Dirty Jobs

This is Mike Rowe. He is creator and executive producer of the very intriguing Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs.

This is Lisa Littlewood. Creator and executive producer of two very small children who have created a life that seems quite fit for the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs.

On this show, Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe sets out to experience first-hand some of the dirtiest jobs a person could imagine. He has ventured into garbage collecting, coal mining, maggot farming, concrete work, sewage cleaning and all sorts of other jobs that make you go "ewwwww."

I think Mike Rowe should stop by my house for a day. It's dirty business over here. It's a sh*! show as my husband likes to say sometimes.

The act of parenting is a job that requires a lot of small dirty jobs throughout the course of any given day. I wipe noses. I clean spills. I wipe toddlers who have smeared split pea baby food ALL over their arms and face and hands like it was some sort of luxury lotion. I found a crusty booger on the wall in my hallway yesterday and have found crusty cheese sticks under my daughter's bed. My car, at any given time looks as if a raccoon may have rifled through our garbage and then somehow opened the car door and distributed the dirty remnants inside.

Today, while we were all contentedly eating lunch at Panera I overheard Ella say "all gone, all gone" in reference to her yogurt tube.

"All gone? How could it be all gone? She just started it?" I thought.

I look over...she was squeezing the unopened end of her yogurt into her mouth thus spilling the actual yogurt ALL over her shirt and high-chair out of the opened end which was facing the ground.

I won't lie, I was tired by the time I got home from lunch. Scott had not been with us because he was practicing music for a church related event, but his 13 year old sister Caitlyn (Auntie KK to the girls) was helping out. Despite Caitlyn's wonderful helping hand, taking care of the girls feels a little like managing monkey's sometimes. They are non-stop and messy.

It was naptime when we walked in the door. "Hallelujah" I thought.

I took Ella upstairs to settle her down for her nap and left Ava in the bathroom because she said she needed to poop-- something she has been doing independently long enough for me not to need to worry about her.

Or so I thought.

Five minutes later I come downstairs and hear "Mommy, don't come in the bathroom I'm rinsing something."

Oh dear. This cannot be good.

I open the door and lo and behold, Ava is propped up on a stool rinsing the plastic inner bowl that belongs to the small training potty which has been sitting in the bathroom to get Ella used to it.

She had pooped, BIG POOPS, on the training potty and was rinsing it out, toilet paper and all in our bathroom sink!!!

Mike Rowe, I could use some help. I really do not want to clean this up!

My eyes got big, I demanded in a very large and irritated voice that she put the potty bowl down, march upstairs and to NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER do that AGAIN!!!!!

And then I stood there, gagging, as I cleaned poop and toilet paper out of my sink with paper towels.

Which is why I fled the house with my laptop as soon as Scott returned home and am now sitting at Starbucks drinking a latte and evesdropping on the ridiculous conversation of the three young twenty-somethings next to me who are talking about how they stayed up until 3 a.m. last night and got up very early (at 8 a.m.) this morning and are now talking about floral patterns and some sort of boutique store design.

It's also why they look all young and trendy and I look, well, tired...Seriously, mothers don't "let them selves go" because they don't care. They appear to have "let themselves go" because they are in the trenches! I mean, you wouldn't expect a sanitation worker, or a restaurant dish washer, or a custodian to show up right after a day of work, or while out running errands during the day, all freshly polished and clean soap-scented in their nicest tailored pants and button down shirts, would you?

Consider me a sanitation worker and judge the ensemble and tired eyes and frazzled hair accordingly.

After all parenting is the dirtiest job out there.