It’s Yucky

My baby was due in three weeks.  I felt like I was going to die if I didn’t get a nap.  At three, John had given up naps.  I locked all the doors and found King Kong on TV.  I fixed him a tray of snacks and a drink.  “You are a big boy.  I’m going to take a nap while you watch King Kong. You can wake me up if you really need me but I’m so tired. Stay right here with me and try not to wake me up just talk about King Kong.”

“Okay, Mommy.  I can watch King Kong by myself.”  He answered.  I stretched out on the sofa, hoping he’d be occupied for a while.

John patted my face.  “Mommy, King Kong is scary.”

”Then turn it to cartoons.”

“But I want to see King Kong.”

”You can turn it off for a minute till the scary is over, then turn it back on.”

He turned King Kong off and on a few times.  “Mommy, I have to potty.”

”You’re a big boy.  Go by yourself..”

He was back from the bathroom in just a minute.  I

I heard King Kong go off a few more times.

He asked me several questions.  Finally, I sat up.  I saw John’s bare butt in front of the television.and a half a dozen poops smushed into the carpet.  “John!  Where are you pants?  Why didn’t you wipe your hiney?  Look at this mess!”

”I couldn’t wipe my hiney.  It had poop.  It was yucky!”

That it was.

 

Accounting

Bud is fussy about his budget.  He does a computer check on the bank account every morning.  Our big dog, Croc eats a lot.  That goes in the budget.  What goes in must come out, so he poops a lot.  Bud also likes to work that not the budget.  “Croc pooped about a dollar’s worth.”

I’m glad I’m not in charge of accounting!”

It Couldn’t be Helped Part 12

Now for the poop part of the story, Once Mother gets a notion in her head, she can not be side-tracked. Mother and I stopped in at the grocery store one morning. As we made our way back to my vehicle, I spotted a dignified elderly gentleman hurriedly making his way back to his own car parked adjacent to mine. He seemed to be in some distress, so I slowed my place to stay out of his way. As he sidled past me, I got a whiff and realized the reason for his scurrying. I slowed my pace and acted distracted to give him time to get to his car and save his dignity.

Meanwhile, Mother was right behind me. She didn’t notice his predicament, only that an oldster was getting ahead of her. She is vain about being spry for her age and was determined not to be left in his dust. She picked up her pace, catching up to him. Getting into my car as the wind changed, she got a foul whiff of feces. They were standing back to back, almost touching as she inspected her shoe and announced. “Something smells awful. There must have been a dog running loose doing his business. Better check your shoe. I don’t have anything on my shoe.” Just in case I hadn’t heard, she repeated, just like I was five years old. “You’d better check your shoe! Something smells awful! Don’t you smell it!” By this time, the poor man was sitting in his car with the window open.

“No, Mother. I don’t smell a thing. Get in. Let’s go.” By this time, the whole town had to know what the problem was.

It seemed like an eternity before we got away. “Mother, that man had messed up his clothes and was trying to slip into his car. Of course, I smelled him. Dead people smelled him. I was just trying to avoid embarrassing him. You were just about backing into him.”

She was horrified. “Oh, My Lord! Did I get anything on me? Oh well. It couldn’t be helped!”

Conquering Corwin (Part 1)

In my family of “Mixed Nuts” Cousin Corwin was the winner, hands down.  When he was about twelve, he and his twin Kelvin got in a little “dust up” with the police, so it seemed like a good time to get out of town.  Aunt Essie called Daddy, asking if the twins could come spend a few days.  Now if the image “twins” brings to mind thoughts of “barefoot boys with cheeks of tan,” think again.  Kelvin to all intents and purposes, could have passed for normal, but Corwin was nuts.  At five foot eight and two hundred and sixty pounds, he was physically intimidating.  His pale blue eyes blazed with madness.  He ripped through a fried chicken like a chain saw.  Mother had to double the amount she normally cooked the minute he arrived.

Aunt Essie’s call for relief was well-timed.  Mother and Daddy were just about to leave on a much-anticipated vacation.  Though Mother could only hear Daddy’s end of the conversation, it was clear he was assuring Aunt Essie “taking the boys will be no problem.  I’ll straighten them out. We’ll come get them as soon as we get back.  They can stay as long as they want.  They’ll always have a home with us.”  He hung up, turning to Mother.  She was murderous!  Like any right thinking human with twelve years’ experience with Corwin, she despised him.  She’d spent most of those years defending her girls from his attacks.

