead paint that i know of. but competition among yo-yo manufacturers to be profitable was and is a big part of the story i’m telling. and working on the documentary is an occasion to muse about the rise of family-owned businesses that become wildly successful (as the duncan family experienced with duncan yo-yos) and how inevitably part of the narrative of success is that an even larger corporation buys them out and the enterprising family members cash out (or literally “sell out”) and then kick back on the beaches of cabo (or wherever) and live the good life.

what’s interesting is that the duncans never got to the stage where they were bought out by a huge toy corporation like hasbro or mattel. but they were easily on that trajectory.