Tomorrow the kids and I drive up to Chicago, for Ira's funeral and Shiva. Please keep my kids in your thoughts and prayers. And please, no matter how angry you are at someone, be sure to work it out. Make sure that they know how much they mean to you, because you never know if that's going to be the last time you see them.
Taking some time off
I'm taking some time off from my blog, thanks for all of your kind words and prayers. Sunday afternoon I went to my ex-husband's apartment (yes, we remained friends) and he...the boy I married and loved and had two children with and was together with for 18 years....was dead. There are no words to describe my sorrow, how much I miss him and how horrible this has been for my two children. Ira and I talked on the phone at least 4 times a week, and we spent last year's holidays together with the kids. The kids are devastated, my son is more verbal in his grief than my daughter. He just turned 8 and spent his birthday night at his dad's, he said it was awesome. Julia is sad, because her dad was away last year during her birthday, and he won't be here for her next one. Totally not fair, I agree. We also have Ira's cat, which he got in 1994, a year after we started dating. I feel so bad for her, she's been through a lot in the past week.
Tomorrow the kids and I drive up to Chicago, for Ira's funeral and Shiva. Please keep my kids in your thoughts and prayers. And please, no matter how angry you are at someone, be sure to work it out. Make sure that they know how much they mean to you, because you never know if that's going to be the last time you see them.
Tomorrow the kids and I drive up to Chicago, for Ira's funeral and Shiva. Please keep my kids in your thoughts and prayers. And please, no matter how angry you are at someone, be sure to work it out. Make sure that they know how much they mean to you, because you never know if that's going to be the last time you see them.
I started to write about the time I wanted a pony but then this post completely took on a life of it's own and that's ok because we all have to listen to our inner muse, right?
When I was 6, I desperately wanted a shetland pony, because it would be small enough to keep in the yard and when it got cold outside Mom would probably let it come in the trailer because she sometimes let the stray cat we fed come inside and really, was a shetland pony much bigger than a dog?
I'd only seen pictures but I was pretty sure it would fit nicely on the rag rug in the kitchen, all curled up. I would name it Tiffany and we could have our pictures taken together at Easter. I would ride her to school and she could eat grass while she waited for me and during recess when the other girls all played on the swings together, Tiffany and I would play tag, or hide and seek. Screw those a-hole girls who wouldn't play with me, I would have Tiffany. At the end of the day when the other kids were getting onto the buses to go home, I would ride Tiffany home and tell her about my day. It would be awesome.
Here's a picture of Tiffany and me:
Ok, not really, but that's how we looked in my imagination. Only Tiffany would have bows in her mane and I would braid her tail with ribbons and I would be dressed as Tinkerbell. Because you can't ride a horse in a long princess dress, everybody knows that. And plus? I could fly. That's right. I had magic fairy dust and I could fly, and all the other mean girls totally were jealous because I had a pony and I could fly and they begged me to let them ride Tiffany and one time I let that bitch Cari Nessler ride her but ha! Tiffany bit Cari on the leg and then threw her off because she was a one-girl pony, and I was the only girl at Neil A. Armstrong-Oakview Grade School who could ride Tiffany.
Then all the girls wanted to be my friend but I knew it was only because of Tiffany, but then one day Tiffany got strep throat and she had to stay in bed (because I now had a bunk bed and Tiffany slept on the lower bunk but I got the top bunk) and Claudia and Nancy still wanted to play with me and that's how I knew they were the only nice girls in my class and so we played ring-around-the-rosy and tag and then Claudia let me braid her hair with ribbons and Nancy asked me to be her best friend but then Claudia said no, she's my best friend and before they could start fighting over me I said it's ok, I'm both of your best friends and even though that was completely improper grammar they totally knew what I meant.
Then when I got off the bus that day my parents were waiting for me along with Tiffany, because the antibiotics had worked and she was feeling much better. Then Mom told me that she was pregnant with twins and they were both girls so I would get to be an older sister and Dad said that he'd been digging a hole and found a pirate's treasure so he'd bought us a mansion on Grandview Drive that had a basement and an attic and stairs and a dining room plus a swimming pool and we were going to move in today and I would get my own bathroom. Oh, and I had an older brother too, his name was Greg and he always teased me and he taught me how to fight and all of his guy friends thought I was cute.
