The Tiniest Gift

The tiniest gift sat nestled on the seat of the vehicle between my husband and me on that Christmas morning. We rode in silence all that long way home to a house with no decorations – not even one. Our brand new Christmas tree was still in the box in the back of that old clunky suburban he used to have as it had been for an entire month. We had joyfully purchased the new tree for our first Christmas in our new house. Now the tree wasn’t even unpacked, no decorations were put up, no lights on the house, no parties or even getting to spend time with family, no Christmas meal would be cooked, no gifts would be exchanged, no stockings were hung by the chimney with care. In fact, it would be the first time I had sat foot in my own house since before Thanksgiving and I jolted with the realization that there would be no stores open on Christmas day should we need any necessities.

I rested my hand on that tiny little package, willing it not to shift with each bump and jerk of the vehicle as it was so very fragile and I desperately wanted to get it home safely. After all, it was the only gift we received that year, little as it was. I still viewed it as a gift even though it had cost us our entire savings and we still owed tens of thousands of dollars for it. It wasn’t at all what we expected or asked for but here it was on the seat between us on that long deserted road that quiet Christmas morning. This was not how we envisioned our life would be.

I reflected on how this Christmas was so very different from any other and what the true meaning of Christmas might be. It’s not the decorations or pretty lights, it’s not the shopping or baking, it’s not Santa or the tree, it’s not parties or even the gifts. It’s God’s love for us. ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ This is the true meaning of Christmas.

Our tiny gift that year? We named him Matthew. His name means Gift of God.

(I’ll tell you his story sometime. It’s a story of God’s promise, a real life miracle, and the power of prayer. The tiny preemie is a grown man now and, still to this day, doctors reading his medical history will pause and look up at me, continue reading the medical notes and then look me straight in the eye and they all very seriously say the exact same thing, “You realize he’s a miracle? Babies like this don’t live.”
I nod.
I know.
That tiny little gift was a Gift of God.)

“I’m LOW!”

Lip reading is much harder than you might think. I was taking pics at the Jazz Band performance at the fair when Katie Jane looked at me, pointed at herself and then pointed downward and mouthed “I’m LOW!”.  I repeated it back to her “You’re low?” She shook her head “yes” so I dropped the camera, dug out some money, and ran to buy her a coke. Then I had to slink over to the stage where she was sitting right front and center and, in front of everyone and their grandma’s dog, hurry to the middle of the stage, set the Dr. Pepper can on the floor, and slide it over by her feet. (Side note to all my Yankee friends: Yes, I know I said “coke” and then I said “Dr. Pepper” but here in the South, any soft drink or soda pop is referred to as a “coke”).

My daughter gave me a funny look that was not exactly a look of gratefulness and relief that I had just saved her life like you would expect her to look. Teenagers these days!

I slunk back over to my seat and tried to pick up my camera but the strap had gotten caught in the slat and I had to yank it several times to get it out before I could sit down. Yes, I realized that I had made quite the spectacle of myself but when you have a child with Type 1 Diabetes you have to be prepared to swoop in like a super-hero in case of any emergency like a low blood sugar even if they are up on stage in front of millions of people. (Okay, maybe I exaggerated about the millions of people thing but you get the idea).

 In the mean time, before Katie Jane could take a swig of her drink to treat her low, she had to stand up to play a solo. Oh, that poor, poor, brave girl!!!  What else could go wrong? I hope she doesn’t pass out before she finishes her solo! What horrible timing for that. And darn! I wish I had known she was going to be playing a solo. I would have liked to have taken a video. Between the trip to the concession stand, my interruption in the middle of the stage, and fighting with the camera strap I didn’t get sat back down in time to enjoy her solo – much less take any photos or video. Still kinda miffed about that!

When the concert was over she finally got to chug her drink to treat her low. She sheepishly said, “Thanks for the coke, mom, because I AM starting to feel a little low but that is NOT what I said”.

What? You said you were low!!

She laughed and shook her head.  “No, mom! I said ‘solo’! I was trying to tell you that I had a pretty big solo coming up in the next song.

Oh.
Totally missed that.

Be specific

So, I’m back in the classroom after all these years. Teaching 5th grade Deaf Ed. with a bit of Speech Therapy thrown in. It’s a learning curve for all of us which was proven today by one of my kiddos.

We received our set of textbooks a couple of days ago and one of my girls had been dying to take them home – the entire giant stack of them. There was no way I was letting her tote all those giant books home on the bus. Finally, becoming weary of her begging about the books, I told her she could take her Science book home and do some homework – a review of what we had learned in class that day. We had learned all about the Properties of Matter, we had seen a video about it, learned the vocabulary and signs for it, knew pretty much all there was to know about the subject as far as 5th grade is concerned. (Yes, I do know that plasma is included as a state of matter but let’s not go there).

So, I showed her the chapter in her Science book and told her to read it and do the three review questions at the end. I wrote all this down for her and put it as a bookmark so she would be sure to find the right page. I even gave her a piece of notebook paper, in case she didn’t have any at home, with the numbers 1. 2. & 3. spaced amply enough apart for her to answer the three questions at the end of the chapter. I really wanted her to be successful with this assignment so she would want to do her homework in the future.                                                                                                                                                                                    
She ran into the room today very excited. She couldn’t wait to tell me that she had done her homework.
Really? (I admit I was a bit surprised at this news).
Did you read the chapter?
YES!!!
Did you do the 3 questions?
YES!!!
Thank you for doing your homework. Good job!
She shook her head up & down with a huge smile on her face as she proudly handed me her paper. Which looked like this:

 

1. What are three states of matter?

 

 

2. Give two examples of a solid. Give two examples of a liquid. Give two examples of a gas.

 

 

3. What happens when water is heated to it’s boiling point?

 

 

I had to laugh. What did we learn from this homework assignment?
Be very specific.

A Recipe for Disaster

This is the story of a very determined young lady. For those of you who don’t know, one of my children has Type 1 (or Juvenile) Diabetes. It’s extremely difficult to manage and affects every aspect of her life. However, since the very first day of diagnosis that kid has been determined that, although she has diabetes, it doesn’t have her. This is just one of many tales of her amazing courage in the face of a vicious disease that threatens to take her life every single day.

She woke up with low blood sugar early on Friday morning the first week of school. When I say woke up early I mean EARLY! Still pitch outside and would be for a quite awhile. She had to be up, showered, and have 3 changes of clothes ready to go for the long day ahead. First, to cross country practice in the wee hours of the morning, then a long day of school and leading the pep rally for the first game of the season. Friday night football in Texas is a very big deal, y’all, and she was the Head Drum Major for the Marching Band. She was also low when I picked her up after school. It was not a good D day (D is shorthand for the big D – Diabetes) and not even being remotely close to over. She had to rush to shove some food in and change clothes for the big night ahead. Of course, she was amazing, as was the band. I regret to say that the same wasn’t so for the football team. I won’t tell you the score because it was, well – embarrassing. My mother sitting up in the stands caught the only football that was caught that night on our side. Perhaps the football team shouldn’t have waited to start two-a-days until after the band had already been practicing for a full three weeks in the hot Texas sun. I’m just sayin’…

Anyway, all the kids usually go to IHOP, the only place open late at night, to hang out after the game. Even though her twin brother was going with all their friends, she declined. She had had a long, hard day, was completely exhausted and needed to get up early in the morning again for the first Cross Country run. She was low at bedtime – also, not a good thing. I don’t know what happened but we all over-slept the next morning and we had exactly 5 minutes to get to dressed and get to Cross Country which was 20 minutes away. Yep, we were going to be late.

