In this case, “ping” is short for pee-ing. Outside. Something I have done my whole life, mostly but not always with aplomb. Embiggen to see what’s on the mug.

First off, I have also had access to indoor plumbing my whole life, just not in the summers of my childhood and early adulthood. I have blahgged about this before (a few times or more🐽) but I spent my very early childhood summers at the Old Cabin. The moomincabin aka the “other cabin” (I *love* my very young emerging talker first cousin twice removed’s name for the moomin) was not yet built. There was cold water in the kitchen sink via a garden hose and an outhouse.

It’s hard to describe this but there was a heavy wooden door between the kitchen and living room and when it was wide open, which it was most of the time, it hid a lot of things behind it. Clothing hanging on the back of the door and little kids pee-ing in a potty in there. The summer I was three and my brother was about to be born, The Commander was trying very hard to get me to go to the outhouse instead of using the potty. But moom, the outhouse is stinky.

Once she tried to shame me with “there are MEN in the living room so you can’t use the potty.” I looked around the room. There was my dad and my Dear Uncle Harry and my uncle Dcuk… And Lewie… My dad and uncles, “man’s men” that they were, were well accustomed to the potty (as long as they didn’t have to empty it) but Lewie was a bachelor friend of theirs and I’m sure Lewie was who The Comm was referring to when she said “MEN” are there…

Anyway, I can use outhouses and I can pee outdoors without a problem. Woods pee is almost always easy. Urban pee is a bit more difficult because you can be arrested for indecent exposure. But I have done it, usually in the the small woodsy parks that dot The Planet Ann Arbor and always looking carefully in every direction for interlopers and voyeurs. And sometimes, even if you are an experienced female outdoor pee-er, dribbling happens. TMI?

My uber-smart daughter (they are both smart but this is the older one) gifted me with a pee cloth. If I have it right (and I may not), it absorbs “liquid” in such a way that if you can’t hide in a copse to woods-pee, you can just, um, go in the pee cloth. I haven’t used it yet but I will.

Update: The pee cloth is Kula Cloth and you don’t pee *into* it!

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