When one lives in north Texas (or anywhere, really) it is impossible to predict the weather. Today may be a fabulously sunny and brisk winter day but tomorrow? Who the fuck knows! It's weather Russian roulette and everyone loses.

Since this winter has been unusually warm I have been trying to spend as much time outdoors as possible. I know that the dreary grayness of REAL winter is coming and I don't want to take the sunshine for granted.

We live in a subdivision that has many playgrounds and lucky for us the nicest and least spider-infested one is at the end of our block. I get on our coats and we walk past less than ten homes before we're at the park. It's nice. I feel lucky. Never in my dreams did I imagine that this is what I'd want when I grew up. The American Dream wasn't in the cards for me. I was going to be alone forever hopping from city to city, never curing my wanderlust and making sure that my mother was always right about one thing- I can't finish anything I start.

So I'm walking, holding my tiny daughter's blue nailpolished hand as I keep her from running into the street and she sees the playground. Forget keeping her next to me. She takes off for the stairs, climbs, goes down the slide, back to the stairs, and repeat. She's laughing and making sure that I am watching her. Another mom and toddler pair walk up and her kid, a little boy not much older than Avery, finds Avery and then run around each other for awhile. She picks up mulch and throws it into the air like confetti. He mimics her. I smile at his mother apologetically, sorry that my kid is a bad influence.

I start to get bored so I pull out my phone and send a few tweets and text messages. Just as I'm sending a text to my husband my kid walks up to me, shows me her hands, and says "Mommy, mess?" She had been playing with what looked like a clod of dirt and was showing it to the boy so now her hands were muddy.

Wait a fucking minute.

That isn't mud. I smell her hand. It's shit. I panic.

I check her diaper. Clean. Where the hell did she find poop? The mother of the little boy checks his diaper. Nope. Clean. She walks over to where the kids were playing to investigate and finds a huge pile of dog shit buried under a layer of mulch.

She hands me a baby wipe so that I could clean Avery's hands and we both decide to head to our respective homes. As we walked away I told her that I would email our HOA to complain about the dog shit and how fucking ridiculous it is and OMG PICK UP AFTER YOUR GODDAMN DOG.

The more I thought about it the more angry I got. What if Avery had eaten the poop? What if the dog had worms or some other funky diseases in its poop and she ingests it?

More importantly, WHAT IF SHE HAD EATEN THE POOP AND KISSED ME ON THE MOUTH?