All the prior events contributed to a recipe for disaster but the rest of the morning topped it off. First, she woke up low. Again. Then, she had no time to eat a proper breakfast and not enough time to carb up and have the carbs kick in before running. She shoved a granola bar and some electrolyte beans in her mouth on the way to the course while getting her running shoes on. Since we arrived late she had no time to warm-up or stretch so she had to run with cold muscles. The Cross Country races have always been 2 miles long but we are in a new district this year and the distances changed. This morning’s run was a 3 mile course. Ordinarily, she starts practicing with the CC team several weeks before the start of school. However, things were different this year with band camp, as well, and it was scheduled to begin earlier in the mornings so she had only practiced with the CC team for less than a week.

I mentally checked off all the strikes against her leading up to this 3 mile run and couldn’t foresee a good turn-out for this at all. There was just no way she would be able to finish this run. It was impossible. I was preparing myself to console her afterwards. That is, if she even survived. Anyone who is remotely familiar with Type 1 knows this was a recipe for disaster. This very well could turn into an emergency very quickly – or worse. You may wonder why I would even let her attempt such things. It’s because I know something that is very hard on a mother’s heart. No matter what disease or disability a child may have, the thing that will kill them is letting that rule their lives. You have to let them be as normal as possible and D kids have tenacity like none you’ve ever seen. They are truly heroes who are beyond brave every single day. Besides, my daughter’s motto when it comes to this sort of situation is “Impossible is Nothing”. So I put on my This-is-no-big-deal-face and stationed myself near the finish line, holding my breath and praying that she would actually finish.

I strained my eyes to catch just a glimpse of her bright blue running shorts somewhere in the woods across the lake. I couldn’t find her. Just when I was getting very nervous I saw her come around for her first lap. 1 ½ miles. She didn’t look good. She was breathing too hard and she had shortened her stride and was barely jogging. But she kept going for the second lap around the lake. 1 ½ miles still to go. Only half-way done. I yelled my encouragement, held my breath again, and thought about the impossibility of her actually finishing.

Then the thing I dreaded most happened. I was peering into the woods across the lake trying to catch that one quick glimpse of those blue shorts knowing that she should have already been way past that point. In fact, she should have already been in. I know how she runs and she should have come in already. I was trying not to panic. She should have come in by now. Something was wrong. Would a kid run in and tell the coach? I turned around to look at the coach, to see if any kids were reporting something bad to him. That’s when I heard someone call my name. I whipped back around. Another parent asked me if I knew who they carried in. My heart literally stopped. Where? Where? Some parents had carried a girl to the pavilion up the hill. As I stood to take action I heard someone say something.

No. The other parent was saying something to me. I tried to concentrate on what she was saying. No, it’s not her. I still didn’t breathe because I knew she should have been in already. If it wasn’t her then where was she? She should have come in by now. Finally, I saw her. She was in bad shape but she was still on her feet. She ran by in little short steps. She didn’t turn it on and sprint to the finish line like she’s famous for doing. She collapsed as she passed the finish line but she got right back up. The new assistant coach half-walked half-carried her toward me while I rushed to take her something sugary to drink. She was low. Very low.

As she fell to the ground to start guzzling a drink to treat her low she reached a shaky hand up to me and handed me something. It was a small orange piece of paper. I turned it over and saw the number 7 written on it. What does that mean? She looked up with a lop-sided shaky smile. “I made Varsity. By the skin of my teeth, but I made Varsity!” Not only did she finish the race in face of insurmountable obstacles, she had made the Varsity team. I swear that kid runs on sheer determination.

Impossible is Nothing.

Neverending pasta

We hosted a couple of foreign exchange students last year and we took them out to eat at Olive Garden one evening. It just so happened that Olive Garden was having their never-ending pasta special where you could order unlimited bowls of whatever combinations of pasta and sauce that you wanted. Of course the salad and breadsticks were unlimited, as always.

The exchange students were a bit overwhelmed with all the choices on the menu so I tried to help them out by explaining that the special was the never-ending pasta bowl. They could keep having it re-filled with whatever they chose and it would give them the opportunity to try out a different kind each time.

One of them was particularly awed by this concept.

“The pasta is never-ending?” she wanted to clarify.

“Yes, it is.”

“Is the salad never-ending, too?”

“Yes, and the breadsticks. You can eat as much as you want.”

There was silence as this information sunk in and everyone studied the menus.

Then in a voice filled with hope she asked, “Is the water never-ending, too?”

The things we take for granted!

The dog needs a bath

What’s worse than your dog barfing? Your dog barfing right on top of the other dog. I can’t make this stuff up.

Our black lab barfed right on top of the Golden Retriever. Great. He had to pick the one with the most fur to throw up on?

This was smack dab in the middle of me cooking dinner, one visiting Type 1 diabetic kid having a low, and my own Type 1 kid screaming “I can’t clean it up. I’m sick to my stomach. It’s going to make me throw up, too!” while I’m screaming at her that I don’t care – CLEAN IT UP!

Because, in the meantime, the barfed on dog started running all over the house!!

Pepe Le Pew – Part 2

If you read Pepe Le Pew (Part 1)  then you know that the skunk took up permanent residence under our back deck. I can’t really blame it. I mean, free cat food and nobody’s going to go outside to bother it or shoot toward the house to kill it. It was a pretty good deal for the skunk.

My husband decided the skunk was pregnant and was going to have her babies under the deck. How he made this determination I don’t know. He’s not a doctor or a veterinarian. However, no matter how cute baby skunks might be, we did not want them under our back deck.

So my husband started asking around about how to get rid of a skunk. Someone advised him to put some mothballs under the deck. The skunk would not like the smell of them and would leave. (This advice may or may not have come from the same Aunt that told me how to catch a woodpecker.)

The kids and I came home from school and opened the front door. WHAM! The smell was overwhelming!! I can’t even begin to describe it. The kids went into all sorts of contortions, choking and gagging, and carrying on. “What IS that smell?” they cried. Big sigh from me as my eyes rolled back into my head. “That would be your father’s attempt at getting rid of the skunk.” “MaaaahhhhUummmmm! We can’t stay here!”

If you have ever smelled mothballs then multiply that smell by a hundred thousand and that’s how strong it was INSIDE the house. Trust me when I say there are worse smells than skunk smell.

My husband came home and was delighted. “Maybe that will chase the skunk off!” he proudly exclaimed.

“I don’t know or care about the skunk, anymore. The skunk can have the whole darn house for all I care! You have just chased all the rest of us off, too. The kids and I are going to my mother’s until you get rid of that smell.”

