Boys and dogs

Everyday after school Jesse can hardly wait for me to pull the car into the garage before he hops out.  First, he runs to the tree and pees.  Then, Harley and Khaleesi run out and off they all go.  As I watch him out there talking to and playing with the dogs, I often wonder what goes through his mind.  Boys.  They can be so sweet and kind.  More often though, they are completely inappropriate.   

Me:  Jesse, C'mon, let's practice your spelling words.  Read them to me in a sentence.
Jesse:  Wiped.  I wiped my butt.
Me:  (eyeroll)
Jesse:  Covered. I covered my butt.
Me:
Jesse:  Slipped. I slipped in poop.
Me:  Okay!  Okay.  Enough with the potty talk.  Let's finish the rest of these without saying poop or butt.
Jesse:  Smelling....(He looks at me and I just shake my head like "don't do it.")  I'm smelling something that's not poop.

This is how it goes with boys.  Poop, fart, butt, pee is integrated in all conversations and how every joke ends or begins. Today, after the busy work of playing outside, he comes upstairs.  Screws around with his Lego's for a little while.  He comes over to my desk and ever so sweetly lays his arm across my back.  He compliments my drawing and then calmly with zero urgency says, "Someone threw up on your bed." 

"What?!" I just washed my bedspread.  I literally just took it out of the washer, slightly damp because it takes five years to dry.  I laid it over the bed and went up stairs to finish drawing this panda card I'm working on.  "Who threw up?   >pause<    Did you?"  I only asked him that because I could smell a faint corn chip smell and snack time was long gone.  He says, "No."  Me, forever in mom mode, start a completely different line of questioning, "Are you eating chips?  We are going to have dinner soon."  He pats my back sweetly, reassuring me that it was only a few chips, he'd eat his dinner and that he thinks it was Harley that puked on my bed. 

Harley, our Corgi mix has 4 inch legs.  There is no way he jumped up on my bed and puked.  Had to be Khaleesi.

The suspects

I rush into my room.  It was like one of those scenes in a scary movie where the camera flashes from one horror to another.  I see a weird brownish color smeared on my bedspread. Pan to it smeared along the side of it, the part that hangs down.  To Jesse sitting on my bed with his shoes on.  "Is that mud?!" I kind of shout.

"No.  Smell it."  I'm going to say this, even though you know, when your 9 year old boy tells you to smell something, just don't.  Do not.  So... I smelled it and no, it wasn't mud.  It wasn't puke, either.  It was poop.  Dog poop.

Dog poop all over my freshly laundered bed spread.  I stood there, I think in shock, for second until it all registered.  There was no poop fairy coming to clean this mess up.  I began to rant.  I'm not proud of it but, I did.  I instilled and reiterated a few house rules.  Loudly.  No shoes in the house.  No kids, chips or dogs in my room.  I threw the chips in there because yesterday there was orange Cheetos dust on my bed spread, hence the freshly laundered blanket.  (Weird thing was... nobody did it.  Maybe this is a horror movie and I have a ghost eating Cheetos on my bed.)  I added that the dog poop pick up chore would now be done daily.

Also, we do not yell an apology.  We say it like we mean it or we don't say it at all.
 
As I was cleaning the mess up and talking loudly from the bedroom to the laundry room; Jesse, God bless him, was trying to not laugh because I kept saying poop.  I had to give it all to Jesus when I gagged a little while using my Shout stain remover.  I heard him mimic me with a "hoorrrk" sound.  I stopped shoe scraping and turned to look at him, I had no words.  There he was bright eyed with Khaleesi and Harley right next to him watching the shit show. 

It was an accident, I know, but I needed a minute.  It was so gross.  I want a new bedspread for Christmas -actually I want that right now.  I even thought about declaring my house a lost cause and putting it up for sale.  It is amazing how much indoor ground a boy can cover with one dog poop shoe.

The boy

"Little boys bring you just to the brink of insanity before gently easing you off the ledge with a sweeet kiss and laughter from a perfectly timed fart."

Chris Issak