Country Mouse....

My mom asked me today if I had completely given up my blog for Facebook (to which I have become addicted and is another story for another day). Actually, I told her I'd given up my blog for reading. So far I'm on track for my book a week goal, though I had to give up on The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It was too wordy and too-self aware. I kept getting the feeling that he thought he was wowing me with his verbosity, but really he was just turning me off. I rarely give up on a book, but this one just wasn't doing it for me.

So, anyway, last weekend the kids and I went to visit my best friend from high school, Dee, and her kids. Her sister, also a good friend of mine, was also there and we had a blast. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't seen Dee in almost two years. I know, I'm a really bad friend. It's just that sometimes when things aren't going exactly right in my life, I like to just tuck into my shell. It's hard enough to admit to myself that my life hasn't turned out exactly like I expected, so I'm not all that keen sometimes to expose my failures to other people.

But the great thing about Dee and her sister is their easy friendship. We just dropped back into our friendship as though no time had passed.

When it came time to leave we were standing by our cars when one of Dee's cows mooed loudly. Punkin's eyes lit up and she yelled out "COW!" You would have thought she'd heard an elephant. Dee made everybody's day by offering a quick jaunt into the pasture to see the cows. Both Bubba and Punkin were thrilled and acted as though cows are exotic animals. I found this highly amusing, yet also slightly shameful that they've never had any more contact with cows than that. I guess not everybody grew up on their grandfather's dairy farm like I did. It was hard not to be affected by their delight and I ended up being just as excited about the cows as they did.

But do you know what sent them absolutely over the moon? Cow poop. Yes, I said cow poop. Bubba spotted it first. "Is that cow poop?" he asked.

"Yep," I replied. "Also known as a cow patty or a cow pie."

"Look!" Punkin yelled. "There's more poop over there! Let's go see it!"

We went from cow pie to cow pie, marveling anew over every pile. Bubba's fascination with all things butt and poop related is well documented, but what you don't know is that Punkin has followed in her Bubba's footsteps. She too is a fan, and is well....um...a gassy girl. Let's just leave it at that. And also? She is easily amused. We should be probably be discouraging her, but she takes such delight in making us laugh at her, um, offerings, that she's probably ruined for life.

Yeah, that what happens with country folk go to the...country? Obviously, we need to get out more.