Plus? I was psychic.
I'd only seen pictures but I was pretty sure it would fit nicely on the rag rug in the kitchen, all curled up. I would name it Tiffany and we could have our pictures taken together at Easter. I would ride her to school and she could eat grass while she waited for me and during recess when the other girls all played on the swings together, Tiffany and I would play tag, or hide and seek. Screw those a-hole girls who wouldn't play with me, I would have Tiffany. At the end of the day when the other kids were getting onto the buses to go home, I would ride Tiffany home and tell her about my day. It would be awesome.
Here's a picture of Tiffany and me:
Ok, not really, but that's how we looked in my imagination. Only Tiffany would have bows in her mane and I would braid her tail with ribbons and I would be dressed as Tinkerbell. Because you can't ride a horse in a long princess dress, everybody knows that. And plus? I could fly. That's right. I had magic fairy dust and I could fly, and all the other mean girls totally were jealous because I had a pony and I could fly and they begged me to let them ride Tiffany and one time I let that bitch Cari Nessler ride her but ha! Tiffany bit Cari on the leg and then threw her off because she was a one-girl pony, and I was the only girl at Neil A. Armstrong-Oakview Grade School who could ride Tiffany.
Then all the girls wanted to be my friend but I knew it was only because of Tiffany, but then one day Tiffany got strep throat and she had to stay in bed (because I now had a bunk bed and Tiffany slept on the lower bunk but I got the top bunk) and Claudia and Nancy still wanted to play with me and that's how I knew they were the only nice girls in my class and so we played ring-around-the-rosy and tag and then Claudia let me braid her hair with ribbons and Nancy asked me to be her best friend but then Claudia said no, she's my best friend and before they could start fighting over me I said it's ok, I'm both of your best friends and even though that was completely improper grammar they totally knew what I meant.
Then when I got off the bus that day my parents were waiting for me along with Tiffany, because the antibiotics had worked and she was feeling much better. Then Mom told me that she was pregnant with twins and they were both girls so I would get to be an older sister and Dad said that he'd been digging a hole and found a pirate's treasure so he'd bought us a mansion on Grandview Drive that had a basement and an attic and stairs and a dining room plus a swimming pool and we were going to move in today and I would get my own bathroom. Oh, and I had an older brother too, his name was Greg and he always teased me and he taught me how to fight and all of his guy friends thought I was cute.
Plus? I was psychic.
This Was Going To Be About The Time With The Headless Chicken, But It Turned Into A Touchy-Feely Post Instead. So Sue Me.
Grandma and Grandpa Myers. Josephine and Charles. Jo and Charlie. My mom's parents. They had a farm about an hour away, where Mom and I went about every 4-6 weeks, and Mom would fix the visits so they coincided with the visits of my aunt JoEllen and her kids, Tommi Jo and Curtis. I was jealous of Curtis because he was the only member of the family who had a middle name. Seriously. His middle name is Britton, how neat is that? The rest of us had to slum it with only a first name. Our family was Pennsylvania Dutch, so maybe middle names were to fancy, I don't know.
Mom and I would go down early on a Saturday morning and come back home late Sunday night. I remember feeling like so much fun was stuffed into those 36+ hours. Sometimes we'd walk in and Grandma and Grandpa would be in the kitchen, making homemade noodles. There would be a big lunch, which they called "dinner", followed by a big nap for everybody. I mean it, my entire family would find a couch, half-a-couch, chair or space on the floor and we would crash. We were like a litter of kittens, and we always said the house just made us sleepy. It's also possible that we suffered from low levels of carbon-monoxide poisoning, I'm not sure.
