Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Thursday thirteen (on Wed, cuz if I don't it will end up being Friday)... dirtiest story #2

My second thought was not of poop but dirt. It is the ‘dirtiest’ story.

My children are 15 months apart, each time… lets review, this makes them during the summer … 1, 2 & 3, or 2, 3 & 4, etc… I will guess that this occurred during the summer that they were 3, 4 & 5 (maybe 4, 5 & 6) but I think that the oldest had not yet started school.

All summer they had been pestering me, “mom can we play in the mud” and always I had a reason to avoid the inevitable mess – cuz that was how I rolled – no finger paints, no shaving cream tubs, no bathtub crayons and no mud. I let my niece who liked those things be the best babysitter in the world and fingerpaint with them. But finally they had worn me down, so I went outside to get the hose and make the dirt pile into a mud hole for them. They were inside ‘dressing’ for mud – swim suits would be my best recollection. As I was putting the hose back after a good soaking of the mud pile and the darlings were running headlong into what promised to be a hideous mess later, I managed to stub my foot on the dog house and break with great noise my toe. We are talking hideously bent sideways broken, it was gross. After teaching the punkins, and the rest of the neighborhood (knowing how well my voice projects), some pretty colorful new phrases, I hobbled inside. I would be able to see the darlings from the kitchen window and get ice at the same time – they were after all, already way too muddy to be sent inside to get me a phone or ice. I got to the window, and the freezer, and the phone with much cursing and pain and called my husband – it was one of those miracle days when he was ALREADY ON HIS WAY HOME – wow the universe must love me, and the children were playing so nicely in the mud together, and I really needed to elevate my foot – he assured me he would be home in less than 20 minutes and I should just go put my foot up and the kids would be fine. In my pain, which clearly caused me some delirium, I believed him. I hobbled to the couch with my ice and grabbed a book (I wouldn’t be able to hear the kids if I had the TV on) – I sat there with my ice, reading and listening to the kids giggle and play nicely in the mud for about 35 minutes before the husband got home. He walked to the kitchen, looked out the window, and then lied to me again – all was going to be fine he said, but he was closing the window now and turning on the stereo and air conditioning for my comfort and I should not move no matter what.

What followed was the sound of the water being turned on… “what more mud???”… and then some sort of screaming, it was unclear if it was happy screaming or sad screaming or just some wow-that-water-is-cold screaming. That’s when I moved… and what I saw out the window of my kitchen was two very delighted older children, good and muddy but still very recognizable, and my husband… laughing his ass off with some sort of moving mud statue. It was about as tall as my youngest child, but not at all feminine or for that matter… human looking. It was quite frankly something out of a movie. Remember when Ahnold puts all that mud on himself to camouflage himself from the Predator… well it wasn’t anything like that. This was actually a different shape, not human at all… it did have big blue eyes peeping out, and four limbs, but that was the only similarity to my child at all. Well in spite of the cold water, husband hosed off the creature and did find our daughter under there. It actually left enough mud on the porch to SHOVEL it off afterward. And then, to the shower, actually… showers. Daddy washed and washed and washed that little girl, and the dirt just kept coming. This particular child was born with hair enough for about 4 people, maybe even 5. If I braid her hair in two braids, one of those braids is twice as thick as my one braid… and people say that I have thick hair. Her pony tail is probably two inches across now… it was probably 1.5 inches when she was 3 years old. ACROSS not around. This hair contained enough mud to grow a garden, and it kept coming… for weeks it kept coming. Weeks after mud day, she would get in the shower and the mud would run from her scalp again and again.

The older two children… well they thought they were pretty clever using little sister as their ‘model’. Mud day… I’m thinking it’s possible we NEVER had another mud day!

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