Don't Make Me Angry

Why do people insist on scaring me? I do not react like a normal person.

A normal person would scream, freeze, or maybe fall. I attack.

My best friend scared me one time, and I gave her a bloody nose. My daughter scared me once, and I almost ripped my husband's ear off.

People should be careful around me. I am like a grenade with it's pin in the dust. Yet, my relations continue to risk their bodies in attempts to scare me.

Makenna gave me a nasty fright when she secretly changed the wallpaper on the screen of my iphone to a close up of her eyeball. My phone barely survived the thrashing it received when that picture popped to light.

But, when I was searching for the Crisco and opened the spice cupboard, I was scared nearly senseless when I found a slimy, warty monster hiding inside. It turned out to be Makenna, but I still almost ripped that cupboard out of the wall.

Worst Voice Text Ever

Yes, my mother-in-law rides on motorcycles. She also wears ridiculous masks and attends the midnight premier of The Hobbit.

My son just turned sixteen and is a new driver. I have no words to explain adequately the paralyzing fear a parent experiences when their newly licensed child takes command of the car and drives away.

Josiah drove himself to a piano lesson from his motorcycle-riding, mask-wearing grandma. He arrived safely. But, as I was driving I witnessed a severe car accident on the interstate. Knowing Josiah was going to be driving on this very path in the near future, I took advantage of the completely stopped traffic to warn him via text message that traffic would be stop and go and to be oh so careful. I had visions in my head of Josiah driving at a ludicrous 70 mph, surprised by suddenly encountering an entire interstate of cars at a dead stop, and I can't talk about the rest of the vision.

Josiah responded to my text by asking if there was an alternate route he could take home so he could avoid the accident. I didn't think there was. He said surely there was another route. But traffic was beginning to move, so I began to voice text so I could focus on the stop and go pattern of driving I was going to endure for the foreseeable future. I voice texted him to ask his grandma if she had any ideas because she's good with directions. She's good with DIRECTIONS. And that, my friends, was when I sent the worst possible text in the history of communication to my teenage son.

Josiah showed the text to his grandma, who called me immediately.
"I can't believe I sent that text to Josiah!" I wailed.
"Well," she said, "I think you give me more credit than I deserve."

Coffee Challenge - Week 4

1. It is difficult to drink an entire cup of coffee before it gets cold.


2. I would rather have my mouth full of rusted nails than cold, leftover coffee.

3. Some people I know make their coffee bitingly and intensely strong.

4. I still love those people.

Josiah

My oldest son is turning 16 today. Sometimes I miss the toddler Josiah so much I would do almost anything for a time machine just so that I could hug that fuzzy haired little boy one more time.

He was born with ears that were way too big for his body, and when it was time to start loosing teeth, he lost all of them at once. This boy learned to crawl in one day and learned to walk the next. He took four hour naps until one day when he dropped napping completely.

We were on vacation in Florida one time when a strange phenomenon occurred. Multitudes of fish began to swim to the shallow water where we were swimming. Soon the fish were swimming up onto the sand by the hundreds. I thought maybe I was watching evolution happen before my eyes, but then I was told that this was a yearly event. Apparently sharks infested the deeper water at that time of the year, so the fish swam onto the shore in a desperate attempt to avoid becoming a snack. It was most definitely one of the strangest things I have ever seen happen. Then I noticed that Josiah was picking the flopping fish up one by one and tossing them back into the water. I told him that there were way too many fish for him to throw them all back in. "I know I can't save all of them," he said, "but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try."

When he was older we took a trip to Chicago. We took in all the typical Chicago sights, and were walking around downtown so the kids buy some souvenirs with their spending money. Suddenly Josiah told us all to wait, and he ran back and gave all of his money to a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk who we had walked past many times. Someone made a comment that the man would probably just use the money to buy whiskey. "Maybe he will," Josiah said, "but at least I know I showed someone who has nothing that he is a valuable person."


When we were talking about the huge island of garbage that has collected in the Pacific Ocean, he said that we should get a boat and go clean it up. I told him that the dump was so large it would take years to clean up. He shrugged and said, "Then we should get started right away."

The world is a better place because of Josiah. 

                                                Happy Birthday, Son. I am honored to be your mother.

Coffee Challenge - Week 3

1. Being a coffee connoisseur makes me want to buy more mugs than I need.

2. I can't drink all of my coffee before it gets cold. It is a problem.

3. Drinking coffee while eating chocolate is highly recommended. Even without the coffee.

4. I'm going to have to buy more coffee soon. This is likely to cause a melt-down when faced with the staggering amount of choices.

Collar Magic

Our dog has a tendency to run like the wind. He runs faster than any human can think about running. And, because he was built to pull heavy sleds, he escapes our grip with just a tiny effort. In the past we have worried that he would run away and we would never see him again, so we bought him cute name tags to put on his collar. Then he destroyed the cute name tags. Three times. Finally, I accepted that he did not appreciate cute name tags.

Then we tried to make sure he was always on a leash. This lead to one broken ankle, seven eaten, ripped or destroyed leashes, and a lot of howling. When I finally stopped howling, I stumbled upon a genius solution. I logged onto a website and ordered that naughty dog a collar with his name and my number stitched into it. Genius.

This is what he looks like with his new collar on.

Yeah.

You can't see it.

Not at all.

But I know it's there.

And that makes me smile.