I don't get paid enough for this.

I'm a tough chick. I'm a mom. Other moms can nod in appreciation of the fact that I have lived through the do or die hazing ritual. For every woman who thinks she can't take it, can't do it, there is a mom who comes through it a better chick than she was before.
I've seen it all, so have you. I've seen a 30lb. child produce 50 lbs of vomit. I've found impossibly large boogers dried onto walls that could only be removed still attached to a chunk of wall. I've seen wall art produced by every marking device known to man. I have seen chemical reactions made by bathroom science experiments. I know the limits to a particular home's plumbing system, the difference between a diaper that needs changing and a diaper that needs emergent changing. There is nothing that can come out of a child's body that even remotely fazes me. I've reached the point where the unexpected becomes expected. Like every mom, I know it is just better to deal with it and move on, than to fret about it and waste precious time.

Today I hit a wall with a bum string.

In the morning rush, I can smoothly remedy liquid spills, missing homework, cat pee on a back pack or stand at the door making frantic movements so the bus waits while I scream at kids scattered through the house.

Today it was a bum string and the wheels fell off my smooth running morning machine.

The cat was sprinting crazily around the house and I took no notice while I went from one task to the next to stay on time. When I stood in the kitchen while Mitchell and Will had their cereal the cat whizzed by again. It's amazing what you can peripherally pick up in an instant.
Me: Mitchell, did you just see the cat?
Mitch: Yes.
Me: Did it look different to you?
Mitch: Um, ya.
Me: Does the cat have a long string hanging out of it's bum?
Mitch: Yes.

That was beyond my mommy powers of quick grabbing the paper towels, or using my keen senses to locate a missing item. I was cut low by what I was hoping to God was a string, because if it was something that was alive or used to be alive I would have been paralyzed by hee bee jee bee convulsions. Maybe some of you tougher moms can deal with the thought of intestinal parasites with fortitude, but this chick goes down at first site of anything that can travel, by it's own accord, out anything's bum.

Brave Mitchell donned one of my Playtex living gloves (that I now have to replace cause would you want that handling your cutlery now?) and did some gentle tugging on the thing to conclude it was something man made and it was stuck. Now I had to do the school drop off run knowing my morning was going proceed with the corralling of a cat with a bum string. This was going to overlap into my coffee time. Stupid cat. I did come back and 1)find the cat sticking out from under some furniture. 2)Locate the front section of the cat because be damned if I was going to let that nasty thing touch me. 3) Drop the cat into the carrier noticing the frayed end of the string going down into the crate with the cat. I had my coffee first though. I needed some inner strength.

When we got to the vet clinic we were put in an examining room. The tech wanted a temperature. Whoa, I am going to go down if you lift that tail and fiddle with that spot I told the tech. See, I thought she would want to try some pulling and I was so afraid of what might be attached to the other end of that string. I had nasty visions of something plopping out. I would go right down if that happened. She wordlessly took kitty to the back to do the business. When she came back she announced there was no string. The vet came in and did a full oral/rectal exam to find no evidence of a hanger-on. That was scary-perplexing as the cat DID have the attachment when he went into the cage. Let's put our Agatha Christie hats on for a second and consider the clues. Cat has bum string upon entry to cage. Cat has no bum string upon exit. Sounds like a classic mystery. I'm sure you are deducing the same thing as me...the cat freed itself from the appendage by EATING it again. I cannot live through another bum string day.

Experience tells me that somehow I will survive. I know that in my mommy kit of everything you need for anything, I have some bum string experience to draw from. But, like I mentioned, I don't get paid enough for this.

I bet I'm the only person in the whole blog world to have a cat bum string post.