It would be untrue to say the reason I didn't respond to Chris' IMs - 2:12 PM through 2:24 PM - was due to "the largest poop event I've had to deal with in my life." The truth is, it's more like the biggest event for about a year. It really did come abruptly and without warning. Nels called me in the bathroom and - well, he was trying to take care of things himself and failed. As I ran a bath and cleaned the bathroom he said, "I'm sorry, Mama. Thank you for cleaning up the mess," but I told him the truth is, the whole thing was so out of nowhere and impressive I was amazed. I wasn't even mad.

No, what surprises me is how easily it was for me to go from being used to dealing with someone else's poop - on demand, at any time day or night - to being so, so blissfully happy and used to not having to do so at all after less than a year of reprieve. It seems one's default state of humanity is to not have to clean up excrement on a regular basis. Interesting.

A few minutes later, post-bath, he wraps the towel around him and strolls into his sister's room to select his wardrobe (his latest fad is dressing in sister-drag). After a selection from head to foot Sophie I tell him we have to head out to the van to go grab The Girl from school. Nels descends the steps and grabs at the back of his dress (actually his favorite rugby knit casual frock over a Mary Kate and Ashley full white skirt serving as a petticoat - he's the prettiest girl at the ball) and I ask what's up and he says in surprise, "My underwear!" Because of course, it isn't his underwear, it's his sister's. And apparently a set of boy tackle - even a miniature set - disrupts the fit significantly.

Speaking of Nels' garb, I found out I have only six days to get his little Christmas velveteen suit sewn up in time for the Christmas program. Time to get on it!

Labels: chaos, holidays, Nels, sewing, shit

Today after a memorably annoying lunch date (kids were not on best behavior) Sophie and I rode the bus back from Aberdeen while Ralph and Nels took to Top Foods for groceries. Sophie and I waited a long time for our bus into Hoquiam, and it was cold even in the bus shelter. Then there was a twenty-five minute wait at the HQX station - Saturdays and Sundays the bus routes are nearly dead - and by then the cold was in our bones so we took my last $2 to the 7th Street Sweet Shoppe to split a cocoa. Here's what's funny: the proprietors of this little cafe ply my children with more sweets and extra helpings than a grandma on love-crack. Today I didn't escape without double cocoa portions, extra whip cream, and a giant cake mix cookie to take home to give my kids after dinner (this last excuse was used when I claimed my children had had enough sweets for the afternoon). Jennifer, the patroness of the shop, especially wanted my son to get his part of the decadent cookie. He is her biggest fan in an almost stalky way, which by the way is kind of cute on a three year old.

The leg of bus route that gets us closest to our house runs through the more run-down or low income area of town known as North Hoquiam - my girlfriend who grew up there affectionately calls it "the hood". This is also the most active part of the Hoquiam bus route since those that take the bus in Hoquiam and Aberdeen are usually poor, carless, or both. Today as we passed the Lincoln Commons we let out a man and he winked and smiled sexily at the driver as he crossed behind the bus. He was one of those men that retains a certain handsomeness and dangerousness - a Daniel Desario or Danny Zuko - keeping his lothario charm despite years of bars, pulltabs, smoking cheap non-brand cigarettes and living a life of, well, low-income apartments I guess. In any case I got a kick out of his optimism as the driver in question was a big-boned toothsome woman with Barbie highlights at least fifteen years his junior. She didn't look interested in flirting in any way, her kohl-rimmed eyes weary and irritable from working on a Saturday in the rain.

We passed by the apartments again on my way back from the Perry Ave. loop and I found myself wondering about the families and citizens in my [hometown] / new burg. Who where these people and what were their lives like? How does it feel if you ride the bus because it's your only way to get around? Why do some people live with their family, even a large family, stacked up in these tiny apartments on the edge of town? Why do those who can and do own a spacious home all to themselves pretend these others don't exist or flat out decide they don't exist for all practical purposes? Why am I hearing so much about "the hills" and "the flats" these days - more than I ever heard of the haves and have-nots when I was growing up? Why am I puzzling over remedial "injustice of the world" questions as if I was a thirteen year old just discovering them?

Hey, you know what's awesome? People that let their dogs crap on our sidewalks and yards and lawns without cleaning it up. Today was really great because just a few minutes ago I was helping Sophie remove her boots when my hand, gripping the heel, came into contact with the slimy, rancid horrible backend vomit of some neighborhood pooch. Although this is the first time I have mashed my hand into dogshit, the weird thing is my body had a preternatural awareness of what this substance was, right upon contact. After my revulsion and anger I washed her boot and scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed my hands and I can still smell shit. You know, there's almost no point to this tirade - I don't really feel any differently on the subject than I did almost two years ago.

My brother is moving to Portland in two days. Wish him luck! We've been feeding him a lot. I think he is kind of lonely yet overworked and stressed lately.