My husband has never been able to wrap his brain around the term ‘less is more’. He was advised to throw a 2 or 3 mothballs under the deck. Well, then it would only be logical if 2 or 3 were good then hundreds would be even better! He put two entire boxes of mothballs under there. I bet that skunk was halfway into the next county along with every other living thing for miles around – including the rest of US!!!

Pepe Le Pew – Part 1

I looked out the back door to see a skunk on the back deck!  It was eating the cat food right by the back door. Now what? How do you make a skunk get off your porch? I couldn’t very well open the door or startle it in any way.
I called my husband who was at work.

“You have to come home!” I said in a high pitched, sort of panicky voice.

“Why? What’s wrong?!”

“There’s a skunk on the back porch!”

“And…..?”

“Did you not hear what I said? There. Is. A. Skunk. On. The. Porch.!!!”

“Umm…okay. What do you expect me to do about that?”

“I don’t know! I expect you to get it off the porch or shoot it or something!!”

“Look. I’m not coming home from work just because there’s a skunk outside. Even if I was home I couldn’t shoot toward the house.”

What did this man I married not understand about this situation? There was a skunk ON. THE. PORCH. I couldn’t open the door. The kids couldn’t go out to play. The skunk was eating the cat food. He might just stay there all day. What if he called his other little skunk friends to come to the free buffet? I could see this getting totally out of control with a yard full of skunks by the time my husband decided to finally come home. He obviously didn’t grasp the severity of the situation.

“So. Are you telling me that you are not going to come do something about the skunk?”

“Yep. That’s what I’m saying.”

Big loud sigh from me. (He’d be sorry when he drove up to find the house surrounded by hundreds of skunk friends) “FINE! If you aren’t going to do anything then tell me what to do about it! What do I do?”

“Well, if I were you I wouldn’t go out back since there’s a skunk out there.”

They say it’s your birthday. It’s my birthday too, yeah.

When the twinkies were in Kindergarten their teacher put a display on the door of her room. Every time a child learned to tie their shoes they got to put a little paper shoe with their name on it up on the door.  Every time a child learned to say the date of their birthday they got to stick a little paper cake with their name on it up on the door.

When I picked the kids up one day after school I noticed that Katie Jane had a paper cake with her name on it (meaning she knew her birth date) but Christopher did not.  So I asked him.

“Christopher, why don’t you have a cake up on the door?”

“I don’t know when my birthday is.”

“Really? I thought you knew your birthday.”

“No.”

“Well, do you know when Katie Jane’s birthday is?”

“Oh, sure I do”  and he proceeds to tell me the correct date.

“Ummmm, weren’t you born on the same day?”

“Yes.”

“Then your birthday is the same date as your sister’s.”

“Oh.”

At that point I started praying that the child would at least graduate from Kindergarten.

Do you have a job?

I was sitting in class talking to one of my deaf students who is in the 6th grade. He pipes up and says,

“Mrs. B., Do you have a job?”

(WHAT??!!) “Ummm. Yes. I do.”

“Where do you work?”

(Is he serious?) “Well, I work here at the school and at some other schools.”

“Really? You work at the school? What do you do?”

“I do speech therapy with you and the rest of the hearing-impaired kids. I teach you how to talk.”

“THIS is your job?!”

Seriously? I mean, I know teachers don’t get paid much and I’m not in it for the money but does he think I just come to school every day to hang out with him? I can only hope that I make learning so much fun that it doesn’t seem like work. Otherwise, I’m not sure what to think about this conversation!

A man in my ear

A friend’s young child came up to her one night and said, “Mommy, there’s a man in my ear.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“There’s a man in my ear!”

“Okaaaay. I don’t really know what that means.  Is the man talking to you?”

“No.”

“What’s the man doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okaaaaay. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

This went on for about a week with the child insisting there was a man in his ear. He was becoming increasingly more distressed about it. She told a group of us about it every day seeking advice but since none of us had any children she was on her own with this. He was really getting upset about it so she finally took him to the doctor. Feeling very foolish, she told the doctor what her child had been saying.  

Sure enough. The child was right. There was a man in his ear! (Or rather ½ man). The doctor pulled out the upper body of a little green army man!

Car adventure

Oh dear! My best friend (who I refer to as “Ethel” if you catch my drift) suggested to me many, many years ago that my life very closely resembled a sitcom. Hence, the name of this blog. What I didn’t know is that this condition is quite possibly heriditary. I’m afraid that I might have passed my sitcom-like life onto my daughter. You decide after reading her account of her adventurous evening:

My night started out with a “Joyful Noise” late night movie with one of my D buddies, Ethan. While on our way home to drop me off at my house, we were laughing and talking about the movie, and suddenly we hear a loud pop. We both look at each other wondering what the heck that sound was. Not far from where it popped, the back right side of the car tipped and the road gets realllllyyy bumpy. I said it might be a flat tire. Fearing the worst, Ethan pulls over to check and what do you know! Flat tire. It’s 1:00am and the wind makes it feel like 20 degrees, in jeans and short sleeve tshirts.

So we call and wake up my mom who wakes up my dad to come help us. He brings a jack and a tire iron. After about ten tries, the bolts finally loosen, and we get the (completely obliterated) tire off. We couldn’t figure out how to get the spare out of the trunk. It was stuck. Upon closer examination, we realize that the spare tire is flatter than the flat tire. So, Ethan and I drive my dad’s truck back to my house, where we grab coats and fish out the spare tire from my mom’s car.

Getting back to Ethan’s car, we realize that no, Mom’s spare tire doesn’t fit Ethan’s car. The bolt pattern didn’t match. While we were busy retrieving Mom’s spare tire, Ethan’s car battery died. So now we’re stuck in the middle of the two way highway road with a dead car, no tire.

Dad replaces the original tire, and then moves his truck around to jumpstart Ethan’s car. But upon popping the hood, we couldn’t figure out where the latch was to actually raise it up. Finally, we find the latch, lift the hood, and jump start the car. Dad backs Ethan’s car backwards into the parking lot beside the spillway. It’s now 2:30am. We call mom to tell her what’s going on and she tells them to drop me off at  home so I can go to bed. I woke up feeling bad the next morning from being out in the cold wind.

Ethan and Dad go to Walmart to get Fix-a-Flat stuff and a air pump for the flat spare. They repair the tire in the freezing cold wind and decides he better follow Ethan home. Believe it or not, Ethan’s car was out of gas so they have to stop at a local gas station. After Ethan comes back out from paying for his gas my dad goes up to him and says “Your back right blinker light is messed up.”

Seriously? Could anything else go wrong? Anyone want to start a collection to buy Ethan a different car?

Fast ride

When my Uncle Ross passed away he was buried about 50 miles away so the family had to follow the hearse to the small country cemetery which was difficult to find. The young man driving the hearse was in his early twenties and he seemed to forget that there were cars following along behind him. In the first car were the widow, my Aunt Joyce, her youngest sister and her husband, Stuart, who was driving the car.

Stuart kept getting further and further behind as the hearse sped faster and faster toward its destination. He tried his best to keep up but just couldn’t. They missed the turn to the cemetery and had to back track. When they finally did arrive, Stuart jumped out of the car and confronted the driver of the hearse giving him what for, “Young man, what in the world do you think you were doing? You were driving entirely too fast and the family couldn’t even keep up with you. You need to be more respectful and responsible.” There might have been more colorful language involved in this tirade than what’s recorded here.