My grandpa raised sheep, along with crops of corn and soybeans. He may have planted some winter wheat, but I'm not sure. There were two ponds on the farm, one was really old and overgrown, so that no fish would breed in it any longer. When I was 10, Grandpa had a new pond built, and he stocked it with bass and bluegill. He taught me to fish, and my cousin Curtis, but I'm not sure about my other cousins. Aunt Kathleen, and her daughters Molly and Annie, lived in Arizona and then Wyoming, before finally settling in Wisconsin, so I didn't see them as often as I'd have liked. In fact, I was the only grandchild for 10 years, before Tommi Jo came along (Molly is 2 years older than Tommi Jo, but I never counted her, since she lived in other states and therefore wasn't a rival for Grandma's affections).
After the nap, I would drive my cousins into town to pick up a couple of movies at the seed & feed store/video rental place, which was run by a blind woman and her husband. All of the videos were labeled in Braille, so she could find movies when her husband was busy selling seed/feed/fertilizer to local farmers. Nothing above a PG rating, that was the rule.
If we wanted to get clean, there was only the bathtub, no shower. And my grandparents had a well, so if there was a drought, we had to....share bathwater!!! Oh, get over yourself. The cleanest person would go first, and so on and so on.
The farm has been in the family for over 150 years, and I'm not sure when the farmhouse was built but the layout was very simple: the main floor had a living room, kitchen and dining room. Upstairs had three bedrooms, no hallways. The main bedroom was at the top of the stairs, with the bathroom being just off of the main bedroom. The house was heated by coal, and there were no vents upstairs, so it got super cold in the winter. That's why Grandma kept her homemade candy in the green room during Christmas-time.
Grandma and Grandpa slept in the main bedroom, JoEllen and her kids slept in the "blue room" and my mom and I slept in the "green room" (which was the furthest from the stairs and the coldest).
When Kathleen and her kids were down, we'd make up beds on the floor. Mom and her sisters would then keep all of us awake talking and giggling about stuff they'd done as children. Like the time Kathleen snuck into JoEllen's room, under her bed, and grabbed her, making JoEllen scream and pee the bed, which led to my grandma making all of the kids sleep in the shed with the sheep....and I totally made up that last bit. Are you still with me? Whatever. If you aren't, you're not interested. If you are, you're probably in my family.
Sunday morning. Grandpa always cooked that meal. Scrambled eggs with chopped up bacon in them. Pancakes and sausage. Biscuits and gravy, with fried Morrell mushrooms in season. And the most disgusting breakfast ever...scrapple, which I secretly nicknamed "crapple". Basically, scrapple consists of cornmeal mush, mixed with leftover pig parts, "everything but the squeal" such as the head, heart and liver, formed into a semi-congealed loaf and fried before serving. I know. What's not to love?
Grandma would start dinner, which I called "lunch" before church and stick it in the oven. After church, she sometimes made Grandpa race back to the house so dinner didn't burn, on account of the preacher going over his allotted time.
Sunday dinner. Chicken and noodles, baked ham, scalloped chicken, fried fish and pork chops, along with the various things that appeared at each meal. Bread and butter with jelly (always), pickled beet eggs (around Easter, and disgusting), Aunt JoEllen's awesome salad with vinegar and sugar dressing, her amazing potato salad (whenever we had fish) and Grandma's canned vegetables. We also had something called "snicker salad". This consisted of chopped up snickers and cut up apples, mixed with cool whip, and it was actually served with dinner (lunch), not after. Then there was dessert. Homemade angel food cake with pennuche frosting, rhubarb, peach or blackberry cobbler covered in Milnot condensed milk (eww, right?) or chocolate cupcakes I'd made the day before with Grandma.
Supper (dinner) that night was usually simple, since the main meal on Sunday was Dinner (lunch). Sometimes my mom would make vegetable beef soup, which always stressed me out. I'd eat the vegetables separately but not on the same spoonful (I know, somewhat OCD'ish), so I'd spend dinner (supper) first eating all the corn, then all the lima beans, then all the potatoes, then all the carrots, and etc...it took forever.
Or Grandpa would pop corn on the stove for supper (dinner). First, he would melt a bunch of the leftover bacon grease from breakfast (depression-era, waste not, want not), then he would throw in a handful of kernels. After he popped the corn, he'd pour butter over it and then salt it. Their cat loved it, and we'd entertain ourselves by throwing popped kernels at him, until Grandpa got mad because we were wasting food. The cat's name was Honky and he was pure black. Ironic, I know. He'd actually belonged to my Aunt JoEllen, who'd been a huge Elton John fan, jump back, honky-cat....So his full name was Honky-Cat.
