The Parent Trapped Pre-release

Before I started Chronicling The Desert, I was The Parent Trapped. My first blog which lasted a year, was my first venture into the blogging world and began simply enough as a desire to connect, vent, and commiserate with anyone willing to read my words. I enjoyed blogging very much while learning many new things about electronics and myself while also rescuing my brain from a slow Dora the Explorer demise.

When we moved to Del Rio this summer, I realized my Trapped-ness seemed to be relieved by the desert. That's when I realized Suburbia had been making me feel Trapped, not so much my kids and domestic responsibilities as I once assumed. You know, when you "assume", you make an "ass out of U and Me".

Anyway, that's when I decided to continue blogging but with less trappings and more Chronicling.

The Desert Chronicles is doing well and I'm enjoying it just as much as I enjoyed The Parent Trapped.

But it's time for me to release some memory space from blogger so I have to delete The Parent Trapped soon. But I didn't want it to just languish on my hard drive or on a disk somewhere, so I turned it into a book!

I made one book that is the complete blog, no editing, no fixing, just the blog as it really was. I have that one and only copy. It's really, really rough.

Next, I'm making an edited version where I deleted some of the junk, fixed some of the mistakes, and cleaned it up a bit. It will be finished late this week. Hopefully.

This second edition I will release to the public! I will give you all the details when it is ready.

In honor of the release, I have decided to post a few of my The Parent Trapped entries.

Enjoy the first re-issue today!

(Warning: The Parent Trapped was a bit edgier, more crass, sometimes ugly, and often offending. But it was fun, and sometimes funny. Or so I've been told!)

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www.theparenttrapped.com

Redneck Baby, Part Doo (originally posted July 23, 2009)


This next blog consists of the grossest story ever to find its way onto the Internet. Really, extra nasty. Just a warning. If you are totally grossed out it's not my fault. Leave now if you can't handle some serious nasty business.

Here goes:

The other day we were on the beach, again, with all three kids fully clothed. (Yeah! Cheers in the background!) We were all having a swell time, playing in the sand, body boarding, snacking, and the baby bouncing around in her bucket of seawater. We were just happy as a lark minding our own business.

When the baby started fussing in her bucket I took her out and set her down in the sand. She started crab walking (hands and feet) toward the low tidal pool where all the other little ones like to migrate. (And now the skim boarders. Where the HELL did all these tween boys come from? Is that really a sport, anyway? Throwing a thin piece of plywood onto the low surf then jumping on and riding it until you fall flat on your ass or face? It's taking up MY beach, please move along.) Any who.....

Baby and I are playing happily in the water with Middle child who is taking a break from having Dad spin him in insane circles on his boogie board. We're bouncing, laughing, having a great time until I see a cloud following the baby's butt. Since it's kind of yellow, I'm thinking it's pee. We ALL pee in the ocean. When a mom who has been sitting all afternoon suddenly gets up, goes waist deep in the water while pretending to "jump" the waves, then suddenly gets out just as fast? Yep. She's peeing. The boy who is standing on the shoreline with his legs slightly apart while staring into space. He's not meditating. Pee city. My oldest plays no games about it. She marches out to the water, squats down and let's it rip. Piss-ola.

With pee on my mind I swash away the cloud trailing the baby, then on a whim, I check her swim diaper. OH MY GOD!! With one teeny peek thirteen raisins, 157 undigested blueberry skins, and four billion ppm of crap come SWIMMING out of the back of her swim diaper! I almost gag on the spot! Oh my god now what do I do? I grab the baby in the obvious "she's crapped her pants" hold, (you know, with one hand holding a shoulder and the other hand holding the opposite leg), and run-walk her to our chairs.

On the way, Mr. Wonderful playing in the surf catches my death glare I'm shooting him, and comes up asking, "What the hell is going on?" "I need some effing HELP!!" I plead in my most unsexy pleading/demanding voice. (When there is floating baby shit in the tidal pools there is NO room for manners or sexy talk, believe me!) He asks what's wrong when, no offense, any mom in her right mind would take one look at the babies position in my arms and know exactly what's wrong. But he's a Dad and great at lots of things but not aerial poop avoidance maneuvers. So I quietly scream the situation and it sounds something like this....

......"THE BABY-SHE CRAPPED IN THE TIDAL POOL! THERE'S POOP FLOATING AROUND, ALL AROUND THE OTHER MOMS AND BABIES! WHAT DO WE DO?" 1. Should I get the fishing net and "pretend" to scoop up fish when in fact I'm scooping baby poop? 2. Do I alert the lifeguard so he can blow his whistle, put up the black flag meaning water contamination so 5ooo other people's days are ruined? 3. Do I do nothing about the doo?

As we folded flat a lounge chair, stripped the baby, fielded curious questions from kid #1 and #2, and wiped up the biggest mess, we decided to go with option number 3. We did NOTHING!! I repeat, we left that baby poop just floating in the tidal pool with moms and kids and skim boarders all around. Oh my Lord I am so ashamed! Let me explain to you our thinking....

1. The poop was very runny so there wasn't much solid waste to recover.
2. The tidal pool was still "attached" to the ocean so fresh water was constantly flowing through the area and spreading around the "debris".
3. The closest third parties were 10-15ft. away.
4. The baby had no illness or contagious GI infection for someone else to catch if they were exposed to her feces.
5. Skimming the pool with a net would only reinforce the "Oh, that baby must have pooped", theory of anyone watching our abrupt exit from the area.
6. Why let a little poop ruin everyone else's day?

The damage was done, the baby was clean, so Jerry goes to rinse his hands in the water bucket we have for the baby to play in. Only, now it's cloudy and yellowish. EWWWWWWWWWWWW! After pulling his hands out, we both almost barf, and he says, "Um. Maybe I should put new water in this. What do you think?" Um, YEAH! EWWWW. Just think about it. Rinsing your hands in baby poop water!? AHH!!

The story ends with Jerry taking the babe into the ocean to rinse her off, dumping the poop-water bucket into the same ocean, and then burying a small but noticeable trail of pooh in the sand that leads from the bucket to the tidal pool. Then hand sanitizer, more hand sanitizer, a quick "Please forgive us for what we do" prayer, and then on with the fun.

I told you. Super GROSS!

Want to hear the really gross thing? Do you have any idea how often that probably happens? At the community pool, at the spray-ground, or at the beach? From a nerdy scientific point of view... Thank GOD our immune systems work as well as they do or we would be in.......

GIANT BABY REDNECK DOODY!