After the graveside ceremony, the young driver sheepishly approached my Aunt Joyce to offer an apology telling her that someone had told him he drove too fast. “Oh, that would have been my brother-in-law, Stuart.”

“Yes, ma’am. He was very angry about it and I offer my apologies and condolences. I’m sorry that I drove too fast.”

She patted the young man on the arm and said, “Listen, honey, don’t you worry about it one bit. Ross liked to drive fast. He would have enjoyed his last ride.”

Waiting….

I got up one morning to find Christopher sitting at the bottom of the stairs in his pajamas, boots, big coat, and mittens.

“Honey, what are you doing?”

“I’m waiting to go out to play.”

“Well, why are you just sitting there?”

“I’m waiting for the Princess to come down.”

Nothing’s really changed all these years later. We all still find ourselves ready to go but waiting for the Princess. It’s pretty much a daily occurrence.

FIRE! or Why we were late to the band concert (Part 1)

You pick the title. My life is a cross between “I Love Lucy” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos”

The following is an account or a really lame excuse of why we were late to my children’s very last band concert for Middle School. This is a 2 part story. This is Part 1 – Fire. Being late to the band concert will be Part 2 of this story.

My twinkies had just turned 14 when this episode happened:

Katie Jane comes running through the house screaming, “There’s a fire in the oven! And when I say fire I mean it’s a big one!” She’s a bit of a drama queen so no one really breaks a sweat running to the kitchen but when we all do arrive there is, after all, a humongous fire in the oven.

I open the oven door & after some really funky-smelling white smoke rolls out & seeps all over my entire house I see something that looks like melted cheese covering the entire grate with a big black blob right in the middle of it. I can’t even describe the smell.

What could that possibly be?

There is yellow, gooey, cheesy looking stuff melted all over the rack & dripping down to puddle on the bottom of the oven. When globs of the cheesy looking stuff plops down and hits the bottom of the oven it spontaneously combusts into very tall flames. The whole firy, cheesy mess is about the size of a cookie sheet. Then there is that square, black blob in the middle of it all. I absolutely can NOT figure out what this could be. Neither can anyone else.

The whole family is just standing in front of the flaming oven staring at it with our mouths open while the fire burns & the smoke goes all over the house. We must have looked hilarious. No one knows what it is or how it got in the oven but my husband had apparently turned the oven on to cook some crescent rolls because they are sitting on top of the stove.

I slam the oven shut & everyone scrambles around to open windows so we don’t all die from smoke inhalation & then we all gather back in front of the oven to stare at the fire some more. What IS that? It’s fascinating and well, kind of entertaining. Still….what the heck is it?

Finally, my husband says “Oh, no! I know what it is! It’s the tupperware cake carrier.” WHAT????? Someone please explain to me why anyone would put tupperware in the oven?

 My twins had a birthday Sat. & Christopher’s left-over cake was too tall for the lid of the tupperware cake carrier so he put the last piece in the oven for safe-keeping because he couldn’t use the lid. I cannot even begin to explain the mess that’s in there. We may never be able to use the oven again. Ever. I’m not kidding.

But wait, here’s the really funny part. Being the sugar-deprived diabetic that she thinks she is, Katie Jane just cannot wrap her head around throwing a piece of cake away – even cake that is sitting in the middle of oozing yellow plastic. So I hear her say to her brother, “Christopher, I don’t think your piece of cake actually caught on fire – it was just the tupperware.” (She says this like it’s good news!)

 He looks at his twin like she’s lost her mind and says, “I can’t eat that! It’s sitting on burnt plastic!”

“Well, you could just cut the bottom part of it off & eat the part that’s not touching the burnt plastic”, says the diabetic child seeing nothing wrong with this logic at all.

Tupperware replaces stuff, right?

How romantic

My eccentric Aunt Joyce and sweet Uncle Ross were happily married for many years. One night as she climbed into bed he snuggled up to her and told her he loved her.
“I love you, too” she replied.

“Honey, you smell really nice” he complimented her while snuggling up closer.

“Oh, well thank you!”

“You really do smell good. Are you wearing something new?”

“Why, as a matter of fact, I am!”

“What is it that smells so nice?”

“Campho Phenique.”

Morning routine

I looked out the window just in time to see a squirrel jump off the ladder into the swimming pool. Oh, great! My husband was at work which meant I was the one that was going to have to go downstairs and down to the pool to retrieve a drowned squirrel. Then what? What do you do with a wet, dead squirrel? I couldn’t just leave it there. This was not my idea of how to start the day. Besides, I needed to leave soon to get to work.

Giving a big sigh, I looked out the window, again, before starting downstairs for dead animal retrieval. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! That little squirrel was not dead at all. He was swimming! Who knew squirrels could swim?

Here’s the unbelievable part and I’m not making this up. The squirrel was swimming laps! I watched him swim across the pool and back two times then he climbed back up the ladder, shook himself off and went on his way.

Huh. Apparently, I had just witnessed a squirrel doing his morning exercises. I wonder if he does this every day? I can’t wait for the synchronized swimming class!

You got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do

Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year. My mother and I used to go shopping on this day waaaaay before it was ever called “Black Friday” and before it was so popular. Before the wild crazy trampling crowds that wait in lines for the stores to open. When we used to shop on this day we were often the only ones out at 5:00am. Those were the days! It wasn’t crowded at all and I would often get all my Christmas (and birthday) shopping done on that day. We would start out locally and then shop our way through every town on the way to Dallas and back, starting out before the sun came up and finishing when the stores closed late at night.

One year, I was returning home with the back of my van (with the backseats laid down) absolutely full to the brim with sacks and pkgs. from my day’s purchases when I was pulled over by a highway patrolman. I couldn’t believe it. I was only 100 yards from the turn around to my house!

I rolled down my window and the patrolman asked for my driver’s license and proof of insurance. Oh, great! Just what I needed, a speeding ticket. I handed him the proof of insurance but my billfold was not in my purse. With a sinking feeling, I remembered that I had dropped it into one of the sacks at the last store we had been in. I told the guy that it might take awhile for me to find my license because my billfold was in one of the sacks in the back and I would need to look for it. He then shined his flashlight into the back of the van and a look of horror came over his face. “Where have you been?” he asked with a voice filled with awe. I told him I had been out shopping all day and had been to Dallas and back and was just on my way home. “How far from home are you?”, he asked, still shining his light over all the sacks behind me, with a look of fascination. I pointed over his shoulder to the only porch light that was on and told him that was my house. I had almost made it home when he stopped me.

 “Ma’am, I’m not going to give you a ticket because I think you are going to have enough explaining to do to your husband as it is.” He walked off, shaking his head, got in his car and drove off.

To catch a thief

My husband, Todd, had not been working at Home Depot very long when he heard a loud clanging sound when leaving work one night. He peered into the dark parking lot and saw a truck dragging a lawn mower behind it. It turned the corner and stopped so he went to help thinking it was one of their regular landscaping customers. He was surprised at what he saw. The truck was gone and left behind was a tangled mass of 4 or 5 lawnmowers that had been chained together.

