S***ting Bricks.

I present to you, completely unaltered, the email I sent to my son's sixth grade teacher this morning concerning their social studies assignment to make an adobe-style brick at home. Being a mom is so glamorous.

Dear Sara, 

 I have a question about poop. (You read that right.) 

 James made his bricks as soon as he got back from his dad's on Thursday. He made three different bricks so he could choose the best one. One was too crumbly, one was way too mushy, and the third one, made of soil from the side of the house and oatmeal, looked like the best bet. 

 When it looked like rain on Sunday, he moved it inside to the garage to finish drying, and later that day as we walked back into the garage, we discovered it had dried enough to smell sort of like . . . poop. 

 Now this is upsetting for a few reasons, mainly because I got a bunch of it on my hands when it was still wet and didn't smell like poop. GROSS! Secondly, we don't have pets. But Kenny says it smells like cats might have been welcoming themselves to our side yard at some point in the past. ALSO GROSS. Did I mention I touched it with my bare hands? SO GROSS. 

 Then, of course, there's the whole issue that I can't send him to school with a poop brick and by last night, when the odor chased Kenny out of his workshop, it became obvious that that's what we were dealing with. 

 So here's the deal. Bless his heart, James now has three bricks, none of which are fantastic, and truly through no fault of his own, not enough to time to try a fourth. Now granted, a lot of original adobe was made with manure but James definitely wasn't intending to be quite so authentic. Does he bring in one of the inferior bricks? The damp one will never dry in time, even baked, and the other one is so crumbly I'd be shocked if it made it to school as anything more than dry clumps of dirt. Or does he bring in the stinky brick but in a plastic bag or something? 

 This is officially the weirdest letter I have ever written as a parent. 

 Thanks!

 ~Melanie

Note: Her response was, "Sorry about your fecal fiasco."