If you made it this far in my post, I commend you. I'm sure this was completely boring and I thank you for sticking with it. If you're a member of my family....weren't those good times?
I'll post about the headless chicken another time, promise.
Mom and I would go down early on a Saturday morning and come back home late Sunday night. I remember feeling like so much fun was stuffed into those 36+ hours. Sometimes we'd walk in and Grandma and Grandpa would be in the kitchen, making homemade noodles. There would be a big lunch, which they called "dinner", followed by a big nap for everybody. I mean it, my entire family would find a couch, half-a-couch, chair or space on the floor and we would crash. We were like a litter of kittens, and we always said the house just made us sleepy. It's also possible that we suffered from low levels of carbon-monoxide poisoning, I'm not sure.
My grandpa raised sheep, along with crops of corn and soybeans. He may have planted some winter wheat, but I'm not sure. There were two ponds on the farm, one was really old and overgrown, so that no fish would breed in it any longer. When I was 10, Grandpa had a new pond built, and he stocked it with bass and bluegill. He taught me to fish, and my cousin Curtis, but I'm not sure about my other cousins. Aunt Kathleen, and her daughters Molly and Annie, lived in Arizona and then Wyoming, before finally settling in Wisconsin, so I didn't see them as often as I'd have liked. In fact, I was the only grandchild for 10 years, before Tommi Jo came along (Molly is 2 years older than Tommi Jo, but I never counted her, since she lived in other states and therefore wasn't a rival for Grandma's affections).
After the nap, I would drive my cousins into town to pick up a couple of movies at the seed & feed store/video rental place, which was run by a blind woman and her husband. All of the videos were labeled in Braille, so she could find movies when her husband was busy selling seed/feed/fertilizer to local farmers. Nothing above a PG rating, that was the rule.
If we wanted to get clean, there was only the bathtub, no shower. And my grandparents had a well, so if there was a drought, we had to....share bathwater!!! Oh, get over yourself. The cleanest person would go first, and so on and so on.
The farm has been in the family for over 150 years, and I'm not sure when the farmhouse was built but the layout was very simple: the main floor had a living room, kitchen and dining room. Upstairs had three bedrooms, no hallways. The main bedroom was at the top of the stairs, with the bathroom being just off of the main bedroom. The house was heated by coal, and there were no vents upstairs, so it got super cold in the winter. That's why Grandma kept her homemade candy in the green room during Christmas-time.
Grandma and Grandpa slept in the main bedroom, JoEllen and her kids slept in the "blue room" and my mom and I slept in the "green room" (which was the furthest from the stairs and the coldest).
When Kathleen and her kids were down, we'd make up beds on the floor. Mom and her sisters would then keep all of us awake talking and giggling about stuff they'd done as children. Like the time Kathleen snuck into JoEllen's room, under her bed, and grabbed her, making JoEllen scream and pee the bed, which led to my grandma making all of the kids sleep in the shed with the sheep....and I totally made up that last bit. Are you still with me? Whatever. If you aren't, you're not interested. If you are, you're probably in my family.
Sunday morning. Grandpa always cooked that meal. Scrambled eggs with chopped up bacon in them. Pancakes and sausage. Biscuits and gravy, with fried Morrell mushrooms in season. And the most disgusting breakfast ever...scrapple, which I secretly nicknamed "crapple". Basically, scrapple consists of cornmeal mush, mixed with leftover pig parts, "everything but the squeal" such as the head, heart and liver, formed into a semi-congealed loaf and fried before serving. I know. What's not to love?
Grandma would start dinner, which I called "lunch" before church and stick it in the oven. After church, she sometimes made Grandpa race back to the house so dinner didn't burn, on account of the preacher going over his allotted time.
