We went to my parents’ for the weekend to go to my SIL’s baby shower. The highlights of my weekend:
1. There was a 1 year old at the shower. Z was fascinating to her. At one point she started walking towards Z in a great imitation of a zombie shuffle. Z started to run and yell, “Babies are scary!!” in the middle of the shower. Everyone looked at me like I put her up to it. Wonder why? I pulled her aside and told her that she was absolutely correct but that she wasn’t allowed to say it out loud. Welcome to the great secret world of baby haters, kid!
2. I overheard my mother having a conversation about grandchildren. She was asked if the impending baby was her first grandchild. She said yes and then pointed out Z and said that she was her “unofficial grandchild.” Pause. Then she added grumpily, “Very unofficial.” Ooooh, I think my mother just dissed me and my happily living-in-sin status. LOL
3. A woman did a very involved grace before dinner. In it she commended the mother to be’s “two mothers”. My cousin and I had a hard time stifling the giggles. I think the lady meant meant to praise my mother and my SIL’s mother but it didn’t come across that way.
4. When we were in line to eat Z started licking my arm for reasons only clear in a six year old’s mind. I told her to stop or I’d cut off her cookie supply. She stopped immediately. My cousin commented on how “obedient” she was. “Obedient” and “Z” have never been used in a sentence together before.
5. Z made my father watch a Bratz movie.
6. On the ride home she was grumpy. I swear we need to start drugging that kid for the ride home since the fun of anticipating a visit is gone and all that is left is a 3.5 hour drive. We were listening to a book on CD. She started to object. Repeatedly and with escalating loudness. I invoked the road trip rule that the driver gets to pick the entertainment. Her father said that if he shut off the CD he was going to get the most annoying music that he could find. He did. We started with mariachi. Z was yelling, “What are they saying???” over and over. Then we found a station playing the top hits of the 1940s. The SO and I danced in the front seat to the Andrews Sisters. Z was screaming, “Make it go away!” After that there was a station playing different versions of THE BANANA BOAT SONG one after the other. We can sing “Day-O” with the best of them. Then we found Kasey Kasem’s Top 40 from 1974. Some of the top 10 from that week have very thankfully faded into obscurity. The wails of “I Want Hannah Montana!!!” from the backseat were ever so pitiful. At one point she made up her own song.
“I love my mommy!
I love my mom—my!
YOU are not my mommy!
And YOU are not my mommy!”
I think we were supposed to be mortally emotionally wounded. I don’t think we were supposed to say, “Amen” and start laughing. She can add that to the list of things she’ll tell a therapist someday.
7. I took Freckles trail running and we were in a hit and run accident with a free range Pomeranian. I feel empathy now for Spirit on the day he was randomly attacked by Snowball. “When Pomeranians Go Nuts” is a scary thing. I don’t know how we didn’t trip over her since we didn’t see her coming until she was under our feet.
8. We are still pulling staples out of stairs. We are halfway up the stairs now. We exploited child labor to have her pull staples too. Character building, you know. Strangely she didn’t seem to mind that nearly as much as the hits of the 1940s.
9. My parents live in a fairly rural area. Not rolling farmland but no developments either. There is a butcher shop near them. It is a weird place to have a commercial business in the middle of pretty much nowhere but it has been there forever. There was a shop and a barn where they took in a few animals at a time. It closed last year. It was recently sold. It is going to be a strip club. That will be even more incongruous. It is directly in line with the front windows of the biggest bible thumping family on the road. I can’t stop laughing every time I think of it because it is so absurd.
