We have a cat.

It looks like this:

Hairy.

Very hairy.

Sometimes this cat does poo.

Mostly the poo ends up in the kitty litter, and all is right in the world.

Once upon a time, the poo didn’t end up in the kitty litter, but remained in the hairy hair for quite some time before my nostrils were assailed by a fecund faecal odour not befitting this establishment.  There was a kitty-dag.  This was bad, but the poo was quite firm and could be easily removed with toilet paper, a little water and much gagging.

Once upon a THIS time, the poo didn’t end up in the kitty litter.  Neither was it firm.  It was quite pliable.  And securely affixed to the hairy hair.  Entwined in fact.  Almost poo-plaited in.  I believe surfers have a term for a similar phenomenon, when they have been surfing for hours and their arse-hairs get a little matted and then they desire deft defecation.  I have it on reasonable authority that this is known as a “netty”.  (Don’t.Even.Ask how I know this.)  So Woofa Butterball Popsicle Asher had a feline fur-netty, and was showing no signs of removing it of her own accord.

The other three sooks in this house were gasping and gagging and basically carrying on.

So, as with all things daring and dangerous and disgusting, it fell to the woman.

I demanded gloves, scissors and toilet paper STAT.  I also demanded a camera, because: blog.

I donned the gloves, held the cat prostrate, and performed the nettyectomy.

A little bit of vomit might have scalded my throat as I swabbed the area clean.

And that is that story of why an unfortunate event has led to me imbibe my second Stella on a school night.

For your viewing pleasure: a blurry pic of the netty. It was difficult to get a clear shot due to the retching.

You might not believe me, but I SHIT YOU NOT: less than five minutes after I cut that poo-pouch off, the cat was LICKING HER BUM HAIR.  I know not why.   It was cut it off.  And if she likes licking faecal-fur, why did she wait?  Why was she licking it at all?  What is wrong with nature-y things?  Excuse me now, whilst I go and eat a placenta I have in my freezer*.

*This is not true.  I do not have a placenta (although our midwife was strangely keen for us to keep them).  I didn’t have a crock-pot back then: opportunity missed.

…From The Ashers xx

There’s a meme that is doing the rounds at the moment, and if you’re a Mum and on Facebook you’ve probably had it pop up in your feed once or twice:

A little slice of Mother Guilt anyone?  Come on, just one more tiny wafer….

And rightly so, I say, because a lot of you are screwing up aren’t you?  Maybe not in astronomical ways, but in little, insidious ways every single day.  Sometimes without even realising, you are messing up your children’s brains and lives forever.

But not over here.  Up here (on the moral and ethical high ground) the view is perfect.  Over at The Asher House we are all neat, kind, well-mannered, successful, happy, wise, talented and, well, perfect.

I have delved into the archives my phone to find documents to regale and impress you.  And of course prove my superiority.

Exhibit A:

I found this little love note on Liam’s desk a few years ago.  Ahh Liam, my gorgeous, quiet, gentle-soul of a son.  In case you can’t read it, it is poignantly entitled Liam’s Revenge and even better than a sonnet, it is more of a To-Do list.  A list wondrous things that he will do to his little (then 4 year old) sister.  Just quietly, I was relieved to find the note and be alerted to the plans of the PSYCHOPATH before Check Box One was completed.  Please note the tasks Three and Four: “Brake (sic) the things she makes” and “Call her names” have been successfully performed.  We are so proud to have such a committed high-achiever for a son.  I think most of the pundits would agree that goal setting and completion of tasks are the marks greatness…. Or perhaps it is vengeance that is the sign.  Obliterate the competition.

Exhibit B:

Coco has just started violin lessons, which makes our ears bleed brings much joy to our home.  This morning I was pleased and impressed to see she has penned her very first song.  It is without a title so far, but I think you will agree, it is the work of a prodigy.  There is a fair bit of crossing out, so perhaps the final words are still under review, but the chorus is truly wonderful.

In case the meaning escapes you the lyric is:

Verse:

Pop, cha cha

Fart, cha cha

They mean the same thing

They come out of people’s bums.

Chorus:

La La La La

La La La La

La La La La

(The chorus went on for quite a while, like any good ‘pop’ song… see what I did there?)

So there you have it, THAT is what perfection looks (and smells) like.  If you feel like you aren’t keeping up, feel free to drop me a line.  I think this year I’ll run some courses on pyshco and maestro hot-housing.  I’m clearly onto something.

In the interests of not divulging too much personal information about my children, lest they become famous and my blog becomes famous and we are all so famous dah-ling, I have been thinking I really shouldn’t, you know, overshare.  About them.  At least not until they are old enough to understand the implications of, and consent to putting information out there on the interwebby, that they may later become entangled in.  But its almost 8.30pm, I’ve been at a Christmas party and consumed some cheer, and The Agony of Christmas is about to start.  It’s on the ABC and therefore has no ads to type within.

So “stiff shit” as they say in the classics.  Although this is a tale of shit that was anything but stiff.

*****

When our second child, who for the purposes of this story we shall call Coco, was a baby, she was a little tricky.  Some days she would cry.  A lot.  And some days she just needed to be held, or she would scream.  A lot.  If you are a RR you will know she has a weird-arse condition that means she requires regular blood transfusions, and so I guess that’s why she was tricky.  Either that or she was a little shit.

But this is not a story about that, this is a story about bodily functions.