He called back into the store to report his find. His boss came out, took pictures, and asked Todd if he would transport them back to the store in the back of his truck. So they loaded up the lawnmowers into Todd’s truck and he proceeded to drive them around to the back of the store to unload them. When suddenly, in his rear view mirror appeared bright red and blue flashing lights. Uh oh. Realizing how this looked, Todd jumped out of the truck and quickly walked back to talk to the officer. Bad idea. This apparently made the officer very nervous. He started backing up and reached for his gun. Todd had to do some fast talking to try to explain why he had a load of stolen lawnmowers in his truck and no orange apron on. A customer had seen the crime taking place and called the police. The officer refused to leave or let him go until his boss came out and identified him in person, not over the phone.

When he finally got home his explanation for being so late was, “I was almost arrested for stealing lawnmowers.”

State capitals

I have two degrees – one in Education of the Deaf and one in Speech/Language Pathology. I’ve worked in both fields throughout the years but Deaf Ed. is where my heart is. I was lucky enough to have a job doing what I absolutely love to do for a couple of years which was to do speech/language therapy with deaf students. I love doing it and I’m darn good at.

As I sat down with a student in the 6^th grade Deaf Ed. classroom one afternoon I noticed a small booklet that had been on his desk for over a week. It listed a few facts about each State – things like the state capital, population, flag, etc. I asked him if he was studying about the states and he expressed that he had been reading the booklet because he was really interested in learning about the different states.

I asked him if he could tell me something about what he had learned.

“Ask me questions.” , He challenged.

“Okay. Let’s see……what’s the capital of South Carolina?”

“Mmmmm….I don’t know”, he shrugged.

“That’s okay”, I tried to make him feel better, “I’m not sure I know that one either. Let’s try an easier one.” Feeling certain he would be successful if I asked about the state where we live, I queried, “What’s the capital of Texas?”

“T”

I’m not making this up, people. I’m ashamed to admit that his teacher and I both burst out laughing.

Get it, Freckles, get it!

When we lived in the land of wind and mesquite trees, the kids were outside playing when they noticed, Freckles, our Dalmatian start digging around in the wood pile. He was definitely after something. All three kids started encouraging him. “Go, Freckles!” “Get it, Freckles Get it! ” (not even knowing what “it” was). Loving the attention and his own personal cheering section, Freckles dug in with enthusiasm. Something made Christopher sense that this might not be the best idea since they didn’t know what Freckles was after. Maybe he thought it might be a snake. He told his brother and sister he was going inside.

Suddenly, Freckles gave a yelp and pulled his head out of the woodpile revealing a sickly green color all over one side of his face. Matthew and Katie Jane screamed like little girls and ran for the house. Christopher, being the good & helpful brother that he was, held the door open for them. “Hurry, guys, hurry! Run inside!!” They ran in screaming “Freckles got sprayed by a skunk!” “Mom, Freckles got sprayed by a skunk!”

I came into the dining room just in time to see Freckles rubbing his face all over the carpet and spreading that horrible smell all over the house. “Freckles got sprayed by a skunk!” the kids stated the obvious, again, just in case I didn’t have a sense of smell. “THEN WHAT IS HE DOING IN THE HOUSE?!!” Honestly! The dog never came inside any other time. Why would they let him in when he had just been sprayed by a skunk? All three of my children stood there like they didn’t have a brain to pass around between them while Freckles proceeded to run from room to room rolling on the carpet. Why were they just standing there?

“GET THAT DOG OUT OF MY HOUSE!!”

“Eeeew! We don’t want to touch him!” When I turned around, the look on my face must have communicated some sense into them because Matthew and Katie Jane sprang into action and quickly tackled Freckles and took him outside. I slammed the door right in my sweet children’s faces just as they turned around to come back in.

“Moooommmm. Let us in! We don’t want to be out here with the skunk smell.” Well, I told them, I did not want to be inside with the skunk smell either – but I was. Besides, they were both pretty stinky after wrestling with Freckles. They insisted that it wasn’t fair because I didn’t make Christopher go outside, too, since he was the one holding the door open. It was clearly his fault. Christopher was the only one who did NOT smell like a skunk so he got to stay safely inside while his brother and sister stomped around on the porch whining. That’s when my kids discovered that I had, in fact, not lost my sense of smell – only my sense of hearing.

How to catch a woodpecker

When we lived out in the middle of nothing but wind and mesquite trees a woodpecker landed on the side of our house and never left. I wouldn’t have noticed him except that he started pecking on the house. TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT . TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT. TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT. Non-stop. All the time. Incessantly. I felt sorry for him at first because we didn’t have any real trees for him to peck on (mesquite trees don’t count as real trees) so our wooden house was the only thing for miles around. My sympathy for his plight came to a screeching halt when he woke the twins up from their nap. Nobody wakes the twins up and lives to tell about it. Naptime is sacred when you have multiples. I even had a sign on the door that said “You wake ‘em, you take ‘em”!

TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT. TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT. TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT. This went on for weeks on end. I had to get rid of that woodpecker!

I tried everything.
I knocked on the wall and he stopped to listen, shrugged his little feathered shoulders, and resumed his pecking.
I screamed at him “STOP”……..Nope. Nothing. Just kept right on.
I went outside and threw rocks at him. He turned his head and looked at me as if to say, “Really? You throw like a girl”. He was right. I can’t throw.
 However! I can shoot a gun. Now I’m not trigger happy by any means. I had to give this idea considerable thought. What if I missed and shot a hole in the side of the house? Would it be worth it? YES. Yes, it would. Maybe I should talk this over with my husband since he would be the one that would be up on the ladder fixing the hole. He just laughed at me and told me there was no reason to shoot at the bird. All I had to do was shoot up in the air and scare it away. So I did. I went out there multiple times a day and shot up in the air. The woodpecker would fly up to the roof and then come right back and start pecking again. So I started aiming at him trying not to hit the house. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but no, this story is not about shooting a hole in the side of my house. It’s about how to catch a woodpecker. I was willing to try anything to get rid of that darn thing but with no luck.

. We went on a visit down to Valley Mills to visit my mother. I don’t remember the occasion but there were several family members there including my fraternal twin aunts, Lois and Joyce, who were both characters in their own way. I asked if anyone knew how to catch a woodpecker. Lois said she had a problem with one in the past and told me to get a giant rat trap and nail it up on the side of the house. You know, like a spring-loaded mouse trap but giant sized. Ick. I didn’t want to envision the woodpecker caught in the trap like a mouse but I was desperate at this point. Thinking that just might work I asked, “What do you bait it with?” (Woodpeckers, most likely didn’t eat cheese).

Without missing a beat, my Aunt Joyce piped up, “Duh! You don’t need any bait……… It’s made of wood.”

The bad word

I was conducting a speech therapy session with a lively group of Kindergarten boys when there was a knock on my small closet door. (Other SLP’s will understand that statement) I felt lucky to have a closet with a door. Oftentimes, school speech-language pathologists do not have the most ideal spaces. In the past I’ve had to share a room with 3 other teachers, had a table in the wings of a stage located in a noisy cafeteria, been across the street from the school, in an auditorium, in the library, and even out in the hallway.