Sunday dinner. Chicken and noodles, baked ham, scalloped chicken, fried fish and pork chops, along with the various things that appeared at each meal. Bread and butter with jelly (always), pickled beet eggs (around Easter, and disgusting), Aunt JoEllen's awesome salad with vinegar and sugar dressing, her amazing potato salad (whenever we had fish) and Grandma's canned vegetables. We also had something called "snicker salad". This consisted of chopped up snickers and cut up apples, mixed with cool whip, and it was actually served with dinner (lunch), not after. Then there was dessert. Homemade angel food cake with pennuche frosting, rhubarb, peach or blackberry cobbler covered in Milnot condensed milk (eww, right?) or chocolate cupcakes I'd made the day before with Grandma.
Supper (dinner) that night was usually simple, since the main meal on Sunday was Dinner (lunch). Sometimes my mom would make vegetable beef soup, which always stressed me out. I'd eat the vegetables separately but not on the same spoonful (I know, somewhat OCD'ish), so I'd spend dinner (supper) first eating all the corn, then all the lima beans, then all the potatoes, then all the carrots, and etc...it took forever.
Or Grandpa would pop corn on the stove for supper (dinner). First, he would melt a bunch of the leftover bacon grease from breakfast (depression-era, waste not, want not), then he would throw in a handful of kernels. After he popped the corn, he'd pour butter over it and then salt it. Their cat loved it, and we'd entertain ourselves by throwing popped kernels at him, until Grandpa got mad because we were wasting food. The cat's name was Honky and he was pure black. Ironic, I know. He'd actually belonged to my Aunt JoEllen, who'd been a huge Elton John fan, jump back, honky-cat....So his full name was Honky-Cat.
If you made it this far in my post, I commend you. I'm sure this was completely boring and I thank you for sticking with it. If you're a member of my family....weren't those good times?
I'll post about the headless chicken another time, promise.
Dead Unicorns And Spaghetti Monsters
My 11-year-old daughter has a cell phone with a limited number of minutes each month. When they're gone, they're gone. Unfortunately, she also has a fierce addiction to texting, and 3 texts=1 minute. When you only get 100 minutes a month, they go pretty fast. I have tried to tell her not to waste her minutes on unnecessary texts, but my advice seems to fall on deaf ears. How do I know? Well, here's an example of how she chooses to use her text minutes:
Julia: Where are you?
Yesterday, 8:15pm
Me: Just got done @ kroger. Getting my salad and coming home. Love u.
Yesterday, 8:18pm
Julia: I love you.
Yesterday, 8:18pm
Me: <3
Yesterday, 8:19pm
Julia: Kiss
Yesterday, 8:20pm
Julia: *sends cute photo of 8 week old puppy she found on the internet*
Yesterday, 8:30pm
Julia: Where are you?
Yesterday, 8:33pm
Me: On my way now. Stop wasting ur minutes! <3. And yes i know u love me so dont waste minutes, k?
Yesterday, 8:34pm
Julia: K
Yesterday, 8:35pm
But she took it like this:
Julia: Where are you?
Yesterday, 8:15pm
Me: Just got done @ kroger. Getting my salad and coming home. Love u.
Yesterday, 8:18pm
Julia: I love you.
Yesterday, 8:18pm
Me: <3
Yesterday, 8:19pm
Julia: Kiss
Yesterday, 8:20pm
Julia: *sends cute photo of 8 week old puppy she found on the internet*
Yesterday, 8:30pm
Julia: Where are you?
Yesterday, 8:33pm
Me: On my way now. Stop wasting ur minutes! <3. And yes i know u love me so dont waste minutes, k?
Yesterday, 8:34pm
Julia: K
Yesterday, 8:35pm
*sigh*
Julia: Where are you?
6:06pm
Julia: Where are you? answer
6:33pm
Julia: U all most here
6:49pm
Me: Yes
6:49pm
Julia: Good with food (wtf?)
6:50pm
Julia: U here me (she was singing at her master choir recital. With 371 other kids. And she wanted to know if I could hear her)
7:34pm
Julia: *unintelligible voice text asking if I videotaped her recital*
9:03pm
Julia: Where are you?
