It's a dirty job

Dean spent part of Labor Day watching the Dirty Jobs marathon, and now he wants to invite Mike Rowe to do his "dirty job."

I laughed at Dean, "Dirty Job? Not even."

Of course then I thought about what the poor man has done recently (besides the usual working and providing and fathering and husbanding and volunteering and riding for charity, etc.):

1. A rat died in Marna's backyard and Dean had to remove it. My mom handed him a plastic grocery bag thinking he would pick it up with his hand... I'm grimacing as I type so you would be correct in assuming that I was no help. As Dean described it: "It was still pretty fresh." (Please don't think my parents have rats. My mother would be appalled. Neighbors of my parents just moved into a vacant house and have been exterminating rats. Neil was quite thrilled to find one in Marna's yard. "Sweet!" Marna was less thrilled.)

2. We've been ignoring the fish tank. Of course when black stuff is oozing out of the filter and the kids' room is starting to smell worse than the usual dirty socks, you can't ignore it anymore. That was Dean's job too.

3. Dean took the kids for a bike ride which turned into a 6-mile ride (at least one mile of which was almost straight up hill) to my parents' house. At one point he was carrying his bike and the 5-year-old's bike while trying to cajole the aforementioned 5-year-old up a very steep hill (He would say MOUNTAIN.) and trying to keep the 9-year-old from being run over by traffic. Of course, the 9-year-old wanted to ride back home too.

4. He rescued a remote-control flying thing (It looks like a giant bug to me) that was covered in saliva from a neighbor's growling dog.

5. Do you have an idea how much poo two dogs can produce? Enough said.

6. Speaking of poo: Do you have any idea how much poo a 5-year-old can produce? And then how much toilet paper he uses when unsupervised? And what it does to the toilet? And what it does to the bathroom after the 5-year-old panics and keeps flushing?

And this was an easy week. No one had the flu. The dogs have run out of plums to eat in the backyard (THAT was not pretty). And nothing has crawled into our yard and died. Of course, there's always the weekend...