clearly I'm raising boys

"Oooh, oooh! Let's find really disgusting things and put them in the bucket!"

My boys and two families of neighbor boys were playing in my muddy backyard when one of the kids picked up a shovel and started to dig-- effectively (unlike my own two) a hole in the middle of what we wish was grass. I sent him over to the compost pile for his digging. Pretty soon they were all over there. Finding "treasures". These now fill two buckets and a frisbee: rotten potatoes (it took me three days to find the source of that smell in my pantry), old gourds, coffee filters, and clementine and grapefruit peels. Whoo hoo! This is seriously fun stuff apparently.

I really wasn't a girly-girl, but I would never have done this. I remember swinging-- or, rather, spinning on a swing. I remember putting leaf and stick boats in our creek to race them. Nothing particularly muddy or excitingly disgusting. The closest I can come is my paper making stage. We'd sit on my dad's woodpile and use a rock to grind up leaves into pulp. After we mixed it with a sufficient amount of spit we'd pat it out to dry. The plan was to come back later to collect our homemade paper, although I don't remember ever doing that part.

My boys lugged their "treasures" up the ivy covered hill to put in their stick-fort (teepee-ish pile of brush and wood). I suggested that they rebury the items so we won't attract rats. "Oooh rats! How cool! If you find some can I keep them?"