9:09pm
Me: Popeyes
9:16pm
Me: Everytime you waste your cell minutes saying things like "k" or "where are u" or "u there?" God kills a beautiful unicorn. Do you want that on your conscience?
9:24pm
Julia: K
9:25pm
Oh, and today Zach got a D in Conduct. Why? Because he called his art teacher "A Spaghetti Monster". And she was offended by this. Why? I happen to know that he enjoys a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs every once in a while. Perhaps it was a compliment, no matter how backhanded. Maybe he meant it like this:
But she took it like this:
Maybe.
Know why I don't want my son to pee standing up? Because somebody, probably ME, is gonna sit in it. THAT'S why.
Last night, I watched The Hot Chick with my 8-year-old son. I wasn't too worried, there was some minor language but he knows better than to repeat it, and any sexual innuendoes flew right over his head, so it was the perfect movie for us.
There was one scene in particular that caught his attention. It's the scene of the movie where "Jessica" has to go pee at the club. In earlier scenes we saw that she just peed sitting down, but she has to use the trough in the men's room at the club, and apparently she's never peed standing up.
Ok, I just realized that if you've never seen the movie, this probably makes no sense to you. Basically, a cheerleader (Rachel McAdams) and a thief (Rob Schneider) accidentally switch bodies. Here's the movie poster:
Now you want to see it, right? I know. So anyway there's this scene where the cheerleader has to go standing up. Zach sat straight up and got that look in his eye, the look that says I have an interest in this, a desire to see it play out in real life and with enough time I'll have a plan. Wait...there. Now I have a plan.
Because I potty-trained both of my children, I taught both of them to go pee sitting down. Julia had no issues with this, but Zach insisted on standing up. The problems with this were that I had never seen a guy actually go pee, because my ex-husband would never let me watch. And I asked A LOT. So I didn't know if I was supposed to tell Zach to just point and shoot, or was there a special way to do it? And I've heard rumors about something called "shaking it", but I wasn't sure about that either, and I knew that if I just told him, "shake it", I'd get a call from the school telling me that my son was shaking his penis at the other kids on the playground. Because he would totally do that. He has done that. Both in Kindergarten AND in first grade.
So he sat. But he didn't like it.
Then he saw THIS SCENE last night, and I knew that someday, somehow, I was going to regret letting my incredibly impulsive, creative and curious son watch this movie:
I just didn't know I would regret it so soon.
This morning I sat on the toilet seat and it was wet!!! Ewww!
So I yelled downstairs, "Zach! Did you pee standing up this morning?"
Zach: "...No!"
Me: "Zach!! Did you pee standing up this morning!!"
Zach: "...No!!"
Me: "ZACH! DID YOU PEE STANDING UP THIS MORNING?!!"
Zach: "...yes."
Me: "Well I SAT IN IT!!!"
Zach: ".....Ewwww!!"
And THAT is why he pees sitting down. His future spouse will thank me. School janitors and grade school teachers will thank me. And if he ever becomes friends with your son, or ever dates your daughter, you will thank me.
There was one scene in particular that caught his attention. It's the scene of the movie where "Jessica" has to go pee at the club. In earlier scenes we saw that she just peed sitting down, but she has to use the trough in the men's room at the club, and apparently she's never peed standing up.
Ok, I just realized that if you've never seen the movie, this probably makes no sense to you. Basically, a cheerleader (Rachel McAdams) and a thief (Rob Schneider) accidentally switch bodies. Here's the movie poster:
Now you want to see it, right? I know. So anyway there's this scene where the cheerleader has to go standing up. Zach sat straight up and got that look in his eye, the look that says I have an interest in this, a desire to see it play out in real life and with enough time I'll have a plan. Wait...there. Now I have a plan.
Because I potty-trained both of my children, I taught both of them to go pee sitting down. Julia had no issues with this, but Zach insisted on standing up. The problems with this were that I had never seen a guy actually go pee, because my ex-husband would never let me watch. And I asked A LOT. So I didn't know if I was supposed to tell Zach to just point and shoot, or was there a special way to do it? And I've heard rumors about something called "shaking it", but I wasn't sure about that either, and I knew that if I just told him, "shake it", I'd get a call from the school telling me that my son was shaking his penis at the other kids on the playground. Because he would totally do that. He has done that. Both in Kindergarten AND in first grade.