We were out doing the food shopping, back in the days before Coles online was available in our sleepy Sunrise town.  The shopping was done, and it was time for Coco to have a nap.  Instead of rushing home, we thought it would be awfully chic to have a coffee at a cute little cafe, and have her drift off to sleep in her baby capsule.  We were intent on not letting the fact that we were now mulitparous ruin our life, despite volumes of evidence to the contrary.

I gave her a little kiss, smiled at her beatifically, pulled the shroudy/blankety thing over the capsule, and began gently rocking her.  She gurgled and snuffled and grunted a little, as babies often do, and I sighed in the contented way that only a mother of a pigeon-pair of perfect children can.  I’m pretty sure the sun was slowly setting behind me, illuminating me in my glow, bathing me in soft warm light.  I suspect I have never looked or felt so smug serene as I sipped my decaf-skinny-chai-soy-latte.  (Yeah right, kids weren’t ruining our life- who drinks that?)

Coco started to grizzle a little, so I rocked her with more vigour.  She could be a bit challenging to settle sometimes, so I rocked a little more.  She started to ramp it up a bit more, so I rocked a bit more. Ramp. Rock. Ramp. Rock.  Until eventually I was standing up, legs apart, holding those handles and swinging her side to side like The Pirate Ship Ride at the Melbourne Show in 1986.  UpUpUp one way, almost to inversion, then DownDownDown.  UpUpUp the other way, then DownDownDown.  I almost wanted to go all the way like that water-in-the-bucket trick we did when we were kids, but I didn’t (What’s wrong with that?  She was strapped in).

Eventually the grizzle>cry>scream was so loud there was nothing for it but to break the rule of the latest parenting book I was reading, and pull back the muslin.  “I won’t get eye contact,” I said to myself- there was something in it about no eye contact- something about being manipulated by a baby.

I whisked that blankie back, and like a magician revealing his trick, I saw that Coco was, well, Cocoa.  Totally brown.

Completely, utterly and absolutely covered in shit.

It was impossible not to get eye contact, for in fact her shocked blue eyes were the only things recognisable as human, in this baby capsule poo bath.

She was basted from head to hand, torso to toe, in runny, lukewarm baby diarrhoea.  I have never seen so much poo in my life, nor do I ever wish to. Nobody does. Nobody should have to. It’s not human.

I didn’t know what to do with all that shit, didn’t know how I would clean it up, just did.not.know.where.to.start.  Where can you start?  When you are in a cafe.  And you have maybe twenty baby wipes.  And you have a kind of gurlgly-screaming baby who looks like a runny Chicco.

So I just dropped that poozy Jacuzzi and ran.

That’s okay, right?

Today The Ashers went to a children’s water paradise.  Wake-boarding, inflatable things to climb on and over, and fall into the water from great heights, ice-creams.  It was the Almost Anything Goes of the Sunshine Coast. It was fantastic.  It looked a little like this:

In fact it looked exactly like this

Clearly I didn’t choose this as a way to spend my (preferably) lazy Sunday, but sometimes as parents we don’t get to choose.  Not really.  We have to DO things.  And stuff.  Sometimes those things turn out to be fun, and sometimes they are a bit shit.  Today was fun and shit.

There we were, thunderbird-running along one of the pathways, and trying not to slip over, when I spotted it.  One lump and a bigger lump.  Brown.  Lumps that a women who has toilet trained two children would recognise immediately: toddler turd.

Quick as a flash, and before I even really knew what I was doing, I flicked that crap into the water with my toe.

Then: ewww.  Why did I do that? The water logs were now waterborne.  In the water we were swimming in.  And I’d kicked some turd that didn’t belong to anyone from my gene pool, into the pool.  Just: ewww.

And with that, Coco fell off the side and into the water. Again.

“Quick Coco, swim to the edge, quick, grab my hand, get back onto the raft, AND DON’T OPEN YOUR MOUTH!” I was screaming like a woman deranged, it was like that scene from Jaws 2 when Sean almost gets chewed by the shark. Except there was no shark. Just a toilet truffle.

Coco’s big blue eyes were like saucers as she grabbed my trembling, outstretched hand.  I started dragging her back up onto the slippery, slippery plastic inflatable…

Here we are, almost there, I had her half up, almost safe, then missed my footing, and slipped into the liquorice lake.

OHHHNOOOOTHEHORROR.

We swam through the mire, that I prefer to think of as little clumps of mud, mouths clamped shut, trying to breathe the tiniest bits of air, lest we inadvertently inhale poo particles.  I even tried to keep my ears shut.  (Can you keep your ears shut?)  We tried anyway, just in case tympanic membranes aren’t patent.

You’ll be happy to know we were eventually able to make it out of the cesspit, and so far, we aren’t showing any ill-effects other than my imaginary sore throat.  I’m thinking I will hit the tequila bottle pretty hard tonight, just to kill off the e.coli, mind.  And if I have enough lick, sip, sucks, I won’t know if I’m crook from the old el Toro, or the old el Turdo.

How about you, have you even swum in a dunny?

How was your Sunday, was it as fancy as mine?

Hi there y’all.  I’ve had a bit of a big day* and don’t have the time or the energy to get you a well constructed, hilarious, heart-wrenching or warming post sorted out.

So in lieu of a blog, I give you This . Someone else who had a big day.

May your intestines flow freely and your Friday be happy.

*A big day from work,  not from pooing. Just work.

Ever overflowed your toilet?

Thanks to  AmosKeeto for the link