Yesterday I was doing poop patrol---kind of like an Easter egg hunt with rotten eggs---and I had some thoughts...
First of all, I am glad that search and scoop has always been one of my kids' chores and not mine. (although I do end up doing it now and then to help out) But I have 'been there done that'. I used to clean up after my pet poodle. Of course, poodles are more refined in most areas aren't they? We even had a nice name for my poodle's messes---doo drops. Well now we have two dogs and neither of them are poodles and neither of them are refined. I wish I could train them to pick up their own messes but I'm still working on getting them to stop barking at the tiniest of noises and terrifying small children so we have a long road ahead.
I also thought about how many people clean up my messes. Included could be the people who work in sewage treatment plants and people who pick up my garbage and haul it away. And there are many people who take care of things for me because of my lack of ability or time. People frequently get paid to clean up after me, but I should take a moment now and then to appreciate them. Perhaps one of the reasons we are so wasteful now is because in many cases we are spared the dirty task of cleaning up after ourselves. We have flushing toilets instead of outhouses and we have someone come to our house to collect our refuse. I'm thankful that's the way things work how about you?
There were also a few analogies that came to mind as I was filling a shovel. I am pretty sure we have mentioned to our kids several times the importance of keeping up with the poop. After the erratic weather we have been experiencing it had been a while since the last poop patrol so I spent quite some time turd tracking yesterday. (Sorry, I don't like the word 'turd' but I was going for more alliteration) It is so much better to persistently pick it up than let it pile up. The winter snows covered a multitude of sins but only for so long. When the snow melted the poop could no longer be ignored. I am a skilled procrastinator so to me these aspects of poopiness apply to putting off personal improvement. We need to stay on top of stinky habits. If we ignore them they won't go away they will just pile up.Picking up poop requires being constant and diligent. It is recognizing that something needs to be done and then doing it because the end result far outweighs the inconvenience.
I am not going to follow my dogs around but I am going to make sure we are more diligent in cleaning up after them and I am even going to try and make it easier for people to clean up after me in other ways. I love being able to walk and run freely on the lawn without fear of stepping in something nasty. When our grand kids come for an Easter Egg hunt they will only find good things. Poop that isn't picked up spoils the landscape, interferes with fun and frolicking, and looms on the horizon as an increasingly nasty chore. It needs to be dealt with or it is just...poopy!
What's the view from your window?