So he sat. But he didn't like it.
Then he saw THIS SCENE last night, and I knew that someday, somehow, I was going to regret letting my incredibly impulsive, creative and curious son watch this movie:
I just didn't know I would regret it so soon.
This morning I sat on the toilet seat and it was wet!!! Ewww!
So I yelled downstairs, "Zach! Did you pee standing up this morning?"
Zach: "...No!"
Me: "Zach!! Did you pee standing up this morning!!"
Zach: "...No!!"
Me: "ZACH! DID YOU PEE STANDING UP THIS MORNING?!!"
Zach: "...yes."
Me: "Well I SAT IN IT!!!"
Zach: ".....Ewwww!!"
And THAT is why he pees sitting down. His future spouse will thank me. School janitors and grade school teachers will thank me. And if he ever becomes friends with your son, or ever dates your daughter, you will thank me.
Just Give Me A Sibling And Nobody Gets Hurt
When I was little, and even when I was not-so-little, my dream was to have a brother or sister, because being an only child sucks. I wanted that built-in playmate that all of my friends seemed to have. The person who might try to kill me in my sleep, but would always have my back in times of need. So I waited expectantly for my parents to tell me that a little brother or sister would be coming our way. And I waited some more.
When I was 5, I decided to take matters into my own hands.
For several years now I had seen my mom take these cute little pills in this cute round plastic container. She took one every night, without fail. That round little plastic circle was way too much like a pez dispenser to be ignored. Was it candy? I had to find out.
"Mommy? What are those pills in that round thingie?"
"Oh, those are Mommy's special pills. They keep me from having a baby."
wrong answer.
*cagily* "Sooo, if you didn't take those pills you'd have a baby?"
"That's right, if it wasn't for those little pills, you'd have a little brother or sister! That's why I have to take one every single night."
*Pops sibling-preventing pill into her mouth and swallows it down. Beams brightly at her only child.*
So now that I knew the why, it was up to me to pave the way for my brother-or-sister-to-be. Timing was everything.
Then next day I waited until she went to the bathroom, which was generally when I pulled most of my hijinx. After I heard the door close, I quickly ran to the kitchen and shoved the flat container underneath our 300 pound Amana Radar Range:
Suddenly, she sat down and held out her arms.
"Come here sweetie."
I narrowed my eyes at this trick, Clint Eastwood style.
She motioned once again with her outstretched arms, and I slowly walked towards her. She sighed once, then once more. She shook her head regretfully and made full eye contact with me. I thought I saw an unshed tear glinting in the kitchen lighting, but she'd tricked me before, so I wasn't buying it.
"Honey, Mommy can't have anymore babies. The doctor said if I had anymore babies I'd die."
*gasp!* For realsies?
She nodded regretfully. But I was always a suspicious child.
"Then why didn't you get fixed like Kitty-Kat? And why do I sometimes hear you telling Daddy, 'You know, I'm not getting any younger so if we want to have another kid, we'd better get on it'? And why do you and Daddy sometimes look at me and shake your heads and say, "Next time....next time we'll get it right'?"
She chewed on her bottom lip nervously, then suddenly gave a slight cough.
"See, sweetie? Those pills keep Mommy alive, I'm getting sick already! *cough* Honey....Mommy's getting weak.....need...my...pills....." And with that, she gasped and laid her head on the kitchen table. She was also holding her breath.
No. Freakin'. Way. Seriously?
I quickly fished the pills out from under the radar range and handed them to her. They must have been magical pills because she immediately sat up, popped one in her mouth and got that no-consequences-nookie look in her eyes.
I had been tricked.
Well played, Suzanne.
Well played.
When I was 5, I decided to take matters into my own hands.
For several years now I had seen my mom take these cute little pills in this cute round plastic container. She took one every night, without fail. That round little plastic circle was way too much like a pez dispenser to be ignored. Was it candy? I had to find out.
"Mommy? What are those pills in that round thingie?"
