Ladies, as you await being taken to the obligatory Mother’s Day brunch with the hubs and kids, and you’ve yet to open the gifts given you by an (supposedly) appreciative family, let me warn you that this year’s gift, in recognition of another year’s selfless devotion to running a smooth household, may just include overwhelming concern for your general wellbeing and make itself known as you excitedly rip away the bow and gift wrap to behold…

Pearls? No.

Champagne flutes? No.

A small bench designed to relax the puborectalis muscle with its natural kink to maintain continence and therefore allow fast, easy elimination in the bathroom?

Er, yes.

We’re talking the ‘Squatty Potty,’ here, and as my friend, Karen, pointed out, via text, as I was actually sitting on the potty (shaving! I was shaving my legs!), she had just seen a commercial for Squatty Potty on TV with the last enthusiastic statement by the announcer being,

“Makes a GREAT Mother’s Day gift!!”

Um, no. No it doesn’t. But that commercial will somehow trick some hapless husband into spending $50 (and you can buy some exquisite champagne and chocolates for $50, you doorknob) for a plastic stool to, as it says on their website, ‘improve your stools.’

Listen: I get it. I get how important colon health is, I really do. But if you figure out the most effective height on which to place your feet therefore relaxing the puborectalis muscle (I’m enjoying writing that word, now), you should be able to use a couple of cinder blocks or put to good use the now obsolete Encyclopedia still in your bookcase.

And save the fifty bucks and perhaps spend it on a Spa Day for the woman who works both outside the home and comes dragging in at 6 p.m. to hungry, insolent teenagers who wolf down what she has made for dinner with nary a compliment or even eye contact as they stare at their phones. Afterwards, she will stack the dishwasher, do a load of laundry, clean up cat vomit behind the couch, all the while wondering if her husband, who remained comfortably on the couch watching the widescreen, has given this Sunday a fleeting thought, or will he have waited too long to book a table somewhere nice and it’s back to Golden Corral this year?

If that is indeed the case, then perhaps receiving the Squatty Potty isn’t such a bad thing. It’s lightweight and, while doing far less damage than slinging a frying pan, will surely prove useful in getting her point across…

Happy Mother’s Day.