I got it covered

Chris likes to tell this story about his Mom: When he was younger, it never failed to thoroughly gross him out that she would manage her kitchen compost bin bare handed. After days of dumping egg shells and coffee grounds, potato peelings and rotting tomatoes, she could just reach in there up to her wrists and swish it around, smash it down, and scoop it up.

And while my following opinion is limited by my own personal experiences, I'm just going to go ahead and say that, when it comes to the gross parts of  kids, of domesticity, and of life, the Mom's have it covered. Am I right?

Take the other night. After more than a year without an infestation, I found a few nits on Bela. Now, this was after a long day of work, coming home to a chaotic and messy house full of kids needing to do homework and to eat a decent dinner, while lacking any other adult to help out because daddy was traveling again.

With the beautiful and miraculous help of my two older girls, we succeeded in making dinner, completing all the homework, putting the chickens in for the night, stripping  the beds, and washing the blankies, all while keeping tabs on the adorable but impossible Gillian Fern.

As I stepped over pellets of guinea pig poop that had been scraped out of the cage by my almost two year old, as I slipped through the pee that had sloshed out of her new and much adored (and FULL) potty, I stuffed my arms with towels, discarded clothing, jackets, and anything else that might need scalding to rid us of the nits.

I arrived to Gillian's closet and reached down with the last empty inch of my right hand to pick up a pair of crusty and nasty pajama pants she had deposited there on the floor, and discovered that my aging kitty Bronte, who completes 18 years on this planet come January,  had decided that that was the perfect place to poop.

I hesitated only a moment, I swear. I adjusted some of the things I was holding and, lacking any sort of tissue or paper, I reached down and grabbed the hard little pile. With my bare hands.

I'm almost certain that the guy I married--the one who throws up when he has to pick up dog poop with a doubled up plastic bag--will shudder when he reads this.