"Oh, those are Mommy's special pills. They keep me from having a baby."
wrong answer.
*cagily* "Sooo, if you didn't take those pills you'd have a baby?"
"That's right, if it wasn't for those little pills, you'd have a little brother or sister! That's why I have to take one every single night."
*Pops sibling-preventing pill into her mouth and swallows it down. Beams brightly at her only child.*
So now that I knew the why, it was up to me to pave the way for my brother-or-sister-to-be. Timing was everything.
Then next day I waited until she went to the bathroom, which was generally when I pulled most of my hijinx. After I heard the door close, I quickly ran to the kitchen and shoved the flat container underneath our 300 pound Amana Radar Range:
It was a big deal to have one of these in 1974. My dad had a friend who owned an Amana dealership and he got it for my mom that Christmas. The dial at the top measured the time in seconds, up to one minute. The bottom dial measured the time in 5 minute incriments, up to an hour. For the two months following that Christmas, my dad went out and bought pounds of bacon and invited all of the men in the trailer court over to watch it cook in the Radar Range. Then they would all stand around and talk about how fast it cooked things, while they ate the bacon.
That night, I heard my mom moving things around on the kitchen counter, her movements becoming more frantic with time. I stared stonily at the t.v., my mind made up. I would not cave. Johnny and/or Annette were counting on me.
"Yvonne? Have you seen my pills?"
Silence. It was the best weapon, as nothing could be used against me.
"Yvonne? Did you hear me? Where are my pills?"
Cue the music:
Slowly, I turned my eyes from the t.v. and looked at her. "Um, I don't know?"
Her eyes narrowed as she came to the realization that her 5-year-old daughter was trying to take charge of her reproductive cycle. Her incredibly stubborn and lonely 5-year-old daughter.
"Yvonne! You give me back my pills right this instant!"
"Um...no. I threw them away and now you'll have a baby and then I can blame it when all the sugar cookies go missing from the Christmas tree. You'll never know who peed in the sink and it can sleep in my closet. When it gets older we're going to gang up on you and Daddy so you'll have to buy us a house. The kind without wheels."
She made a kind of choking noise when I told her I'd thrown the pills away, and she quickly checked the garbage. She found no pills and called my bluff.
"If you don't give me back my pills RIGHT NOW I'm going to spank your butt!"
I rolled my eyes.
"I'll...I'll...I'll ground you from your toys!"
I sighed and inspected my nails.
She could see that threats would not sway me. This was war, and she would have to change her plan of attack. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth worked as she tried to figure out what might cause me put her refusal to have another child ahead of my determination to have a sibling.
She stared at me. Hard. I stared back at her coolly from across the Harvest Gold and Avacado Green living room.
"Come here sweetie."
I narrowed my eyes at this trick, Clint Eastwood style.
She motioned once again with her outstretched arms, and I slowly walked towards her. She sighed once, then once more. She shook her head regretfully and made full eye contact with me. I thought I saw an unshed tear glinting in the kitchen lighting, but she'd tricked me before, so I wasn't buying it.
"Honey, Mommy can't have anymore babies. The doctor said if I had anymore babies I'd die."
*gasp!* For realsies?
She nodded regretfully. But I was always a suspicious child.
"Then why didn't you get fixed like Kitty-Kat? And why do I sometimes hear you telling Daddy, 'You know, I'm not getting any younger so if we want to have another kid, we'd better get on it'? And why do you and Daddy sometimes look at me and shake your heads and say, "Next time....next time we'll get it right'?"
She chewed on her bottom lip nervously, then suddenly gave a slight cough.
"See, sweetie? Those pills keep Mommy alive, I'm getting sick already! *cough* Honey....Mommy's getting weak.....need...my...pills....." And with that, she gasped and laid her head on the kitchen table. She was also holding her breath.
No. Freakin'. Way. Seriously?
I quickly fished the pills out from under the radar range and handed them to her. They must have been magical pills because she immediately sat up, popped one in her mouth and got that no-consequences-nookie look in her eyes.
I had been tricked.
Well played, Suzanne.
Well played.
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