Labels: bus, HQX, i'm a hater, rain, shit

Dogshit is a mysterious phenomena. Perhaps, if explored in a macrocosmic way, it is more predictable than I've experienced; studied on a global chaos-theory level both the intensity, size, and regularity of dogshit deposits found in urban areas reveals a dotted-swiss pattern that loses any irregularities or in distribution and incidence. But in my studies - involuntary ones, I might add - I have yet to find any magic formula or even guestimation to help predict and avoid this particular bane of my existance. It existed in Port Townsend in mysterious, irregular manner; and despite my friend Abbi's surprised observance she didn't see it anywhere while visiting us, it exists here in HQX, too.

Take my parents' yard. All my life I have been confused whether it was a Shangri-la or shits-a-lot. The yard is, due to the sixty-odd-and-up inches of rain a year in Grays Harbor, almost perennially lush and green, expansive, huddled with beautiful flowers and trees and singing leaves. Usually the kind of yard you'd like to run in, arms out and dirndl twirling, belting out song. Many a day and night we've piled leaves, rolled in the verdant, scented grass - greener and more vital here than anyplace I've been - to chew on blades while talking about nothing in particular and having nowhere to go. Then again sometimes amidst the greenery lurk foul, monstrous fecal landmines so voluminous they seem to have emerged from nothing smaller than the ratty ass of a bloated Clydesdale. One time in high school my friend Zoe (or maybe it was Shannon) brought in on her shoe so much shit from the yard that even after (unknowingly) laying down tracks on the porch, entry, kitchen and living room there was STILL enough on the shoe for the other girl (again, I can't remember who delivered and who was sullied) to slip on a last and fatally thick track about an inch deep and two feet long somehow spread over my parents' tasteful charcoal-and-rose living room carpet.

This season's latest featured nugget-land is a small tab of city sidewalk at my parents' front entrance, the entrance generally used the least. Despite a fair amount of rain this season a peppering of tiny but loathesome turds seems to always accompany this little patch, both on the concrete itself and winking from behind blade of grass or clump of lawn clipping. This afternoon, too busy feeling sick, herding children inside for an ice cream cone, trying to struggle my daughter - just having received three booster shots which are worse for a fully-sentient child who knows what it means than the two-month baby sitting chubby, cheerful, and unknowing in your arms - struggle my daughter into her hoodie, I'm afraid I wasn't thinking about this patch of lawn. It wasn't until later, sitting on my parents leather sofa with my foot characteristically tucked under my ass and flipping through a tattered copy of Patriot Games that I suddenly became aware someone - oh God, let it not be one of my children - someone had stepped in some foul slimy mustard-brown dog-ass concoction. Well, guess what? It wasn't my children. Guess what else? Of course it was the foot I was sitting on.

Our recent mental flirtations on adopting a dog of our own have once again ebbed into nothingness.

Thanks to nature's healing processes, more rest (which in turn, was accomplished by the help of others: primarily to my husband but also my mother, my brother, my friend Amy, and possibly, but doubtfully, my father), the good doctor's good advice, and whatever is in Afrin - I am feeling much, although not all the way better. Today I was able to cope with help from aforementioned Amy (who watched Nels for a few hours this morning) and my husband worked a full day. Thank God.

Labels: illness, shit

Much of my life consists of cooking and cleaning and most of the cleaning is really following along after creatures about three foot high and re-organizing, sweeping, de-cluttering, sweeping up, wiping down surfaces, and crying. Over and over. Think a parade with the horse poop-shoveler merrily right behind the horses. Except I've been doing it for years in a continuous loop and I'm feeding the horses the food that makes them shit.

The truth is, I give a shout-out "Amen!" daily that my duties no longer contain too much literal shit, having both children potty-trained (my son actually perfected his skills upon our move rather than the oft-predicted regression). This has actually freed up a significant amount of time in my schedule. So my (local and national) peer society tells me I'm supposed to plug a few more things into my life as well: working a job, volunteering for school functions, making crafts with kids, keeping the house even cleaner, visiting friends, taking trips to Costco to "save money", growing my own food, working out, owning a matching and nice-looking furniture set, giving a fuck about furniture in general, doing yard work, looking sexy for my husband or the UPS dude, making a positive difference for our planet, getting a new hobby.

I think I'm hitting about a 14% on the abovementioned exploits. Mostly right now I'm (mentally) leaning back and enjoying not cleaning up shit anymore.

This could take weeks, if I want to do it properly anyway.

Labels: family life, homesteading, lazy, shit

I am a nester by instinct, ability, and natural inclination. So when yesterday in late afternoon my children and I arrived in Aberdeen, met with property manager E. to our new place, I gave her my money, got the key, parked at my 'rents house and checked out our new digs since it was - according to E. - "ready by tomorrow", and found that upon opening the door it smelled like 12 KINDS OF ANIMAL EXCREMENT, well, I was a bit sad. And a few other feelings.