Back to the closet. I got up to answer the door and there was another teacher needing to talk to me. I instructed my energetic boys to continue with what we were working on as I stuck my head out the door to speak to the other teacher.  Suddenly, erupting behind me was much shuffling, giggling, and shhhh-ing and Ummmmm!  I’m telliiiiing!
“Alright, boys, what’s going on?” I said in my teacher voice looking at them pointedly with my best teacher look.

One of them spoke up, “He said the E word!” while another one nodded his head in confirmation.

The teacher I was talking to whispered to me “What’s the E word?”

“I have no idea.” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Well, find out! I’m really curious. Let me know what it is, okay?”

I shut the door and sat back down with my group who were now all looking down. “Okay, boys, let’s have it. What’s the E word?”

“No, no! We can’t say it! It’s baaaad.” They all nodded emphatically.

“You have to tell me what it is.”

A chorus of, “NO! We can’t!” “I’m not allowed to say it!” “It’s a bad word!”

“Well. Can one of you whisper it in my ear?”

One little boy approached me tentatively with his head down.

“C’mon. Whisper it in my ear. What’s the E word?”

In loud stage whisper right in my ear he said,

“Eeediot”

Breaking the Code

id·i·o·glos·si·a[id-ee-uh-glos-ee-uh, -glaw-see-uh]

1. a private form of speech invented by one child or by children who are in close contact, as twins.
2. a pathological condition characterized by speech so distorted as to be unintelligible.

Idioglossia. A language of their own sometimes referred to as “twin speak” or twin talk. Before having fraternal twins I was under the impression that only identical twins experienced twin phenomena. I have since learned this is not true. No matter how long it had been since Christopher had seen his sister he always knew exactly where in the house in our big ole’ two-story she was located and what she was doing. The twinkies exhibited several forms of twin phenomena including twin speak or idioglossia. They didn’t speak English until they were three years old but communicated very effectively with each other in their own (Japanese sounding) language.

For example, they would be sitting on the floor playing and Christopher would ramble off some instruction “Beeha dah poe doe woo tee  da” and Katie Jane would clarify “Woo tee da?” to which Christopher would confirm “toe de woo tee da”. Then Katie Jane would jump up and go retrieve  whatever item it was that they had been conversing about.

We were all intrigued by their secret language. One day I heard Matthew say something in the twin language and excitedly asked him what it meant thinking that finally someone could interpret what the twinkies were saying. “I have no idea. I was just repeating what they said.” Oh. I thought he had broken the code. 

As they began speaking more and more English words the twin speak disappeared. Or so I thought.

One day when the twins were eight years old, and obviously didn’t know I was in the same room, I was shocked to hear them speaking to each other in that long ago forgotten way. Being curious about this, I asked each of them separately what they had been talking about. They both had the exact same reaction when they realized I had overheard them. They looked shocked and panicked. They acted like they were betraying their twin to even be discussing the subject of their own secret language with me. Separately, they both relayed to me the exact same thing that they had been talking about. The twins had never stopped speaking in their own language. They just never used it front of anyone else.

Truly fascinating. I wonder if they still talk to each other in their own secret code?

No such thing as a stupid question?

We used to be lucky enough to have a Papa John’s pizza place that actually delivered to our house out in the country. We had ordered enough from them that when we called in and gave our name they usually saw our standard order pop up on their computer screen. Our order was always a bit out of the ordinary because one of the twins was still allergic to milk at that time. We would order a pepperoni pizza for the three kids but ask that they not put any cheese on half of it so that our daughter could eat the part that had just sauce & pepperoni because of her milk allergy.

 They had a policy of always calling back to confirm orders, I guess to make sure pizza orders weren’t prank phone calls. I called one evening and placed our standard order. One pizza with The Works and one Pepperoni pizza with no cheese on one half. No problem.

Now to just wait for the phone call to confirm our order and then the call we sometimes got from the delivery guy who was lost and trying to find our house in the dark. About 10 minutes later the phone rang and the caller ID showed that it was Papa John’s calling. They asked the confirmation question, “Did you order The Works and a Pepperoni with no cheese on half?”

Me: “Yes, we did”

Pizza guy: “Which half?”

Me: “Pardon me? What did you say?”

Pizza guy: “Which half?”

Me: “I don’t understand what you mean?”

Pizza guy: “Which half of the pepperoni pizza do you want us to put cheese on?”

Me (now speaking very slowly): “Ummmm…..Whichever half you want to???”

Pizza guy: “Look, I need you to tell me which half you want cheese on and which half you don’t.”

 Me: “OoooKaaaay….ummmm….the left half?” Big pause………..

So I said, again, “Is that what you meant? You can put cheese on the left half and leave the cheese off the right half.” I just couldn’t help adding quietly, “Unless, of course, you turn the pizza around. Then you could put cheese on the right and no cheese on the left.”

The very embarrassed pizza guy realized that what he had been asking made no sense and he quickly tried to hang up the phone, stuttering, “ Ummm….oh…..I don’t know what I’m….okay. Uh….your pizza will be there shortly.”

The Chicken Rancher

At our sixth grade end of year banquet my name had mistakenly been left off the list of what we would be when we grew up. Not wanting to leave me out, my beloved elementary principal, Mr. Rutledge, jokingly predicted that I would grow up to be a chicken rancher. Did I mention that Mr. Rutledge was a very smart man?

My husband and I had bought our first house. A big ol’ two story farm house that someone had added rooms on to right in the middle of 5 acres of mesquite trees. As the good Southerners we were, we named our ranch. Well, sort of. We referred to it as the Money Pit along with some other choice words that can’t be repeated here.  One year, we were having a plague of grasshoppers. Literally, a plaque. It was so bad that the kids couldn’t play outside because grasshoppers would jump all over them. I was afraid the children would be eaten by grasshoppers. The grasshoppers ate everything in sight including all the flowers, bushes, small trees and every leaf on every tree. When they finished those they started eating the smaller branches on the trees, as well as the screen wire we had covered the trees with to try to save them. We tried every bug killer we could find to spray, sprinkle, and coat everything with. I think it just made them thrive more. Someone suggested that chickens would eat the grasshoppers so we decided to get about 6 to 10 chickens just for that purpose. We carefully picked out some baby chicks from McMurray hatchery to be delivered to our local post office. My husband, Todd, was very disappointed that we couldn’t order as few as a dozen. The minimum order was 24 baby chicks with one free specialty chick. That’s okay. Maybe I could sell the extras as Easter chicks to my children’s classmates at school since they would arrive before Easter.

I worried when they didn’t come in before the weekend and was afraid they might have to sit up at an empty post office through the weekend and they might die. My mother assured me that the post office would call me to come pick up the baby chicks the minute they arrived. On Monday I told my husband that he needed to leave the truck for me because I expected the chickens to come in and they would need to load the box into the back of a truck. (I know, those of you who know anything about chickens are already laughing at me. Go ahead, I deserve it.)   A lady from the post office called said very shortly and through what sounded like gritted teeth, “COME GET THESE CHICKS!” I could hear them peeping very loudly in the background. My mother was right! They called me to come get them. Little did I know it was because they were driving everyone at the post office insane with their loud, incessant peeping.

