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January 6, 2020 Life is Messy

PROMPT January 6th ▼

Write about something that makes you squeamish. What is icky, gross, or just plain “yuck!” Is there anything that makes other people shiver with disgust that doesn’t bother you?

I'm a woman, of course, I've dealt with yucky. That's what we do. If it needs cleaning up, we are usually appointed.

I think our training begins with our first menstrual cycle. Then you become a Mom and there is poop, vomit, blood, and pus, all manner of yuck. Life is messy. If it is gross, it has to be cleaned up.

I mucked stalls weekly for years and once helped my mare foal. To be fair, she did most of the cleanup. I really don't consider horse poop all that offensive. Cow poop and especially pig poop, on the other hand, is disgusting. Yes, I've raised all three species. One time we were trekking on horseback into the wilderness area in the Sierra Nevadas. After a hot sweaty day riding horseback in difficult terrain, I was bathing in a stream. It felt so good to get clean, I washed my hair, went under the water to rinse and came up to see a horse turd float past my face. Eeewuh.

One of the more disgusting things I can think of was many years ago, when I helped my husband clean up a failed septic tank, now that was just gross. One side of the box had caved in. He was up on the tractor, I was the one in the trench with a shovel. S*** happens.

I think the worst clean up job I had was when apparently, some critter had pulled the plug on our chest freezer. It was full of meat, we had just slaughtered a beef. We had been away and didn't have reason to check the freezer, it had probably been a few weeks since I had checked it last. When I went down to get some steaks, the meat had not just defrosted it was decomposing. I had to throw an entire beef away and had a slimy, bloody, putrid, disgusting mess in the bottom of the freezer. It was thick and syrupy. I smell it just thinking about it.

The ordinary stuff of life can be disgusting. Thankfully, my gag reflex level is pretty high.