The Twinkies

“We saw a big turtle and a little turtle and a snake and then we washed our hands and then we had snack and then we did crafts and then you were coming.”

So quoth James. It was pouring so they had to do the indoor animals today. Yesterday it was a bunny and a chicken and a walk. Tomorrow I am supposed to include bathing suits for sprinkler play.

So, there we were, eating dinner, the kids having already asked to be excused, when I sniffed. I smelled something. ‘Who pooped?’ I asked. You can probably tell that potty training is going slowly. “Who pooped?’ again.

“I farted,” James said.

Later, in the bathtub, he did a squat thing and having lived through bathtub poopage before Brian quickly asked whether he was pooping. Do you start to feel there is a theme in our lives? If you’ve missed it, it’s excrement. There will be a quiz tomorrow. Back to the narrative. James was not pooping. He was farting. Brian told him not to fart in the bathtub lest he mistake an impending solid excretion for air, leading up back to the bathtub pooping possibility, which must be avoided.

As a side note, I once worked with an actress, back in the days when I was paid vast sums of money to do their laundry and help them get dressed, who had done a show where she thought she was going to fart but was mistaken. Her wardrobe crew had to do a fast change. I’m glad she only told this story at the show I worked on rather than living it. The glamour of professional theatre is what really makes it all worth while.

Back to James.

He climbed out of the bathtub to stand on the rug to fart again, then climbed back into the water. And those were the farts of the evening.

Motherhood is very spiritually uplifting, isn’t it, and keeps the mind focused on the noble purity of raising children?

I had the graduate school dream last night. You know the one. You have one week to finish your dissertation and you’ve left all your notes in an elevator in the library. It’s not fair I have this dream when I didn’t even do a PhD. It’s like an accountant getting the actor’s nightmare.