Saturday, September 5, 2009

Flinging Turds and Shirking Responsibility


My life is a poop fest.

It is pretty much a given that when one becomes a parent, poop is just something that has to be dealt with on a daily basis.

After the novelty of baby diapers wears off, the monotonous chore of changing them becomes the sole caregiver's responsibility (unless there is another willing individual present. In my experience, there usually is not).

It's a sobering moment when one realizes that there is no one else who will do this for you.

To the extreme, this soul crushing thought occurred to me during labor, when at 9 centimeters, the epidural wore off and I was thrust into what could be termed as "The Suckiest Experience Ever." As much as I wanted (and begged and pleaded) to hand this responsibility off on someone else, unfortunately, it was not possible.

My example is a bit drastic, yes. But on a day-to-day basis of me shirking responsibility, my boys come in pretty darn handy.

Let's say I am watching a particularly crappy t.v. show and notice that the remote control is across the room.

"Wes, please go fetch the remote control for me," I call nicely, then he fetches it for me. It's magic, that way!

"Cal, the dog just blew chunks," I call. "Please clean it up before your sister gets into it!"

Being 14 years old, he understands the urgency of the matter at hand and that usually sends him scurrying.

All that being said, it was a sobering experience at home alone the other day when the baby toddled towards me, proudly holding something out in front of her.

She stood before me as I sat on the couch, inevitably watching some sort of Bravo Channel programming, and dropped her found item in my lap. She then turned and ran off, apparently to get some more. I picked up the mystery item that had been deposited into my lap and held it up to my face, still unclear as to what it was.

I smelled it.

"OMYGAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWD," I shrieked, violently gagging and dry heaving, as I flung the dog turd away.

I caught up to her as she was making her way over to the other little turds deposited in front the door by our Cairn Terrier, who probably had been holding his little doggy cheeks together ~ undoubtedly with a puckering ferocity ~ for the better part of the morning.

I held her hands in a vice grip and smelled her mouth, gagging yet again, because it had the faint smell of dog poop. She had put the damn thing in her mouth. I wretched.

I ran to a sink to scrub the offensiveness off her hands and face and I considered washing the inside of her mouth out, too, but decided that might cause more trauma than just a little feces in the mouth.

Being the only one around, it was up to me to clean up the dog poop; I had to take responsibility for this mess and couldn't shove it off on any husband or child who had the unfortunate luck of being in my immediate vicinity.

He had made it to the front door, I give him that. And, thankfully our home is mostly ceramic tile which makes disinfecting the contaminated areas even easier.

I realized that although they bring joy and fun, animals and babies also bring the foulest of the foul into the home: vomit, boogers, turds....the list goes on and on.

Hopefully next time something particularly disgusting occurs, I won't be alone to deal with it myself. I will effectively be able to burden the task on someone else, which in Mary's world, is how it should be.


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