I woke up the other day to a raging pain in my ass. Literally. I didn’t notice it at first because I rolled out of bed much like a beached whale would and stumbled to the kitchen to pour myself my morning cup of coffee.

*Praise be for well trained children who know to grind mommy’s beans and brew the coffee before the sun rises in the morning.*

It wasn’t until I sat down on the couch to settle in with the laptop that I noticed the pain. It wasn’t a sharp pain, but more of a nagging pain located below my left arse cheek. Muttering, I grabbed the sore spot to see if I sat on a pin or a shard of glass because it felt much like my soft comfy couch had morphed into a bed of nails.

There was nothing beneath me to explain the persistent pain yet there it was, a pain in my ass.

Now I’m used to suffering through pain in my bottom side. It’s not a unknown condition when one is married or raising children. My life is filled with the usual pains in the backside, yet they tend to be more figurative than literal as this pain happened to be. And since the pain was located just beneath my ass cheek and not in between them, I could safely rule out hemorrhoids.

What??? It’s a fact of child birth gentle readers. Not only is one’s cooter shredded by the angry clawing of rabid babies furiously ripping your pink parts open in their bid to escape the confines of utero and emerge squalling into life, but one’s back side tends to bear the brunt of pushing those badgers out with the gift of grape-like globes hanging in between the cheeks. Deal with it.

*Oh hello dear family members who do not want to know about my private parts. Did I forget to mention this post might contain a bit too much information that you will likely want to suppress only to have the visual of my words spring to the forefront of your mind the next time I ask you to pass the butter at a family function? My bad.*

After shifting into various positions while sitting on the couch to see if I could alleviate the pain, I finally got up and went to the bathroom to investigate the source of this annoying problem. No one likes a mysterious pain in the ass after all.

Picture me stark naked standing before the bathroom mirror, craning my neck over my shoulder to see my ass. That’s how I spent a good ten minutes of my morning that day. Since I’m not an owl capable of turning my head backwards, and I hadn’t been possessed by a demon who vomits pea-like substance while screaming to have sex with Jesus himself I wasn’t having much success in viewing the source of my aggravation.

I tried bending over with a mirror but quickly stood up straight when I caught a flash of bush that was in dire need of a weed whacking. No wonder my husband insisted I buy new razors when we went grocery shopping. At least that mystery was solved. Harumph.

Since my contortion session left me with more visual scars than answers, I did what any woman would do.

I whined to my husband.

“Boo, there is something wrong with me. Every time I sit down it feels like I’m getting stabbed in the ass by an angry elf!” I whined.

Boo, who is used to my whining, just looked up from the newspaper he was reading and rolled his eyes. “Ya, so what do you want me to do about it?”

“I need you to look at my butt. I tried to see what was going on but I must have forgot to take my Gumby pill last night and I can’t seem to bend at the right angle to see what’s going on.”

“You got scared off by looking at your leg hair didn’t you?” he chuckled.

“That and other forests. Shut up.” I grumbled.

Since Boo didn’t seem all that eager to investigate the source of my buttock’s pain, I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him to the bedroom.

“Feeling frisky are we darling?” Boo inquired with a big smirk on his face as I dropped my robe and bent myself over the bed to position myself in such a way he would have the best view of my ass.

“Haha. If frisky means having you look at my ass to fix it, then why yes darling, absolutely. Now look at my bum!” I ordered.

I admit, after 12 years of marriage, 14 years of cohabitation and three babies later, I have no pride when it comes to having my husband look at my body. He’s seen it at it’s best and at it’s worst and all the stages in between. This moment in time was marital romance at it’s finest.

“Sheesh Tanis, seriously, shave those damn legs! Your leg hair is longer than mine!” Boo complained.

“I promise, on everything that is holy and good, fix my ass and I’ll pluck every hair off my body before the day is out. Just LOOK!”

Boo sighed, as he is prone to do whenever I force him to do something distasteful and then bent over for closer inspection.

“Alright, I’m going in. If you gas me, I’m divorcing you,” he warned.

“Don’t be a wise ass,” I growled.

“You know Tanis, with you bent over like this-” he started.

“Don’t even THINK about it. FOCUS Boo, FOCUS,” I stopped him.

“Well, you can’t blame a guy for trying,” he said as he slapped my butt.

“OW! What was that for?”

“No reason. It’s just I have a large white bum in my face, it seemed appropriate.”

“By large I hope you mean tiny and cute.”

“Ya sure. That’s exactly what I meant,” he sniggered.

A moment when by and then all of a sudden it felt like my left butt cheek exploded. “OUCH!” I yelped.

“Well, I see the source of your discomfort.”

I waited for a second for him to continue but he at this point he was easily distracted and lost his train of thought.

“What? What is it? Please don’t say I have a boil on my ass. Because I always tell the kids they are boils on my butt and it would not be funny if that actually came true,” I fretted while looking over my shoulder at Boo.

He laughed and said no. “It’s not a boil. It’s just a really nasty ingrown hair that looks kinda bruised.”

“Oh! Well you need to fix it before it gets infected anymore. Because if I have to go to the emergency room only to find out they have to perform an emergency ass amputation, you are never having sex with me again.”

“Trust me honey, if that happened, I don’t think I’d want to have sex with you again.”

It was at this point I grabbed a pillow, stood up and started beating my husband with it.

“All right, all right,” he laughingly surrendered, “hang on, I’ll get the first aid kit.” A few moments later, Boo returned and waggled his eyebrows at me. “Okay darling, assume the position.”

“This better not hurt Boo.”

“Don’t be a baby,” he mumbled as he ripped open packages and set to work.  As I lay there with my face buried in my comforter I thought of how ridiculous my life had become. There was a time in my life that if I had found myself in that position, naked with a man behind me, the only package that was going to be ripped open was that of a contraceptive. Surely this was a sign from up above that I had firmly entered middle age.

*Never before have I written a paragraph and been so thoroughly glad my children’s school blocks my web site and thankful that my parents refuse to read my website. Ahem.*

It only took moments before I was thoroughly squirming and yelping like a dog being kicked. “Ow! OW! DAMMIT BOO that HURTS!!” I cried as I arched up to try and stop the agony.

Boo firmly shoved my face back down in the quilt (something I’m sure he took great pleasure in all though he subsequently insists he didn’t) and told me to hold still. “I’m almost finished, you big baby.”

“IT FEELS LIKE YOU ARE STABBING ME IN THE ASS!” I squawked at him.

“That’s kinda what I’m doing, what with the big needle I’ve got in my hand.”

“YOU BASTARD.”

“Oh don’t be a baby. Hang on,” he muttered, “ah, there. Got it.” With that he wiped a cold antiseptic swab across what was surely my now bleeding ass cheek and then gently patted my behind. “All done Princess Boil Butt.”

Standing up, I rubbed my arse and mumbled a really lame thank you.

“Oh no problem love. The things I do for you,” he laughed as he put the first aid kit away.

“Like you didn’t enjoy taking a piece of my hide out. I’m sure you poked a little harder than needed a time or two,” I ungraciously accused him while gingerly putting on my clothes.

“I’ll never say,” he smirked.

“Bastard.”

“Boil Butt.”

Boo laughed as I tossed a pillow at his head and ducked before it made contact.

“You do realize I’m going to honestly be able to introduce you as my wife, the woman who once had a stick up her butt don’t you?” he laughed.

“IN my butt cheek, thanks to you using me as a human pin cushion!” I huffily clarified.

“You say tomatoe, I say tomatah,” he grinned.

So it seemed I had gotten rid of one pain in my arse only to grow a whole new one.

Welcome to married life.