I enjoyed a temporary moment of satisfaction as I stood back and admired the afternoon's work I had just put into my room. Desk finally cleaned off, paperwork filed, clean sheets on the bed, furniture dusted, and the carpet vacuumed, my bedroom finally felt clean...that was when I heard the dreaded noise. A heave, a hack, a hack, a heave; the cat was about to throw up a hair ball. And, she did. This one not a tightly compacted clump, but rather the vomit that comes right after a large meal with plenty of water and bits of unc-hewed food and orange, rug staining orange. As if that wasn't bad enough, the cat was perched up on my desk, enjoying its cleanness also, and she hacked her stomach's contents over the edge of the desk. Now, between the vomit and the carpet was file folders, so the orange chunky soupy stuff was able to cover the file boxes, trickle down in between cracks and crevices and THEN onto the carpet. I believe I may have groaned or grunted aloud and turned to go get the clean up tub, it was at this moment I had a thought: I have been cleaning up the bodily fluids of other people and animals for at least 25 years now, someone really should have implemented a 'what it means to really be a parent' into the high school curriculum, and one of the classes should be Intro to Bodily Fluids & Waste.
The ideal class room would be the same rooms that used for science classes so that a full, hands on training can occur. Every day, the young people would come into their class and spend 70 minutes handling some type of vomit or feces, like one lab could be 'the toilet bowl' where the kids would have to march down to the toilets and (I suppose the feds would force up to let them use gloves) have them put their hands down into the water and scrub off and wipe up the leftover feces, urine, and pubic hair that has been left there for a week by someone else. There would be 'dog day' at least once a week. The kids could go into the park and clean up dog poo. There would be a diarrhea day, a 'kid drank chocolate milk then got unbelievable car sick' day where the final lesson would be that you can never TRULY get that smell out of your car.
The more I thought about it, the better the idea sounded. I started running through all the momentous 'cleaning up someone else's sick or someone or something else's bodily waste' moments in my life, and damn there is a lot of them. Now that I own a cat, a dog, and two teenagers, girl and boy, part of my responsibility as a parent and head of household is to clean up the 'messes'. Yesterday, kitty puked her lovely green stuff on my reading pyramid pillow, and this morning, as I sat enjoying my coffee and the episode of 'Death Masks', puppy hacked up his morning green chewie, all over me, my throw and lumbar pillow. After it happened, I looked around me for a tissue or napkin, because I could not even get up without knocking the green goo all over the floor, alas there was nothing, so I took a deep breath and went to into the steely mental mode I knew would be needed as I picked up the warm , green, chunky , gooey vomit and put it in the palm of my other hand. That deed done, I there the throw and pillow case in the washer and decided that from now on, every time I have to clean up the vomit or other bodily waste of a member of my immediate household, I would blog it. And if this helps even one person understand the REAL commitment that comes with raising a family, then I feel the effort is worth it.
I believe that one thing that is lost on today's younger generation is the tangible reality that comes with surviving in the real world. Reality is NOT the consequence free lifestyle enjoyed by the Kardashians and their lot, but instead can be found in the day to day bodily waste that you are responsible for. .
