Swimmin Lessons

The three hellions are doing very well in swim lessons. Lolo just completed the Ray class and is moving to Starfish. She swam the entire length of the pool today without a life jacket or any help. Adrienne is being moved to Eel. She just loves the water and is pretty much a natural at it. Atticus will remain in Pike. He isn't as crazy about the water and really doesn't like getting his face wet. But he still will stay in the pool all day long.

Business is Bad and the Economy Sucks

I am very concerned about my business. Our sales are off over 65% on our core items. Right now all of our profits are coming from one type of product being sold to one customer for one specific application in one industry. We are more vulnerable now that we have ever been- even when we were losing a million dollars a year on 12 million in sales.

I've got a marketing plan that I am implementing that should help with sales. So I am doing what I know to do but I really, really need the economy to come back!

It Runs in the Family

Last weekend the whole five of us in the family went to Pennsylvania for a family reunion. My father's mother's side of the family that is. Although my paternal grandmother is long gone three of her sisters are still alive. My father is almost eighty and he grew up with his aunts as they are about seven to ten years older than him. They always called him Sonny. My mother loves to mock him (in a very mean way) and call him Sonny as in "Sonny boy always gets what he wants. Everyone take care of Sonny Boy." She is a very mean spirit to my father.

But I digress. We went to one of my father's aunt's son's house in York, Pennsylvania. He is the owner of a grocery store so he always has lots and lots of food at the reunions which we have about every five years. I don't know a lot of the people at these things but it is always good to get away and the guy who hosts it has a pool and he kids love that.

One of my relatives brought her award winning show dogs who were two very lovely, lively and friendly boxers. My tree offspring stayed in the pool almost the entire day swimming and splashing about. Adrienne and her twin brother just turned three in May and Lolo is five. They are swimming very well for their age. The twins have had a good amount of success with potty training and they almost have it down.

Adrienne hadn't gone poopie in several days so we knew it was just a matter of time before she asked for someone to take her to the potty to poopie. I was relaxing by the pool drinking a beer (imagine that) and Adrienne climbs up out of the water on the ladder saying she needs to go poopie. I look at her and as she turns around I notice that she has three but cheeks poking out of her bathing suit. Now normally she doesn't have three but cheeks but it just so happened that she had placed a very nice sized turd in her bathing suit to make the nice third hump.

Unfortunately the nearest bathroom was a walk out of the pool area, down the hill, through the crowd and into the crowded house. I looked around and saw only my immediate family so I removed her bathing suit bottom and shook out the turd over the fence in the bushes. Unfortunately the turd was still visible from inside the pool area but no one was going to bother to move it.

So without ever leaving the pool area, we wiped the little ass clean and put on a new bathing suit so the swimming could resume. After about ten minutes I hear the same announcement as Adrienne is getting out of the pool. I look up to see a repeat of the bulging bathing suit bottom except the bulge was much larger. This time I picked up the crapping three year old and held her out away from my body as far as possible and walked directly to the truck. I laid her down in the back and removed her steaming full bathing suit bottom. I chucked the fecal matter into the nearest low bushes away from everyone's sight and cleaned up the tot once again.

So several of my immediate family had seen the first turd tossing over the fence of the pool into the bushes. While I was away cleaning up the second brown offence many of the relatives were still at the pool. They spied the two boxer show dogs running around the perimeter of the pool fence. One of the dogs got really lucky and found that wonderful turd that my daughter had just recently deposited into her bathing suit but was now resting peacefully beneath the bushes on a nice soft bed of pine needles. Being a show dog of course the boxer did exactly what any other normal show dog would do and immediately gulped down the turd in about five or six bites with a good amount of chewing just to make sure the full effect was realized. The dog then went about it's business as if it had not just devoured a marvelous dish of toddler turd.

So my brother who had witnessed the entire unfolding of all events was hanging outside the house a few minutes later talking with the owner of the show dogs. He certainly didn't mention anything about the shit eating incident because he is just too damn polite. While they were talking the two boxers joyfully bounded up to their owner craving attention like boxers do. The owner of course loves her dogs so she gave them the attention they wanted by letting them lick her fact. She commented as they were licking her "My, my, what have you gotten in to?" My brother did a pretty good job of holding it all together so the owner never really realized that she had my daughter's shit all over her face.

Who ever said that potty training can't be entertaining?