Bridget had another one of her butt issues yesterday. For twelve long hours she pranced about on her tip-toes, convinced she couldn’t poo. Bridget withholds, and her incidents of withholding are frustrating. Finally, at 1:17 AM (yes, AM), after listening to her say repeatedly, I give up (what almost 3-year-old says I give up anyway?), after having my nipples ravaged by incessant comfort-boobing, after being screamed at numerous times to stop talking, mommy!, after hours of my encouraging her in the dark that it’s okay to poo, she pooed!

Or, as Bridget said, Ahh, that’s much better! I poo-ed. (all of her action verbs have a pronounced -ed on the end: I swing-ed, I hiccup-ed, I run-ed, I laugh-ed, etc.)

None of the preceding story has anything to do with today’s post, other than the fact that she asked, while clenching her butt cheeks together, When are we going to Kannas? (Kansas)

As I was recounting the story to my husband, who sleeps in Bridget’s bed most nights because Bridget is sleeping with me most nights and quite the bed hog, I happened to mention that I wished my grandparents still had their horse tank.

Horse tank? What the heck does one do with a horse tank?

I look-ed at him with an expression that pretty much conveyed he was an idiot for even asking what the heck someone does with a horse tank.

You swim in it, of course. Duh!

I don’t know what it’s really called, but I imagine my grandparents inherited their horse tank from either of my great-grandparents’ farms. The horse tank was probably 8 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep. It sat on their back patio, and I spent hours swimming in it as a little girl. My grandmother would float on a raft in the horse tank while I pretended to be a shark or sting ray swimming underneath her (I was fascinated by sting rays at one point in my life).

In any event, they got rid of the horse tank some years ago. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s because the grandchildren who used it most, my oldest cousin, my sister, and me, are now all grown and married. There are no little kids left who find swimming in a horse tank to be a novel experience.

Still, I would have loved to have seen my kids enjoying it and then sitting on their towels in the warm Kansas breeze, eating a bowl of grandma’s homemade ice cream.