Excavations

I am standing folding laundry and watching Last of the Mohicans (1992) the Michael Mann extravagana that manages to be better than the original source material. As Nathanial (Daniel Day Lewis) passionately tells Cora (Madeline Stowe) that he will find her no matter how long or far, I begin to sniffle anticipating the final scenes. For those of you who have never seen the movie or read Cooper's book; I stress Last of the Mohicans, and not last in line for an ice cream cone either.

A shreak of fear breaks my emotional movie wallow and a tearful Muralist races into the room. Her finger seems to have stuck up her nose. As she babbles somewhat incoherantly, I realize it is not her finger which is stuck up her nose but something else entirely. The finger it seems has pushed the object so far up her nose it can not dig the item out - hence the fear and panic. I dislodge the finger and pull her into a beam of sunshine. Tilting her head back, I look up. Nope, the light is not good enough to see.

The Dear Husband has a Mag-lite that doubles as a club for intruders and it was this gargantuan number which aided in locating and identifying the foriegn object. It was little and yellow. It was organic in nature. It was an old-maid, popcorn kernal and boy howdy it was a big one. I got a tissue, held it and commanded child to blow. It failed. It was lodged too tightly.

"What ever possessed you to stick something up your nose?" I questioned in exasperation as I scrounged for tweezers through the bathroom drawer.

The Muralist considered the question with considerable gravity. "Becaauuussseee," she replied, drawing the syllables as long as possible, "it was stuck in my feet."

For a moment I was utterly floored. I had no words. Putting aside the fact that I have no idea where the popcorn originated, who, who, WHO? puts something stuck in their feet up their nose? My delicate bloom.

"Why?" I asked bemusedly, tweezers cradled, temporarily forgotten, in my hand.

"It made sense when I did it." was her calm reply. The calmness evaporated when she saw the tweezers. After a brief struggle and then promise of an Oreo, we managed to extract the kernal with the Verbalist holding the light and armchair coaching the whole while.

Three year olds, an adventure everyday.