One day last week I pulled in the driveway and immediately noticed that something about the front of my house was different. There was something on the garden rocks, something splashed on the bushes and all over the dirt.
Something beige and lumpy.
Something that looked an awful lot like vomit.
I sat in the van and looked at it for a minute, told Oliver I’d be right back, got out and walked to the edge of the driveway. I peered at the garden. I couldn’t believe it. There was fucking vomit in my garden.
VOMIT.
In my garden!
Who – or what – would walk up my front lawn to my garden and puke on it? On the rocks? On the fucking BUSHES? I didn’t even want to know.
Now, I’m a puker, so I’ve dealt with vomit a lot over the years, and since I’ve become a mother my dealings with vomit have increased threefold. In short: I know puke when I see it. But the more I looked at the mysterious crap on my garden, the more I realized there was no way it was yack. It was all one colour and it looked powdery, so I did what anyone else would do if a modest amount of a lumpy, beige substance that closely resembled vomit was coating a portion of their garden: I stuck my finger in it.
And I knew exactly what it was.
It was grout, not regurgitation on my lawn. Seems my husband, who, at the beginning of March, finally put up the back splash in the kitchen I’d been pining for, had dumped the bucket of water he used to wash the walls with after grouting out the front door and onto the pile of snow covering our garden. Apparently there was some residual grout at the bottom of the bucket that, once the snow melted, looked like a big pile of puke in our garden.
Dave’s aunt and uncle came over for dinner last night and when they left, we stood out front together and waved as they pulled away. As we turned to go back inside, I glanced at the garden.
“Babe, look,” I said, pointing to the puke-like grout.
He leaned over the garden. “What the fuck is that?”
I put my hands on my hips. “It’s GROUT. From the water you dumped on the snow when you did the back splash. Looks like puke, eh?”
“It totally does,” he grinned. Clearly, he thought that was AWESOME.
“You’ve got to clean that up,” I said, pulling open the screen door. “It looks like we live in a fucking frat house, for chrissake.”
He laughed. “Okay. I’ll clean it up tonight when I take the garbage out.”
“No. Clean it up tomorrow when you get home from work, okay?”
He gave me a funny look. “Why?”
I smiled. “I want to take pictures of it tomorrow. So I can blog about it.”
(Like, DUH.)
49 Comments, Comment or Ping
I see two up sides here. The first is that the back splash is finished. The second is that the snow is gone!
April 7th, 2008
Bloody husbands. I love the colour of your kitchen cabinets, though.
April 7th, 2008
I’m not a puker. The only times I puke are a.) when I’m pregnant
and b.) my college years.
Therefore, I associate LSU=yack.
April 7th, 2008
Oh my God I would have totally shit myself thinking someone puked in my yard
April 7th, 2008
You stuck your finger in something that MIGHT (even the slightest chance) be vomit? BRAVE woman!
And, yeah, it’s all about the blog! ;)
April 7th, 2008
i love how blogs insert themselves into our very lives.
April 7th, 2008
We have drips of ceramic tile leading up the side door into the kitchen since Graham just finished working on tiling our kitchen floor. LOVELY. Looks like someone sliced their hand open and ran inside.
April 7th, 2008
Hehe :) Thank goodness it wasn’t puke. I really like your kitchen.
April 7th, 2008
I thought that looked like the backyard I grew up in. ;)
April 7th, 2008
Like, DUH. :) Hee hee.
April 7th, 2008
My 9-year-old has, for some strange reason, become obsessed with pointing out vomit in public places (lot of it in the Santa Monica homeless areas, by the way.)
You’re brave – I would have called 911 and had a sample done at a lab before I stuck my finger in it.
April 7th, 2008
What a silly question. And wow, even if I tried to shove stuff aside… there isn’t enough room in my kitchen to have cleared counters!
April 7th, 2008
Oh I loooooove your cabinets. Blue! They are BLUE! Sooooo pretty. Oh and the tile rocks too. Good man for finishing it up, bad boy for dumping it on the front lawn.
a.
April 7th, 2008
Ah… the joys the spring thaw brings… long-lost issues of the local paper that you already called the delivery service and chewed out the paperboy for, two cm of dirt that ends up at the end of your lawn, semi-decayed garbage and/or recycling…
April 7th, 2008
Your kitchen looks awesome. :)
…and you are such a fourteen year old boy inside. *snort* sicko.
:)
April 7th, 2008
Awesome kitchen.
gross grout.
April 7th, 2008
Like, TOTAL duh!
April 7th, 2008
it’s been a while since I laughed out loud at a post. I snicker lots but this was a full out laugh. I pictured you and hubby out front and I could *hear* him say WTF. OMG!
