Twin Girls - 01 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Always worried that my photographic exploits will one day lead to me becoming the Lyme Disease King of Ontario, my mother skipped the usual Father's Day gift of lottery tickets and car-wash coupons and instead picked me up a 3-pack of John-Cena-strength U.S. bug repellent. I was so eager to give myself cancer and see how tick-proof it made me that I went out after supper and hiked through a knee-high weed field to get to this wreck of a place on the outskirts of Niagara Falls. I went around the back and made a first-time discovery: piles of ancient, moldy, graying diapers layered underneath a picnic table at the back door. And yessiree, they were each like a little Kinder egg, all packed tight with a surprise inside, though they were so old the smell was long gone. There were about 40 of them!.... what the heck?
Twin Girls - 02 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
As soon as I went inside though, it all made sense. Anybody who has been around UER for a while may have heard that I had a 'unique' child-rearing experience myself, so I can certainly relate. My morning routine once included mixing up and refrigerating a
ridiculous amount of bottles of formula a day. I didn't even use the scoop included in the canister - I bought a weight scale and would just dump the entire contents into a milk pitcher until I had the right mass to fill my fridge with bottles! I wonder if the poor mom who lived here had to go it alone. Super-sparse furnishings and no evidence that the dad stuck around makes me think that she was probably a single mother struggling to raise her two girls all by herself. Hopefully she didn't lose this place because of not being able to pay bills. If she did, I hope the diaper-dump was a final 'fuck you' to the landlord.
Twin Girls - 03 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 04 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 05 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 06 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 07 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 08 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 09 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 10 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 11 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 12 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 13 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Twin Girls - 14 by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
PS - tick count: 0!
Carcinogen ppm in bloodstream: high!