The Bucket

I was an adventurous young mother. I had always loved family camping as a kid and decided to join my two aunts and cousin on an all girls camping weekend with the company of my three angels. Although the campground was less than two hours away, summer road construction sent me on an hour long detour, putting our in-car travel time at 3.25 hours. The girls were hungry and tired, and I was quickly losing patience with the Disney sing-a-long CD they'd chosen to listen to over an hour ago. By the time we snaked our way to the BFE of the campground, I realized we were no where near a bathroom and little B was doing the dance of a lifetime. My quick-thinking aunt handed me an ice cream pail that they'd been given by the office (just in case nature called in the middle of the night). I grabbed the bucket and a tissue and handed it to O asking her to please take her sister behind the shrubs to tinkle while I unloaded the camping gear. She grudgingly obliged. A short while later, she returned with the bucket in tow asking me, "What now?" With my hands full and desperate to get the massive tent up before dark, I gritted my teeth and growled, "Just dump it out, please." She did. She returned again to explain that she couldn't "get it all out". The hair on the back of my neck stood tall. "Get WHAT out?" I asked. "The poop," she stated matter-of-factly. "WHAT?!!" I shouted. "Where did you dump it?" She pointed to the in-ground fire pit, of course. I was boiling over...and my lovely aunts, who seemed to find this ever so amusing, howled with laughter...until they realized that this was the same fire pit we would soon be cooking dinner over. I ran over to the fire pit to assess the damage. Yes, indeed, there were "logs on the fire". Using a small, and I mean VERY small, forked stick, I managed to roll the poo up the side of the pit and back into the bucket. Then I built a fire in the pit to sterilize and burn off any excess. With my aunts still in tears with laughter, I proceeded to walk away from the camp deep into the woods to bury the contents of the bucket. Still grumbling when I returned to camp, I looked directly into the wide eyes of my little gremlin who simply said, "Mom, M said she has to go potty."