“Are you crazy?  I don’t want that maniac out here!  He is not coming!”

“Yes, he is!  I’ve already told Essie we’ll come get them as soon as we get back from vacation. I’m going to bring those boys out here, put ‘em to work and straighten ‘em out.  There’s not a kid in the world I can’t conquer!”

“You can’t straighten them out.  You deserve what you get!  Go get them whenever you want to.  We’re not going on vacation!”

Conceding that point, Daddy left, returning several hours later returning with two sullen, hostile boys.  Since neither Mother nor the girls had anything to say to him either, it was a quiet house except for chicken bones crunching when Corwin ate.  Corwin was exhausted after his big supper and brush with the police so Mother showed him to his bed right after supper.  As soon as she cleaned up the kitchen, she went on to bed, leaving Daddy up by himself.  He was horrified to find Corwin in his bed when he got ready to turn in.  He went to find Mother.  She bunked in with the girls, partly to protect them.

“Corwin’s in my bed!” Daddy roared.

“Yep.  You may as well go ahead and get started straightening him out tonight.”  She turned over, the bed shaking with her giggling.  Daddy knew when he was whipped.

He got up, blasting the boys out of bed the next morning about six.  They were sullen, rubbing their eyes.  He was full of false cheer, enjoying the prospect of teaching them to work, turning them into productive humans.  They dragged away from the table, out into the dawn’s early light.  They were back at noon, to eat and rest in the heat of the day.  The boys were unhappy.  I don’t think their morning had gone well.  Daddy was trying to force a good mood on everybody.  After an hour and a half’s rest, he had them back at it.  They ate, bathed, and fell in bed that night.  The next morning, he had to drag them out of bed, openly hostile.  They took potshots at him at breakfasts before he dragged them off.  By noon, things clearly had heated up.

By the fifth day, Daddy was sick of them, but stuck in the nightmare he’d created.  He had alienated everybody.  In one camp, Mother and the girls hated him.  In the other, he was spending his vacation trying “straighten out” two juvenile delinquents who openly despised him and made his life a misery on every turn. It was a challenge having to having work like a dog trying to teach them to work when he’d planned to be on vacation.

There was no escaping the nightmare as he spent his nights with the corpulent, malodorous, psychopathic Corwin, snuggled up against him.  One morning Daddy got up to find he had no clean underwear in his drawer.  While he was searching, the putrid scent of feces drifted from the general area of his closet.  He investigated, finding that Corwin had suffered digestive issues, soiled his dainties and concealed them deep in Daddy’s closet, rather than admit to his weak sphincter.  Exhausting his underwear wardrobe, he’d helped himself to Daddy’s, which he also soiled and concealed.  Daddy had had enough.  He made Corwin take the whole disgusting pile outdoors and wash it. Corwin found he didn’t care for washing aged crap out of his (and Daddy’s) drawers, retching the whole time.  He felt Daddy ought to wash out his own, even though Corwin had crapped them all and was doubly insulted when Daddy insisted he scoop up the piles of poop and haul the filthy wash water far from the house to dump it.  He would have had absolutely no problem leaving the slimy, stinking mess lying on the ground next to the faucet. To everyone’s relief, Corwin called Aunt Essie, begging to go home.  That saga had ended with Daddy finding a kid he couldn’t conquer.

To be continued

https://nutsrok.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/mixed-nuts/

How to Get Along With Obnoxious Poultry

 

Daddy was a nut about poultry.  He made regular patrols locally, and if he detected poultry, not in his collection, he couldn’t rest until he had one-upped whoever had put him in a “fowl mood. His enthusiasm didn’t last long enough to build a proper poultry yard, so the coyotes inevitably got whichever of the unfortunate creatures not roosting in the hen-house or trees.  He enthusiastically scouted out additions to his flock who served no function but grain-eating, making a lot of racket, and a free-range pooping.  Periodically, he would bring in a flock of guineas, boasting that they were excellent at letting him know if intruders were on the place.   Guinea fowl are typically smaller than chickens, eat just as much and lay small, thick-shelled speckled strong-tasting eggs. Their meat has a strong, somewhat unpleasant taste.  In addition to all this, at the first notice of a slight disturbance, they panic and go shrieking “pot-rack, pot-rack”, flying madly in all directions.  A slight disturbance is likely nothing more than a feather falling off a guinea hen standing nearby.  Having bragged about what excellent “watch dogs” they were, he’d tolerate the incessant racket and disturbance of the guineas better than the rest of us did.  I never felt bad when the coyotes snatched the last of the guineas.

