Good Heavens, I Seem to Have Stepped in Excrement...

WARNING I'll be swearing this time around, okay?

I should be sleeping but why lie there insomniac when I could be waiting for Jethro to get home, and writing about shit?

Okay, from the start of this project I decided I wouldn't swear my face off, despite my love of cussing when appropriate. For example, not at school, in front of kids, at church, you know, a basic respect thing. We have a swear jar in the kitchen. It keeps getting raided of course, but I have paid up my twenty bux worth. Our Boy keeps track. Jethro's about 70 bux in debt, usually from when he's talking business on his cellphone, and no that's not a joke! My father in law, Grandpar, just throws a couple of coins in once he's in the house, to keep up with it. Plus he swears in British, Cockney precisely, and the Boy doesn't care about the exchange rate, so we just take the spare change.

Now understand my upbringing. It's not a nice Mennonite thing to cuss. But we do. Oh yes we do! I'll tell you straight up, not once in my childhood did my mom tell my dad that she'd come out to the barn to help shovel manure. Oh no. Not manure. Nope. It's shit. Manure pile? Shitpile. Manure spreader? Shitspreader.

Mind you if my sister or I said the F word that was baaad. Except for my little sister trying to convince us in all innocence that it's only a bad word if you say OFF after it, but that's another story. And a dang funny one.

So I've got these two golden wonderful kids, and I hate seeing kids cussing like it's normal. It just makes them look like little punk ass shits. (I'm really enjoying this post tonight, eh?) So early on, we taught the kids about double standards. Sure swearing is fun and expressive but also rude and can give people a very bad impression of you, so here are the places you can't swear. Now here's the beauty of it. It makes the most sense of anything I think I've ever taught them.

YOU CAN ONLY SAY SHIT IF YOU'RE STANDING IN IT.

I mean, what else are you gonna say if you stepped in it? I think it's great how my angelic 11yr old Girl looks up at me from under the hood of her barn jacket and says, "Mommy, did you notice that the little Lady only shits along one side of her stall? It's really easy to scoop up the shit when she does that." Or my Boy, who likes to run up the shit pile to the summit, where he proclaims himself Shitman, the ruler of the shit. And asks me how the King never seems to step in his own shit. Well, son, he's the King, he knows where all the shit is because that's his job, and it's undignified to step in your own shit and he knows it.

I'm so excited about staying at the farm over Christmas. We can put on our impervious boots and walk in shit every day!

The key is to keep the shit out of the house. You do not walk into the house in your shit boots. They get parked in the cellar. Winter is nice because you can walk off some of the shit in the snow. You really shouldn't even say shit in the house. This has been tricky in our own house with our Puppy who has the idea that it goes outside, but hasn't quite figured out how to tell us that it's about to come out, and does it at the back door then looks at us mournfully. Just 2 minutes before I was thinking, I gotta get him out there, and then...shit.

Yep, I can feel the pre-Christmas anxiety lifting already. I might even find the strength to tell you more important stuff before I shut this thing down for holidays. For example, I might tell you about the etiquette of what to wear into town. I'll leave this as a teaser: You must never ever ever wear your shit boots to the grocery store. Well duh. Sadly, I've experienced it.

If you get a chance over Christmas to put on some shit proof boots and walk bravely through whatever lies before you, I highly recommend it!