I was ready! I loaded the twins up in the truck and drove to the post office. Instead of going in the front door of the post office I drove around to the loading dock and backed the truck up to one of the loading doors since they would need to load the box of chicks into the back of the truck. As I was walking up to back door to ring the bell I could hear the chickens loudly peeping even through the thick steel door. Wow! They really ARE loud. No wonder the lady who called sounded a bit terse. I rang the bell and told them I was there to pick up the chickens and pointed to the bed of the truck. “GOOD!” said the woman and she quickly handed me a small box that was about 10 inches square and about 5 inches tall with loud peeping sounds coming from inside. I just stood there confused while she tried to shut the door in my face. “Wait! There must be a mistake! I ordered 24 chicks. Are there other boxes?” She didn’t even go look. She just said “No, that’s it.” as she quickly slammed the door. Well. There was no way 24 chicks could be crammed into this tiny little box. Maybe this was just the one free specialty chick and the big box of chickens would be arriving later. I felt a little silly about backing the truck up to the loading dock but was sure I’d be returning for the big box later.

We rushed home to let this very loud little chick out of the box. We set the box down on the dining room table and opened it up. Unbelievable! It was crammed full of fluffy baby chicks!! I imagined them laughing at me during lunch hour at the post office. Oh, well, no time to worry about that. I had to get these chicks into a bigger box before they smothered each other. The twinkies were delighted to gently pick the chicks up one at a time, counting them as they transferred them to the larger box. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5………..24, 25, 26, 27” Wait!! There were only supposed to be 24 plus the bonus chick. There should be a total of 25 chicks at the most. “30, 31, 32….” Uh. Oh. This was not good. The counting continued as I became more and more dismayed.  Why were there so many chicks and what were we going to do with all of them?!!  (Little did I know I was living with a chicken murderer but that’s a story for another day.) And the big question – how did they smush all those chicks in that one little box? It was truly a mystery.

“46, 47, 48, 49!” FORTY NINE. 49!!! 49 chicks in all. I know. I recounted them at least a dozen times to make sure. Then I had my oldest son count them when he got home from school. Yep, 49. None of them had been smothered by their siblings. All 49 chicks alive and peeping. Loudly.

Then came the time for my husband to come home. I felt like Lucy trying to explain to Ricky about all those chickens. His solution was to call the company and complain to them that they had made a mistake. I could hear his side of the conversation as he gruffly explained to the woman who answered the phone at McMurray hatchery that we had only ordered 24 chicks but they had mistakenly sent 49. Then I heard him say, “Think of it as a bonus? Bonus, Hell!!  We didn’t even want the ones we ordered!”

Turns out Mr. Rutledge was right. I was officially a chicken rancher.

Hear ye, hear ye

Because it’s my field of study and employment I know a little something about hearing impairment.  My mother told me that when it came time for her to get hearing aids she would trust me to let her know and she wouldn’t pretend there wasn’t a problem as some elderly people do. When many of her friends had begun to get hearing aids she was concerned and asked me to test her hearing so I brought home an audiometer, tested her hearing, and assured her that she was fine. A few years later my mother mentioned that she might need me to test her hearing again. I assured her that I did NOT need to do so. I knew without a doubt that she had a hearing loss. It was time. She did not put up any resistance and promptly made an appointment with an audiologist to be fitted for hearing aids. She cheerfully wore them without complaining and I told her how proud I was of her for the way she had handled it.

She recalled that the same situation had not been so easy with her husband a few years back. He definitely had a hearing loss but would not admit it. He just turned the television up louder and louder and wasn’t at all interested in having his hearing evaluated as he didn’t think he had a problem. Mom was worried because he would go out to hunt and round-up rattlesnakes but was completely unable to hear their warning rattle. She asked me to speak with him about it so as we sat down to dinner one evening I gingerly broached the subject. I gently pointed out situations and examples when he had experienced some difficulty hearing.

Still not wanting to admit he might have a problem he boasted, “I can hear things that you can’t  hear! I bet I can hear things the rest of you can’t even hear at all.”

Hmmm. Okay. Curious as to what he thought could hear better than us, we asked him to be more specific.

“For example, I’m hearing something right now that I bet none of you can even hear.” We became still and quiet, listening carefully to see what it was he was hearing. We heard nothing.
“See there! I can hear that ringing sound in my ears and you can’t!”

A joint effort

“Twinkle, twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are.”

Driving down the road with my three children securely buckled into their car seats I enjoyed listening to my twins’ rendition of this favorite childhood song.

“Matthew! Please just let them sing.”

I had to interrupt my always practical and literal minded son who was 3 years older than his siblings when he felt the need to point out the facts. “Actually, stars are not little at all and they don’t twinkle. They are enormous exploding masses of    ”   This was when I cut off his scientific explanation of stars to listen more carefully to how the twins were singing this song. It was fascinating to me.

Christopher was singing the words “Winkle, Winkle”

Katie Jane was singing the words “Tinkle, Tinkle”.

Put it all together and their joint effort sounded correct “TWinkle, TWinkle”

The Donkey at the Door

My husband and I had participated in our church’s Christmas pageant for years – even before we were married or had children. We were used to the long dress rehearsals complete with an orchestra, live animals, and a real baby. In fact, our twins played Baby Jesus one year. We had a dress rehearsal scheduled the same night that my oldest son (about three years old at that time) was scheduled to ride on a float in our town’s annual Christmas parade. I took him to the parade, grabbed him as soon as it was over, and rushed to the church. I was a bit pre-occupied trying to throw my costume on while driving when we approached the church. My son noticed the donkey standing on a landing at the top some stairs waiting for his cue to go in a side door.

“Momma!! There’s a donkey!!”
“Yes, hon.”

“Momma? Did you see that donkey on the stairs?”
“Uh huh” I replied distractedly, trying to untangle my scarf from the head wrap.

“What is he doing up there?”
“He’s just waiting to go in”

My son thought this information over for a minute and then said,

“Well, somebody needs to tell him there’s no church tonight.”

Cash Soup

My mother and 2 of her classmates and best friends were taking the 4th one, Sandra, out to eat after she had endured an especially hard round of chemotherapy. They all grew up together and remained life-long friends. Sandra has since lost her courageous battle with breast cancer and we miss her greatly after all these years and we still make her tator tot casserole about once a week. In fact, Katie Jane is named after both my Aunt Janie and Sandra Jane.

Sigh. Back to the soup story. Sandra decided she wanted to eat at Olive Garden so all the women were eating the unlimited soup & salad. They were having the best time visiting and laughing when my mother found a nickel in her bowl of soup. The other women slowly put their soup spoons down and pushed their bowls away. My mother called the waitress over to tell her she had found a nickel in her soup. The waitress offered to get her another bowl to which my mother replied, “No thank you! Doesn’t it all come out of the same pot? Of course, I don’t want another bowl of soup!”

