Tag Archives: poop

Fifty — Happy Baby Day

Is it a coincidence that the Royal Baby was born today, the day of my fiftieth post? I DOUBT IT. When I got up this morning, twitter was all a-flutter about the baby being born, which is so funny because later it turned out the baby was born at 4ish UK time which is morning here which means while we were all a-fluttering, Kate was already lying in her nice hospital bed, all cleaned up, clutching her giant baby boy to her bosom.

I’m not much of a monarchist but I like a nice baby story. Does that sentence make me sound sixty years old? So be it. The alternative is a bad baby story, and no one likes those. So even though I wasn’t keeping track of how many cms dilated Kate was, I was happy to hear she did it, just like I am always happy when someone who wants a baby manages to carry and deliver (or be delivered of…) one. I’d be just as happy for any other woman whose new baby I heard about on twitter.

I mean sure, next there’s meconium and screaming and toddlers and preschoolers and toilet training. And — god, can you imagine — all the opinions of the commonwealth, now in realtime. (Reddit AMA with the Duchess! Halp! halp!) But first, tonight, there’s sweet baby smell and sinking back against the fluffy pillows, and being happy you did it. And there’s Nicole’s post, which includes adorable newborn baby photos of her kids, a great photo of Prince Charles, and a link to William’s birth story that is just so damn carefully written compared to Modern Journalism. It’s only from 1982, (Shut up yes I know that’s 30 years ago) but it sounds like it could have been written in the 1960s.

So: The Royal Meconium? Best or worst punk rock band name ever? Yeah. That’s what I thought.

Twenty-Four — The Petting Farm

Prologue:

The Queen’s Park Petting Farm, near noon on a weekday. It is quiet and damp after a rainfall. Children frolic in the nearby waterpark, the ice cream stand is open, parents stand nearby with towels over their arms.

A lop-eared rabbit hears a noise. “Oh shit. Here they come. HIIIIDDDDDDE.”
The black rabbit, brown rabbit, and grey rabbit obediently cover themselves with hay.

***

Fifty screaming six year olds enter the petting farm. The gate slams behind them. Three sheep run as best they can for the “Animal Rest Area.”

“GOATS GOATS GOATS!” screams a boy with a bowl haircut.
“GOATS! I LOVE GOATS!” screams another boy.

They run at a goat, who bleats at them and runs to the Animal Rest Area.

“IT WENT IN THERE!” screams the boy.
“LET’S CHASE IT!” screams the other.

They are stymied by the fence. The goat looks on from the far side of the enclosure.

“AVERY! LOOK AT THE BBUUUUUUUUUNNNNIES!” screams a girl.

Five other girls run to the screaming girl, who has her face pressed up against the rabbit cage.

“BUNNIES AWWW BUNNIES AWWWW BUNNIES!” they shriek.

They turn and see the juvenile ducks being taken out of their enclosure by a park worker.
One girl pounds on the window. “Don’t do that!” says the park worker.
The girl stops but the shrieking–OH GOD THE SHRIEKING–continues and the last duckling refuses to go to the exit, instead walking back and forth close to the window, quacking constantly and adding to the cacophony.

The baby chickens in the adjacent enclosure look on nervously.

A group of boys sees the peacock enclosure and moves, like a large, cellular mass, towards it. The boys are making a low roaring noise. The peacock sits up straight.

“SQUAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWK!” says the peacock. The boys stop short. One of them turns to me, fear-stuttering, “Excuse me exx-exx-exxcuse me, WHAT IS THAT?”
“It’s a peacock,” I say. “I guess it wants you to go away.”
They do.

Arlo’s grade one class did a field trip to the petting farm a few weeks ago. He told me they participated in the young farmers program and saw a lot of goats. I had assumed this means you get a briefing on how to interact with animals? Like, for example, don’t yell at them? God, I hope so. I hope my son’s class was not running around yelling at goats. Next year, I promise I will volunteer for all the field trips so at least I will have some authority to yell at idiots not to yell at goats.

