Today The Ashers went to a children’s water paradise.  Wake-boarding, inflatable things to climb on and over, and fall into the water from great heights, ice-creams.  It was the Almost Anything Goes of the Sunshine Coast. It was fantastic.  It looked a little like this:

In fact it looked exactly like this

Clearly I didn’t choose this as a way to spend my (preferably) lazy Sunday, but sometimes as parents we don’t get to choose.  Not really.  We have to DO things.  And stuff.  Sometimes those things turn out to be fun, and sometimes they are a bit shit.  Today was fun and shit.

There we were, thunderbird-running along one of the pathways, and trying not to slip over, when I spotted it.  One lump and a bigger lump.  Brown.  Lumps that a women who has toilet trained two children would recognise immediately: toddler turd.

Quick as a flash, and before I even really knew what I was doing, I flicked that crap into the water with my toe.

Then: ewww.  Why did I do that? The water logs were now waterborne.  In the water we were swimming in.  And I’d kicked some turd that didn’t belong to anyone from my gene pool, into the pool.  Just: ewww.

And with that, Coco fell off the side and into the water. Again.

“Quick Coco, swim to the edge, quick, grab my hand, get back onto the raft, AND DON’T OPEN YOUR MOUTH!” I was screaming like a woman deranged, it was like that scene from Jaws 2 when Sean almost gets chewed by the shark. Except there was no shark. Just a toilet truffle.

Coco’s big blue eyes were like saucers as she grabbed my trembling, outstretched hand.  I started dragging her back up onto the slippery, slippery plastic inflatable…

Here we are, almost there, I had her half up, almost safe, then missed my footing, and slipped into the liquorice lake.

OHHHNOOOOTHEHORROR.

We swam through the mire, that I prefer to think of as little clumps of mud, mouths clamped shut, trying to breathe the tiniest bits of air, lest we inadvertently inhale poo particles.  I even tried to keep my ears shut.  (Can you keep your ears shut?)  We tried anyway, just in case tympanic membranes aren’t patent.

You’ll be happy to know we were eventually able to make it out of the cesspit, and so far, we aren’t showing any ill-effects other than my imaginary sore throat.  I’m thinking I will hit the tequila bottle pretty hard tonight, just to kill off the e.coli, mind.  And if I have enough lick, sip, sucks, I won’t know if I’m crook from the old el Toro, or the old el Turdo.

How about you, have you even swum in a dunny?

How was your Sunday, was it as fancy as mine?