Geese made an occasional appearance, remarkable for their noisy honking, arrogance, biting, and lifelong diarrhea.  Since we never ate nor plucked a goose, ours served absolutely no other purpose, other than giving up plenty of practice in guarding our backsides against their bites and teaching us the value of wiping our shoes.  Cool kids don’t show up at school with goose sh__ on their shoes. The coyotes liked geese, too.

Chickens were a given. They roosted in the chicken house at night to keep them safe from varmints, but they had the run of the place during the day.  They were pleasant to look at as they bobbed around the place, but weren’t interested in toilet training.  Most importantly, hens lay an egg a day a few months of the year.  They had a nice nesting box built high off the ground.  The prim and proper among them hopped up the little ladder, strolled along till they found their favorite nest, and deposited an egg. Afterward, they cackled out news of their accomplishment and hopped back down the ladder one hop at a time.  The renegades and slow learners stole away to hide a nest in the bushes.  Gathering eggs was a job for women and small children. Mother listened for these naughty girls and sent us scurrying to find their eggs.  It was very important not to take the “nest egg” or the hen would abandon the nest and steal away to hide her nest.  Hens weren’t too fussy about the nest egg being genuine and were perfectly satisfied with glass nest eggs, or an old white door knob, just so the handle pointed down.

We gathered eggs just before dark.  Should eggs be left in the nest after dark, chicken snakes were likely to steal them.  More than once I have reached in gather eggs and grabbed a scaly black snake instead of a warm fresh egg.  Once I was gratified to find a snake skeleton complete with a crushed glass egg resting inside.

In the spring, Mother would “set” her hens when she noticed hens acting “broody” or fussing around and feathering a nest.  Instead of gathering the broody hen’s eggs, she’d add a few eggs to the pile.  The hens never seemed bothered to see the increase.  They’d sit on the nest for about three weeks till the biddies hatched out.  She’d parade around proudly with her babies, fiercely protective.  Many a child, dog, or cat has lived to regret interfering with a mother hen’s babies.  They’d fly on an aggressor in a fury, flogging, spurring, and beating.  I learned early and well to respect Mother Hen.

My grandma loved her chickens and had personal relationships with them, naming each.  Her hens jumped on her shoulders when she went in the chicken yard.  She was not above pointing out to Mabel that Helen had laid a double-yoked egg, nor mentioning to them that if egg production didn’t pick up, a lazy chicken might get invited to Sunday dinner.  Grandma’s feelings for her hens got more personal as she got older, and she started retiring her hens instead of inviting them to Sunday dinner.  Grandpa raised peas to feed the chickens.  When he went into the chicken yard to toss them their peas, they fogged up to sit on his shoulders and on the top of his head.

Dogs loved eggs, too.  Should a dog be foolish enough to take up “egg-sucking” or “chicken-killing” his days on the farm were numbered.  When my grandpa’s dog got in and killed one of her precious layers, she tied the dead hen around his neck and made him wear it for several days, ridding him of his interest in chickens forever.