In the silence that followed as the waitress walked away to go find the manager, everyone noticed that Sandra had continued to eat her soup. “Sandra! Don’t eat that!” Sandra continued to spoon soup into her mouth. “What are you doing?!!” Sandra smiled mischievously and announced, “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m looking for a quarter!”

Does too! Does not! Does too! Does not!

Sibling rivalry! My husband is an only child so there are things he just is not capable of understanding – like sibling rivalry. He looked at me one day as our boys came tumbling into the room in a tangled mass of arms, legs, and elbows so involved in their wrestling that they didn’t even notice us and said, “I just don’t get it”. You don’t get what? I don’t get the bickering they do. He also is totally incapable of understanding toothpaste talk. Even after 20+ years of marriage he cannot understand one word I say when I have a mouthful of toothpaste. I think he’s not even trying. He also doesn’t know how to share a mirror with someone else. You know, the thing you do where one person stands in the front slightly to one side and the other person stands behind them slightly to the other side so both of you can see what you’re doing in the mirror. Nope. He doesn’t get it.
If you have a sibling then you are well aware of the imaginary line down the middle of the backseat that you are not allowed to cross no matter what. But. That doesn’t stop the bickering. I found out after having kids of my own that it doesn’t really stop the fighting at all. Even after the imaginary line is drawn and sides are chosen, the children having been given clear instructions to keep their hands to themselves or sometimes to even sit on their hands I would hear this from the backseat: “MooooooooAhhhhhhhmmmmm!!!! He’s lookin’ at meeeeeee!!!!!!”
One day on the way to church our twins were in the back seat arguing. “Does too!” “Does not!” “Does too!” “Does not!” “Does too!” “Does not!” “Does too!” “Does not!” “Does too!” “Does not!” “Does too!” “Does not!” “Does too!” “Does not!”
After exactly 10 miles of trying to ignore this I thought my head might explode so I breathed a quick prayer that I would not kill the children before we arrived at the church parking lot. “Does too!” “Does not!” “Does too!” “Does not!” “Does too!” “Does not!”. My helpful husband yelled at them to stop saying that. So they did. They stopped saying that…….
and changed it instead to a stage whisper of “Yes, he does!” “No, he doesn’t” “Yes, he does!” “No, he doesn’t” “Yes, he does!” “No, he doesn’t” “Yes, he does!” “No, he doesn’t” “Yes, he does!” “No, he doesn’t”.
Then it happened. The dreaded call for a referee to intervene and settle the matter. Here I was, dressed for church, and fresh out of yellow flags (or even a white one so we could at least surrender).
“MoooooooooooAhhhhhhhmmmmmm?” in stereo. I did a quick check out the window. Nope. No such luck. We were still 10 minutes from the church parking lot. I was the chosen referee.

Big sigh…….“What?”

“Does God have boogers?” Well, this was one I’d never heard before. I look desperately at my helpful husband. His face was red and tears were streaming down his face while he was having some sort of convulsions. No help there. Ummmmmm……. DOES God have boogers? Have you ever thought about it before? As I’m trying to quickly reason this out Katie Jane emphatically states, “God does NOT have boogers! He’s perfect and boogers are gross so God doesn’t have boogers. So there!” Hmm, made sense to me! I glanced back at Christopher to see how he was taking this decision. He calmly raised his little chin looked out the window and said, “God does so have boogers! He has a nose doesn’t He?”

The Famous Poptart Fire

When my oldest son, Matthew, was in Kindergarten and my twins were two years old (a time that I admit was as much of a blur then as it is now. Did you catch that? TWO, count them, TWO 2 year olds!) we were rushing through our normal chaotic morning of getting everyone fed, getting Matthew ready for school, and trying to find more than three shoes for the twin’s feet. Why were there always only three shoes? We lived in this huge two-story house out in the middle of nothing but lots of wind and mesquite trees. The mesquite trees were the only reminder left of where the Chisholm cattle trail had been. Just a little history for you.
Anyway, I was at one end of the house trying to throw some clothes on and maybe even get my teeth brushed when I hear high-pitched screaming coming from the twins who were in their high chairs in the kitchen with Matthew. As they were born screaming in this same ear-piercing pitch I didn’t really think anything unusual was going on. Until……I went in the kitchen where I found Matthew calmly sitting at the bar waiting for his breakfast, the twins screaming with delight in their high chairs, and a full fledge fire coming out of the toaster. FIRE!!! The poptarts (chocolate is apparently the most flammable , in case you were wondering) had burst into flames which were now licking the bottom of the kitchen cabinets. I grabbed a Twinkie in each arm and tossed them out of the kitchen with instructions for Matthew to take them out to the van. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find, a cup towel, to try to beat the flames out. The towel immediately caught fire so I threw it down on my newly installed kitchen floor causing a huge burn mark. By this time the wall paper under the cabinets was also burning and white smoke had filled the entire house. Sadly, the chocolate poptarts were a complete loss. I honestly don’t remember now how I finally got the fire out but I did. My husband has never forgiven me to this day for not walking out of the house with the kids and driving away so that money pit could have burned to the ground.
After making sure the fire was completely out in the toaster, on the wall and the cabinet I did take Matthew on to school. Mainly, to get the little asthmatic kid out of the smoke that had engulfed the entire house on both floors. He walked into his Kindergarten classroom and calmly said to his teacher, “I’m sorry I’m late. Mom had to put the fire out.” Then he proceeded to go to his chair and begin his work while the entire class sat in silence with their mouths hanging open.
We had to go to a hotel to stay for about a week due to the intense smoke while we scrubbed the walls and ran an air purifier. I continued to take Matthew to school every morning. His teacher required that their money for lunch be put in an envelope every morning with their name and amount written on the outside of the sealed envelope. I didn’t have any envelopes at the hotel and rushed him off to school the next day with his lunch money in his pocket instead. He walked into his classroom where he dug in one pocket and pulled out a dollar then dug in the other pocket to retrieve a quarter to give to his teacher for his lunch money. Again, he calmly says to her, “I’m sorry. There weren’t any envelopes at the hotel.” Then went and sat down. “Hotel?!! What hotel? You are having to stay at a hotel? Just how bad was this fire?”, his teacher asked worriedly. “Oh, it was just a poptart fire.”, was his only reply.

Ironically, the poptart fire just so happened to coincide with Fire Prevention Week at school. When the big red fire truck came to visit the teacher expected Matthew to say something about the fire that had just happened at his house but no – he said nothing. One of the activities that week was making a phone out of construction paper with their fingerprints on the numbers 9-1-1. The Kindergarten teacher asked Matthew if he had called 911 when we had fire at our house. He nonchalantly replied, “No, that wasn’t a REAL fire. It was only a poptart fire.”

Kids are funny, aren’t they? Well, that was the story of the now Famous Poptart Fire.

My Life Is A Sitcom

Okay, people.
You always tell me I should write a book.
Well, for now I’ll just try my hand at writing a blog.
I’m taking the WordPress 365 blog challenge and blogging something every day for a year. I’ve never been one to stick with a diary (that’s what we called it before computers were born. Yes, I’m that old) so we’ll see how this goes.

For now, I’ll just say Happy New Year 2012