The Name of Mud

With the possibility of spring returning comes the realization that we are completely unprepared for mud. At our old house, I was the only one capable of getting mud on my shoes. Last year, we lived in an overgroomed apartment complex in a neighborhood where mud violated the restrictive covenants. But this year we have mud: red, sticky, glue-when-wet, cement-when-dry mud. And D2 has a remarkable talent for falling face-first in it.

Playing out in the mud is fine. If it weren't for D2 falling down in it, we really wouldn't even get mud anywhere but our shoes, as they are mostly interested in poking the mud with sticks.

The problem arises when we try to go inside. We have the choice between the front door, which leads us straight into the living room and the piles of books we forgot to put away before we went outside, and the back door, which still doesn't even have a rug and which is wedged between the dishwasher and the kitchen table. The mudroom was a great invention, but this house predates that. It may, perhaps, be older than dirt.

So we trek through the entire house to reach the bathroom, shedding chunks of mud all the way. In the bathroom, I have three pairs of shoes to remove, while those who have their shoes removed will invariably wander right into a pile of shed mud. Then D2 usually needs to be mostly stripped, under severe protest, because what he wants to do is take his mud-caked shoes and put them away immediately.

When I try to scrape the mud off the shoes first he protests, and when I give up and set them aside to dry, turning my attention to the new garden plot on the floor, he sneaks them out behinds my back. Unfortunately he gets sidetracked on the way to the shoe bin and instead sits down on D1's bed, spreading mud all over the sheet.

So at this point, I have a bathroom coated with mud and filled with muddy clothes, towels and shoes, a bed covered with mud, D1 wandering around getting mud on her white socks because I haven't found her slippers yet, and D2 sitting on the muddy bed half-dressed and whimpering that he wants to go night-night. Everyone's nose is running and they think lunch should have been served half an hour ago.

D1 has a book called The Marvelous Mud Washing Machine. I wonder where they sell those. Or maybe we should just wait for a drought.