“LOOK IT’S POOPING AHAHAHAHAH POOOOOOOOP.”

Look, I know–trust me on this, I know–you can’t stop six year olds talking about poop but could someone at least stop them from piling on the pooping goat and screaming at it? Can you imagine if someone did that to you, you little jerk? Yelled, “YOU’RE POOING IT’S GROSSSSSS!” every time you went to the bathroom?

The kids today were not toddlers, who at least usually have minders nearby to say “don’t chase the chickens” or “don’t eat that, it’s not a Glossette,” but kids older than my own five year old companion, kids who should either know better or if they don’t, have a teacher? or someone? to shut them the hell up? There’s a playground and a giant park where you can yell your brains out and be a jackass. This place is where a bunch of sad animals spend their last summer before they get slaughtered.

Probably. I don’t know. It can’t possibly be the place you take the animals you *like,* so what am I to think.

Epilogue:

Heads ringing, Eli and I left the petting farm. Stuck a donation in the donation box, the screams of children and peacocks echoing behind us.

Poop.

Until I became a parent I do not remember thinking about poop at all, ever. I pooped, and I didn’t mention it, UNTIL NOW, and life went on.

Oh god, now you all know.

Anyway! People joke about poop taking over your life when you become a parent. It’s always been framed like “you are now obsessed with tiny person A and tiny person A makes poop and the home care nurses tell you to monitor the poop and also you need to feel some control over your life so you monitor a daily life function, good for you!” but really it’s just that you have to put your face very close to excrement on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis when you have a baby. Repetition leads to normalcy. Then there’s teaching the small person to use a toilet–don’t get me started or I’ll weep–and wipe properly. Years go by and you start to see poop EVERYWHERE.

Not a day goes by when I don’t consider poop in some way. The other day @jenarbo posted a picture to twitter and it was of cigarette butts and I saw poop in the picture. She was all, “um it’s a leaf” and I was all, “whatever, I’m a hammer and the world looks like a nail, I mean poop.” And then she was all, “#unfollow.” Not really. I hope.

It’s not just the kids. There are many days when I don’t think about *their* poop, but then the cat poops on the carpet, with his accompanying POOP ALERT YOWL. There are also days when I don’t think about the kids’ poop and the cat poops in his box but when I go outside there is dog poop on the sidewalk. On the sidewalk!

(There are also days when all of that happens. We call those “Mommy’s Special Gin Days.” No, we don’t. OK, maybe.)

This is what prompts my post today. The last straw of poop, as it were. Dog poop on the sidewalk. It seems like an especial travesty, like an insult duct-taped to injury. How does a dog poop on a sidewalk and get away with it? (Answer: SMARTPHONES) On our walk to school we often have to step around three or four piles. My internal dialogue goes: “It’s bad enough that I have to think about the poop of two children and a cat but to have to step around your dog’s giant poop ON THE SIDEWALK because he couldn’t he even go on the grass, how does that even HAPPEN? makes me absolutely ready to declare a war on poop. An entire war.”

No idea what a war on poop would look like. After all, it’s a natural function of healthy animals. We poop. There are books about it. Oh so many books. We adults and semi-adults put our poop in the poop recepticle and we move on. You can’t battle or war against it. But I can rage, I guess. I can rage against the improper placement of poop.

I need it to be spring. And I need the dogs–dogs, I love you! Don’t ever change, except please don’t poop on the sidewalk! Wouldn’t the grass be nicer, softer?–to poop in the GRASS and then I need their minders to pick it up with their baggies and dispose of it appropriately. I need this.

I have just discovered that poop is NOT one of those words where the more you type it the weirder it looks. The more you type “poop” the more you end up thinking about poop.* Poop.

Sorry.

* I blogged about my children for 6 years and didn’t write about poop once. Now it’s all out of my system, I won’t do it again.

(Poop.)