I (don't) Love The Smell Of PooBurning In The Morning

Saturday morning, hometown USA:

People stretching, someone up early, dishes making noise, cupboards slamming, rolling over, thinking no, I'm too tired stretching more, and then that smell, that irresistable smell, that oh, it's not healthy but DAMN that smells good I better get up or I won't get any, the smell of fat and plenty and harvest time wakes you up for real.

It's like the smell of hot buttered popcorn; bad for you, but irresistable.

Wafting up. Teasing you out of bed. Seducing you away from your partner, the Healthy Diet.

Bacon sizzling in the pan. Oh...My...Gosh.

Smell it. It's wonderful. Fat and intoxicating. Your butt can grow just breathing it in, it's so rich.

Zach, waking up for work, half-asleep, dreaming of home, breathing in deep, deeper, smelling that rich fragrance of his dreams.

Oh, wait.

That's not bacon.

What the hell is THAT???!!!

That's AWFUL!

Cue the sound track banjos screeching to a halt, lights up, eyes startling open. What the hell IS that???"

That, dear soldier, is the smell of last night's spaghetti dinner, processed hour by hour through the digestive tract, garlic bread and salad and the brownie and intestinal gas pooped out into the portable toilets,

...being burned.

Oh,yeah it is.

Times several thousand soldiers.

Every....single....day.

Can you imagine how that must smell?

Zach told me that one of the things he fantasizes about having when he gets back home is a clean, shining white porcelain seat with a lovely nickle-plated flush handle. The sound of water, swishing through pipes. A vent fan.

Not the rows of portable toilets lined up, baking in the sweltering desert sun, which he swears get emptied and cleaned once every week...or so...whether they need it or not.

Oh, my gosh, I almost cried right then and there. Of all the dangers and rigors of deployment, if I was the one out there, that's the one that would be hardest for me.

I can face many, many things, but the prospect of several trips a day to that thing would probably cause me to lay face down in the desert sand and I don't know, just give up.

Germaphobes, quit shaking in your boots and stand tall. We can face this enemy. We would have to. All of our soldiers on deployment over there have to. Every day.

So this year, when I am inclined to bitch and moan and complain about some little thing or other, some little problem of life or person or whatever, I think of what it would be like to live, eat, sleep, work, and try to relax to the constant, daily, everpresent smell of burning shit.

Remembering that I do not have anything, anything, ANYTHING in my life as bad as Shit On Fire, I shut up and just git 'er done.

Feel better now? Life not as bad as you thought? I hoped this might help!

Thanks for checking in,
Katie