PS. oh yes, photo before cleanup. always. Oh, except when the photo is of the kitchen or any other household place that needs to look clean at all times ;)
April 7th, 2008
You know what I love? I love that ever since the blog was invented we see what we assume to be vomit in our yards and we immediately run for the camera.
Glad it wasn’t puke, Luke.
April 7th, 2008
dave rules. there is no question. and the backsplash is totally bitchin’. be sure to tell dave i said he’s a legend.
April 7th, 2008
Dude.
Yer a potty mouth.
Fuuuck.
That made me really happy. :}
April 7th, 2008
Love the colour of your cabinets. My counter is waaay too small for me to shove anything aside. So glad it wasn’t vomit.
April 7th, 2008
Wudas had 2 upsides –
I’ll add a 3rd – you got an Awesome blog topic to match your Awesome kitchen!
April 7th, 2008
HA HA H AHA HA HA HA.
And that, my friends, is why I LOVE MAMA TULIP.
ps: wanna come help curt & i redo our house?!
;)
April 8th, 2008
I LOVE your cabinets!!!
Just had to say that… :)
April 8th, 2008
I love that you wanted to wait until you took a picture. This blogging thing makes us do funny things sometimes, doesn’t it?
Your kitchen is beautiful!
April 8th, 2008
You stuck your finger in it?! Ew! That’s pretty hard core.
I would have sent the dog out. If he tried to eat it, I’d KNOW it was puke.
P.S. I’m totally jealous of that backsplash. Where can I get a handy man like yours? ;)
April 8th, 2008
I love that your first instinct was puke.
And your back splash looks sweet! Good job, and actually, every time I’ve been there your counters ARE that clean!
April 8th, 2008
lol, who knew grout would last that long, instead of getting swept out into the sewers?
Love the backsplash — it’s beautiful!
April 8th, 2008
Of course you would ask him to do it one day later, so that you could take pics for your blog. Duh.
So… how do you motivate the husband to complete home projects? I find THAT fascinating. :)
April 8th, 2008
all grossness aside, if your counter really that clean all the time? i don’t think i can read you anymore if that’s the case :)
April 8th, 2008
This totally cracked me up. I would make my husband wait till I could take blog pictures too! LMAO
April 8th, 2008
Hahahahahaha! Had to blog it first!
I love you!
yeah, that totally looks like barf, and Mike would so do the same thing…
Mind you, we have cigarette butts all over the place because apparently in the snow we don’t have to use the ashtray or the coffee can or the garbage.
Sigh.
April 8th, 2008
I NEVER would have stuck my finger in it. I would have made the husband do it, for sure. You are braver than I.
I LOVE your kitchen. The blue cabinets are gorgeous and so is the back splash!
April 8th, 2008
Sounds like something Mr Earth would do. Although he would never do the backsplash himself. Looks fab!
April 8th, 2008
How sad am I that I wish someone WOULD puke in my garden so I could blog about it…?
April 8th, 2008
I LOOOVE that you stuck your finger in it. That’s got to be a personality quiz right theya! Fingerstickers and Nonfingerstickers. I probably would’ve been a Nonfingersticker, but a stick-my-nose-a-millimeter-from-it-and-smell-iter.
Just sayin’.
April 8th, 2008
Oh I know – the tolerance totally toughens up with parenthood. I’ve stuck my fingers in a few disgusting mystery substances (shudder) – glad yours wasn’t human produced.
I love your method of cleaning (the shove aside method rawks!).
April 8th, 2008
Spring has sprung! (And vomit is upon us!!)
April 8th, 2008
Which begs the question: Does grout resemble puke or does puke look like grout? Inquiring minds want to know.
April 8th, 2008
you are so damn weird.
I love you.
April 8th, 2008
I LOVE your kitchen. Or, at least, what I can see of it. The antique blue color of the cabinets is awesome.
April 8th, 2008
Beautiful kitchen!
I would not even have stuck my finger in it. To this day, I would still think it was puke.
April 9th, 2008
Your kitchen looks awesome. And I’m so glad you mentioned that you cleared everything off to the side, because man, I’d pay a million bucks for my kitchen to look that pristine!
April 9th, 2008
Niiiice kitchen, dude.
I love the cabinets and the grout job(s) are great!!
lol.
April 9th, 2008
Very nice.
I’m talking about the finger in the puke.
But the cabinets and backsplash are lovely as well.
April 9th, 2008
okay. That’s it. I am now and forever more totally in love with Dave.
Why you ask? Easy. 1) He laid the backsplash you wanted. 2) He agreed to clean up the mess RIGHT AWAY. 3) He waited so you could take pictures. 4) He didn’t sever your internet connection so you wouldn’t tell/show us this.
Totally. In. Love.
April 9th, 2008
so now that you’ve posted….can i clean it?
April 9th, 2008
LMAO
But seriously. Eww. (at least you got pictures of it ;)
April 14th, 2008
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