Once we had a Tom turkey, one of the most detestable creatures living.  He’d been given to Daddy by a deranged backwoodser who found him too evil for his tastes.  Naturally, Daddy grabbed him up and brought him straight home to us, leaving him to the care of his darling bride and tender children along with the rest of the rest of the barnyard creatures. Daddy enjoyed procuring creatures, not caring for them.  That’s what his family was for.  In theory, we only had to tolerate the turkey until Thanksgiving day, when Tom would be the centerpiece of our holiday table.  All we had to do was somehow survive until then.  At his previous home, he’d had a harem of turkey hens, till he got so mean he had to go. For a few days after his arrival, that devil had the run of our barnyard, terrorizing the other fowl.  Deprived of their gentling company, his testosterone exploded. They escaped into the tree branches, under the barn, into stalls, as soon as they’d hear him strutting and making his aggressive, scratchy mating sound, “Aruh! Aruh! Aruh!”  Turkeys don’t always say “Gobble, gobble, Gobble!  Denied the company of poultry, he was not picky about partners, jumping on anything that didn’t get out of his way.  He was no respecter of species and attempted to molest pigs. goats, and even horses.  I was so glad when Daddy put a stop to his antics.  That was one year we gave heartfelt thanks a few weeks early.

Travels With Mother (Part 5)

https://nutsrok.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/the-low-down-on-lunch-with-mother/

Travels With Mother (Part 2)

The Most Fun You’ll Never Have, Kathleen’s Amazing Bathroom Tour!

It’s Not What You Tank!

 

 

 

Continuation

Once we’d gone enough miles it was unlikely we would be apprehended with bathroom destruction with malice aforethought, I pulled into a nice looking station/store.  This one looked like it was progressive enough to have excellent bathroom facilities, which we sorely in needed by now, since Mother was the only one who got to use the restroom at the last stop.  For neck she generously, encouraged her daughters to go first, which we lived to regret. I’d have loved to have laid the blame at her door for what we found. Marilyn, my youngest sister, rushed in to relieve her agonized bladder.  In three seconds, she rushed out, “Oh, my gosh!  You’ve got to see this!” 

She obviously hadn’t had time to take care of any business. As mother of two teen-aged girls, the manager of a call-center, and youngest of five children, it takes something special to rattle her.

Like an idiot, I followed her in.  Someone, a very healthy eater by the way, had obviously paid a visit. The nauseating smell of fermented feces greeted us as we entered the bathroom.  It was horrendous, but I’ve been known to raise a stink myself.

Upon opening the stall, I saw a perfect liquefied poop sunburst splattered above the toilet.  Obviously, someone in great distress had blown a gasket as just as they stooped to settle in for a satisfying moment of quality time alone.  The toilet fixtures, the wall behind the toilet, the floor, and the stall wall were covered artistically with a thoroughly natural medium.  It doesn’t bear thinking of the condition of that poor unfortunate perpetrator of the masterpiece as she exited the store! We scurried out to tell the disgusted clerk what we’d found, only to find numerous visitors had already enlightened her.  That’s when we learned about the worst job in the world.  An industrial service was on its way.

Once more, courting legal problems, we decided to stand guard for each other and use the Men’s Room. Normally, I would have been disgusted, but compared to what we’d just seen, it smelled like a rose.

To be continued.

The Moral of the Story is………..

Three missionaries went to a remote island in the Pacific.  A stream divided the island.  Their predecessors advised them. “Never,ever cross that stream.  The monstrous Foo Bird patrols that side of the island.  Should you cross that stream, the Foo Bird will poop on you.  The smell is horrendous.  It never wears off.  If you wash it off, you will die.”

Naturally, the missionaries were burning with Christian Zeal.  The first thing they did was cross the stream to spread the message.  Sure enough, the Foo Bird pooped on as they stepped out of the stream.  The first missionary rushed back into the stream to wash it off.  He died on the spot as the other two watched in amazement.

About a week later, the smell was just as bad.  The two were constantly nauseated.  The second missionary couldn’t take it anymore.  He waded into the stream for a bath.  He died.

The third missionary suffered five long years till he decided life just wasn’t worth living like this.  He’d have to wash this poop off, even if it killed him.  He waded in and died.

The moral of the story is, if the Foo sh–ts, wear it!

Footloose and Fancyfree (Part 4)

Inez was good company, but didn’t worry much about germs. It kind of bothered Mother when she wiped the baby’s nose with the dish towel and then put it back in the dish pan. After that Mother told Inez not to bother with the dishes. She knew Inez was tired and needed a nap. Mother didn’t like it much when she let the twins run around without

Joke When You Gotta Go

Mr. Smith was in the hospital for the first time in his life and in traction.  He hit the call bell and yelled out loud enough for everybody on the hall to hear.  “Hey, Nurse!  I gotta s—!”