When I was pregnant with my second child our family bought a cottage. Nothing fancy just a small quaint little place that was maybe 700 square feet. The goal was to have an escape and I was out on hotel life with an almost 2 year old and a baby on the way.
We loved our little place. It was perfect for a long time, but as we grew our family the place became impractical.
After much deliberation we decided we needed more room.
Just this fall we made the change and we recently made our first trip up.
We packed up the 3 girls, 3 dogs, ourselves and headed off to unpack.
You know 4 minutes into the ride everyone is asking how much longer? Are we there yet? I toss back little treats AKA little bites of shut the hell up. The dogs are trying to get the kids treats and it becomes the usual disaster that has encompassed my life.
Just because we are the luckiest people ever we hit gobs and gobs of traffic. There is an entire freeway shut down and by the time the tyrants cooperated it was also commuting time.
We are 45 minutes from home, but this actually took 2 whole hours and the bickering is at an all time high. My ears are literally bleeding, I’m foaming at the mouth and I just want silence.
I have to go to the bathroom screams the middle child. We pull off for the pit stop which really worked out as we were still haulted in gridlock.
We hit the nearest BK. We all go to the bathroom except the oldest child.
We lecture all the road trip angles. We’re not stopping again and all the other useless bullshit threats that never work. Husband even takes the dogs out to go potty. To no avail the oldest child holds firm.
I wanna go to our fav ice cream place the non-pee-er yells. They have shakes here, that will do.
Now this is off topic but the speaker was on when we pulled up. We could hear all the employees comically bitching about some sandwich mix up. This poor girl cannot explain this to the car in a way that they can comprehend, WTF is happening.
The air in the car was tense and this was a nice break for the adults. Speaker lady backs up her bitching with a “What the Fuck” then chipperly welcomes us and asks to take our order.
She is me. I am her. I love her. I want to talk to her about it but the husband doesn’t want to waste time. Spoil sport. *Sigh*
We have our shakes and head back to the parking lot on the freeway.
A cool 15 minutes later everyone is happy on shakes and the ride is going well.
I gotta go to the bathroom shouts the middle child.
What do you mean?? You made me stop 15 minutes ago. I know but I gotta go again. The hell you do!! Now the non-pee-er chimes in, I have to go too.
The crazy eyes have been engaged and before my brain even assesses the situation I can hear my own voice. I’m already mid yelling lecture. You know all the words I said. This is why we go even when we don’t think we need to and every other useless parental line of crap.
We pull off again, do the bathroom shuffle and resume burning pavement.
By this point the car smells like a combination of farts, fast food, dog breath and a rotting carcass. I’m confident I have dog hair in my teeth. Which is probably ok as I’m certain I could use a good floss. Pft. Pft. Dog hair cascading around us in the air. I’m not sure what’s going on.
N!! (my husband) where is Butter??
“I dunno”.
Why are men always struggling to see the big deal?
I had her hooked to my chair for a reason! I’m all snippy as I’m frantically eyeballing around the minivan. My eyes darting wildly cannot locate Butter through the disheveled mess that is the traveling circus of a van.
Shit N!! She’s in the back eating all the food!
We have a standard protocol for travel but managing 8 butts is not so easy.
I climb to the back getting stuck to things all the way. Grab the 12 pound puppy and reattach her to my chair.
N, she ate half a baguette. He gives me this awkward trying not to laugh smile.
I’m mourning the loss of my baguette. You see 3 kids later my mom thighs are not my best friend. I limit my bread intake. The fat kid inside me is depressed about the lovely caprese sandwich I had planned to make. RIP my baguette, you will be missed.
The rest of the ride was a blur and I think it’s best that I’ve blocked it out.
So my Bro in law (BIL) came up with his son to help us put together beds and you know just survive.
The following morning I send out some fabulous pictures to my peeps. We have purchased a 1970’s time capsule. The most glorious blue shag carpet, orange chairs, a yellow corduroy couch, blue drapes, a blue rotary phone, etc. This place is in perfect condition and it is spectacularly vintage. I’m loving this throwback, especially that blue shag.
We’re rolling through the morning, BIL is asleep and the rest of us are awake. Breakfast is done, I head for real clothes.
I smell shit.
I’m hunting down the stink.
Here stinky stinky…
Bingo. I have found the the poop. Not just any poop though. Puppy diarrhea. Creamy, liquidized pudding that has seeped into every fiber of my glorious blue shag.
Apparently that baguette didn’t sit so well with Butter. This poo will only be pushed into the shag, this is not going to work.
N is given an update and he makes the executive decision to head to Wally World (Walmart) to buy an extractor.
We load our clan plus the stolen nephew and let BIL’s lungs purify the air while we’re gone. He’s asleep anyway.
Sometime later I am alerted of the missing son. I attempt a ransom but am instructed to keep my kidnapping victim. I advise that will come at the cost of scrubbing diarrhea.
We return home, carpet extractor in hand and some other fun Wally World finds. I also learned something on this trip. Our family takes up an entire aisle. People know we mean business when you’re rolling with a 6 deep family. People also couldn’t handle the 2 year old walking through the whole store with a 2 foot foam Chuckie head on. Who knew.
Anyhow, back to reality. We catch up with BIL, he informs he did a stage 1 diarrhea cleaning, he let the dogs out, things are good.
Husband is ready for business time, he’s got his business socks on and he’s ready to scrub poo.
He enters the room…Bam! The shit stink mows him down.
It’s like your eyes zooming in and out over and over again to each new pile of sloppy diarrhea shit. Men’s voices rise an octave to pubescent levels as blame and defense escalate.
“I let them out”.
“There’s shit everywhere”.
It’s poomaggeden. A pootastrophy. A poonado. The poopening. A literal poo storm of baguette diarrhea is sprayed everywhere. No shard of shag is missed. Rubbing butthole streaks of poo. The mind cannot believe the sights the eyes tell.
For the next hour my husband is aggressively scrubbing shit. Coming out only for a breather with sweat covering his red blotchy forehead. He dumps out the extractor and just when you think it can’t get any worse…he dumps the extracted poo cleaning water all over the bathroom floor.
Involuntary gagging over the smell. I can’t. I abandon him to clean that floor too.
I later joke “It’s not so bad”.
He looked at me like he wanted to punch me in the nose. My husband doesn’t get really frustrated. I think he has hit his max capacity.
“You don’t know how bad it was.”
The relief when it’s all over is palpable.
The moral of the story: Mind your baguettes!
moxiemommy 
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