Which is how it smelled before it was cleaned and when we checked it out three weeks ago - because some trash were living there and letting an animal menagerie (which included birds, rodents, and a snake, the latter two categories presumably kept separate) shit or piss wherever, including a poor dog who my parents tell me howled and whined nonstop, poor thing. According to E. yesterday it had been "professionally cleaned, the carpet is clean and it smells good" but it was JUST AS BAD AS YOU CAN IMAGINE and my father who has lost half the senses in his body completely agreed as did anyone else I let in there (the children, telling them not to TOUCH anything). As in, I couldn't even move my possessions in or those possessions would quickly end up smelling like a particularly vile cocktail of animal ass.

OK, breathe. It will be fine. Maybe. Today I went to see E. as soon as her office was open. The conversation did not go well and in fact got worse and worse as she was unwilling to take responsibility - "unforeseen circumstances" - WTF? - let alone apologize that a family of four counting on a move-in date of the 16th will now not have a place to move into. At this point, as much as I loved the house (sans the ass-smell), I was glad I had not signed a piece of paper with this woman. I got my money back and gave her my key. As it sits now - after a heated conversation where she told me I "need to calm down" because as you who know me know, I am just the type to be loud and crazy - she's supposed to check the place out and sort out if and how they are going to make it liveable and if they are, when it will be ready. At this point I honestly don't even know HOW they can get that odeur out without some major carpet tear-out, treatment, etc. perhaps including a match and kerosene. Mostly, also, E. was such a shit that I won't cry tears if I have zero future dealings with her. Which is a shame because it's a neat place, across the street from my parents', I knew the guy who lived in it for years and years back in the day, and I would have loved living there. Again: minus the ass. The worst part for me in some way is that E. will probably rent to some other tenants who will take similar non-care of what will increasingly be a less beautiful old house. P.S. this happens in Grays Harbor, a fair amount.

So Ralph will be here tomorrow with a 24' long u-haul (that's feet, not inches) and I'll probably have to put our shit in storage and be back to square one looking for a place. Balls.

Luckily we are not set up too shabby; camped rent-free (so far) in my parents' large house, Ralph and I are getting along fine, and the kids are doing well. I am very stressed but I hear moving is one of the most stressful experiences to go through, so at least it's par. Which somehow makes me feel better although I don't feel that good.

This afternoon after my children had napped a bit (they are STILL at it) I crept up to the upstairs bedroom, set up my Mac and connected via wireless (P.S. this took three minutes) and took a deep, deep sigh of relief. With my Mac by my side, and family too I guess, things are a bit better already.

Labels: HQX, i'm a hater, other haters, shit

Sometimes my standards are pretty low. Like, this morning at about 10:25 AM. My standard of life was: keep fecal matter off of clothes and face (hands were out of the picture since I was changing a diaper and unfortunately you still have to use your hands for that). Five seconds later, as I tried to steady the boy and pull his pants up, even my modest boundary had to go. In case you, dear reader, are wondering how I could retain human feces on my hands or clothes let me just say that changing a shitty diaper on the shitty floor of a shitty rec center without a fucking changing table - on a 18-month old child who thrashes like a wolverine and screams like a torture victim whenver I lay him flat - is one of the worst things you get to do as a parent (so far, in my four years). If anyone needs a diagram or further exposition, email me and I'll fill you in.

But you know, I had to keep going with my day. What would I like to have done? I would like to leave my children, go home, strip down, take a hot shower, dress in PJs, crawl into bed, and cry. God, I don't even know what I'd like. It's been a while since I had it, whatever it is.

This afternoon my husband doesn't bother calling to let me know he's going to be an hour late. He calls about fifteen minutes before he's due home. While I'm cleaning Horrendous Fecal Event #3 of the day (the first being abovementioned incident; event Number Two was a delightful Hey-Why-Don't-I-Shit-In-The-Tub incident from this afternoon - by the way, shitting in a tub which was also full of newly-sanitized bath toys) - as I said, while I'm cleaning up shit just to maintain a safe household - my son finds a full pound of rice and dumps it on the floor.

But then I realize this is perfect. My husband was supposed to be home five minutes before the rice got dumped. So, I'm not going to clean it. In fact, I'm not going to go in the room at all. This wasn't the plan. Right now, I should be in the kitchen making dinner as The Boy and Babydaddy are tidying up the living room. Yeah. I'm not cleaning it up. In fact, I'm not leaving this room unless I hear breaking glass or my husband's voice when he gets here. And then I'm not speaking to him for a while, either.

Some days are just like that.

Labels: burnout, chaos, family life, Nels, random potty-mouth, shit