AP Bodily Fluids & Waste

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. .

All God's Children have Fathers...right?

When did we become a society where the best interests of the child are usurped by the rights of the father? So, if a man ducks out and moves around a lot, then he can avoid having to support his offspring in any manner….

Look at this way, even the first homo-sapien clans had a family structure that included a father who was the ‘provider’ of food and protection for not just the child and its mother, but for the small group as a whole. If the man went out in search of food, hunting, he brought back meat, as well as the other supplies made from animal leftover parts; hides, tusks, fat for oil. Anyways, he helped ensure the survival of his family, the women and children of the group. If, and this was a much larger risk than we can imagine today, the father, hunter, man were to die while in the line of duty, it was customary that another member of this family either ‘marry’ his wife or take over the responsibility of her welfare as well as any children in her care. A man need never let the fear of someone being able to provide for his family stand in the way of his duty.

So, as a hunter-gatherer more animalistic, more primitive human society, we took better care of our children. As it stands today, a man can father a child and then evade any and all responsibility for the children, and the laws established by civilization have enabled this to become the rule rather than the exception. In my case specifically, because he is receiving his income through VA disability, my child is not entitled to any of that money because it is like “welfare” as I was told by my case worker. But, if we were still kept house together, that income would go to help provide for the child’s everyday necessities, so why would that money not be considered a way for the man to help with the child?

I asked my case worker that if my ex-husband were to die, my child would receive Social Security benefits, right? She agreed, that she most certainly would, around $1000.00 a month. So, if my ex is dead, the child can receive the resources to survive and thrive, but if the father lives and does not work, the child is left to suffer. Am I the only one who thinks that there is something that is incredibly wrong with this picture? Civilization has evolved indeed, and in the process (I imagine it has something to do with the patriarchal infrastructure of our society) managed to remove the responsibility that a father has toward his child to be what he has always been throughout human history; a provider.