The seasons come and the seasons go and once again we are back around to my least favorite of them all, Mud season. Only this year it has been interesting with snow arriving in the middle of it, then a week or two without mud before it returns again.

We also have a pig this time around who’s sty is in a constant state of mud this spring up to her forelocks but she doesn’t seem to mind.

We are building a big duck/goose/hen house from scratch which is going to be 8 by 12 and we are doing it very near the current duck yard so the ground down there is squishy with duck droppings and mud.

Also ducks like to dig holes in the ground with their beaks to look for additional bugs and worms, so that can make for an interesting ground underfoot as well.

I do not have any toddlers this year. My youngest is 5 ½ and so far hasn’t been too into building mud puddles, thank the gods! This year they have been far happier to ride bikes and jump on the recently raised swing, which has been nice.

But we have had baby girl ducklings in your bathroom along with some meat birds and hens since the basement is still too cold to move baby birds down there. I can’t wait until the big house is built and they can all move down there. Unfortunately we have been getting so much rain lately that it is hard to get any building done when my hubby is home. The weekends have been a wash out.

At least with the mud the mosquitoes and black flies haven’t come out yet. However we have already seen ticks this year. Sigh.

I can see the glimmers of summer. We are in the second half of April and I can see the Girl Scout year winding down, and I am ready for it. I am ready to move into summer days and weekly forays to the beach and later daily visits to the lake. I am ready to be reading and knitting outside and to have the kids go outside more so I can actually remember what it is like to hear myself think.

April rains will become May flowers and then Maine will tease us with summer days and then cold spring ones again in June before deciding that maybe we can have 6 weeks of summer between July and the 1^st of September. A lot of things are still up in the air about this summer, and currently out of my control.

Except for my book launch which is coming on the longest (and shortest) day of the year June 21^st. Are you ready? I am still learning so much about book formatting and all the small pieces I still need to do, but my launch page should be ready in about a month. And it is all super exciting.

In the meantime you can join my launch mailing list HERE.

How is spring treating you? How are you feeling about mud season?

We have a phantom pooper at my house.

And I don’t mean those lovely little packages your toddler or sweet pet leaves for you. We have totally had those. One of our cats used to have to be crated at night because otherwise he would poop in front of the back door every night and I was pregnant so the hell with cleaning that up.

I don’t have any very small people left in my house. I have two cats who are well outside-and-only-use-the-litter-box-during-the-winter trained.

My youngest is 5 and has been completely potty trained for a couple of years now. My middles are mostly out of over night diapers except when they are sick.

So my hubby and I were not expecting phantom poop.

You know that poop that happened in the toilet and for some godforsaken reason was never flushed down?

That one. It ends up getting under the toilet paper if someone else comes along and uses the toilet and like never actually looks in the bowl.

And it just sits there, not smelling so nice, and just mellowing and waiting for a grown up to come along and just hit flush.

And I know from the size of the snakes that it is not an adult who is doing it. I mean we all forget things sometimes, or get interrupted because mom’s pooping on the toilet it must be time for an emergency. Like. Right. Now.

No I am not talking about those times. This has become a pattern, but we can’t figure out which of the kids is doing it.

I suspect it may in fact be more than one.

The 5 year old usually makes me wipe her butt so I think it’s pretty safe to say it’s not her.

I have caught the 10 year old having left the poop in the bowl and she is a bit space cadet-y lately thanks to those lovely hormones that decided to show up already.

My eldest has been known to be the skiddie monster of her undies. Which has the added bonus of no one else being willing to wear her undies, and in a household of four girls I suspect that’s just a way to mark her territory.

And my 7 year old, it might be her. She’s pretty go lucky happy so it’s possible. Or not, it’s really hard to tell.

It tends to just be one bathroom too, the downstairs one. Which is currently off limits as we have week old ducks in a box on the floor right now because it is too cold to keep them in the basement and well the cats might think at their current size they would be yummy snacks.

So it will be interesting to see if the phantom pooper shows up now that we are down to one bathroom for the next could of weeks until we can move the heat lamp over the ducks higher and move them all into the bathtub.

I mean I know it could be so much worse. At least the poop is in the toilet right? No smeared on the walls or just squatting in the corner. I am grateful that days like that are behind us.

Which does beg the question why this is even happening because at 12-5 you would think they would all be good in the bathroom department right?

Everyone seems to have gotten over the being scared of the flushing toilet sound.

Or have they?

Maybe that’s the problem….

It’s too noisy?

Do you have a phantom pooper in your house? I’d love to hear about it if you do so that I know I am not the only one!