Phases

..."Sweep the floor, and sweep it again tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that and everyday of your life; --if not that floor, why then --some other floor"...

Those are the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay, written when she was nineteen years old. I guess she didn't like sweeping floors. Her biographer said that "few young women have ever put it more clearly --or fiercely--" how much she hated housework. I suppose she was indicating that this was an early sign of her promise as a poetess. Yah, I can see that. It takes a real GENIUS to express how much SWEEPING THE FLOOR SUCKS.

Oh, ignore me, you know I'm just jealous. When I read about all of this in her biography I knew that she would go on to write the funky My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night poem and never sweep another damn floor in her life. Inspired, I tried my own hand at writing a little floor-sweeping emancipation ditty, but it lacked the passion, the fervor, the nymphomaniac, drug-addicted, father-abandoned-me-in-my-youth sort of stimulus needed to dash off a real zinger and free me from my bondage to the broom. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to get away from the lines:

Old Fangs explodes at both ends
I'm covered in her shite..

And why was this? Why did I have to be so crude? Because last Tuesday, at approximately 3:17 pm, we here at the House of Whippersnapper entered that much anticipated "Anal Phase" of High Intensity's (so far!) really fun and charming journey towards mature adulthood. And I say "we" because while it may be only old H.I. who is technically going through it, all members of this household are suffering, my friend. All of us.

Although there had been little hints here and there that we were getting close to this much heralded developmental phase, we most definitely reached the point of no return on Tuesday when she presented me with the following picture and gleefully shouted what it (so obviously) was:
Despite the frequent updates I make on this blog regarding the condition of my bowels and the crude bean dinner references I write about with embarrassing regularity, I'm not really an outhouse humour sort of gal. Thus, when I saw this picture, my eyes widened until they were the size of large, overripe melon balls. My mouth gaped open and I could not muster the force needed to keep my dumbfounded tongue from limply hanging out of it. And my larynx, jolted awake by the emergency signal from my much horrified brain, let out an unhappy sort of noise reminiscent of a cow in labour. Perhaps I was overreacting but... those turds. They were so gross. And why... why did there have to be... so many?

In short, the picture kind of shocked me.

Now, High Intensity is not the sort of lass who spends a great deal of time considering the feelings of others. Dare I say, she often takes an unhealthy and discomforting amount of delight in working me up into a neurotic, fire-spitting frenzy pissing me off a little. But this situation was different. I wasn't angry. I was only... speechless. And I guess this kind of freaked her out a bit, because old momburger, despite everything, is never really ever at a loss for words. Quickly, she flipped the picture 180 degrees. "It's not a bum, mom!" she shouted anxiously, "Actually, it's mountains! With snow falling on them!"
Oh how beautiful. Snow falling on mountains. Old Georgia High Intensity O'Keefe. Perhaps an early sign of her promise as a great landscape artist?

Somehow, I think not.