Ed had picked the boys up from their last day of school.  On the drive back to the office, they were looking at their little yearbooks and talking about all of their old girlfriends.  Trip’s little girlfriend moved away this year, so Ed asked Trip if he missed her.

Trip said, “Not really.  It’s good to be a bachelor.”

Ed asked,”You don’t miss having a girlfriend?”

Trip replied, “No, I got bossed around a lot.”

Logan then piped up with, “You dummy!  That’s the point of having a girlfriend!”

Ed blames me for the skewed views on relationships.  I’m pretty sure it’s just because he’s evil.

A couple of weeks ago, we were eating a big weekend breakfast at one of our favorite restaurants and I ordered coffee.  Here’s the thing though:  I don’t like cream in my coffee.  I like milk.  Cream is too thick for me.  So naturally, I asked for milk instead of cream.  My milk versus cream issue has absolutely nothing to do with my current diet, but my guys had to add in a few details for my request.

Ed started, “The milk should be whole milk from a cow that has only eaten organically grown grass.  It should also be a white cow with three large black spots.”

“The cow should be one born only in the month of October and not more than four years old,” said Logan.

Trip couldn’t be left out.  “And the cow should only have lived in Texas or in an adjoining state.”

I just smiled and asked if they could meet all of those requirements.  The server laughed and said, “Of course!”

Last weekend, we ate at the same restaurant.  I ordered an omelet and asked for a couple of things to be left out.  My requests were not unreasonable and the server said it would be easy to accommodate my requests.

Trip piped up first.  “The chicken which laid the eggs should be a white chicken.”

“It should have black spots, but the spots should only be on the chicken’s face,” supplied Ed.

Logan finished, “The chicken needs to have been born in the summer time of the last year.”

Our server was the same one who had heard their routine about the cow a couple of weeks prior and she was giggling at the onset of it.

My omelet was delicious!

After driving for a full fifteen minutes, I was getting a little tired so I decided that I’d get the boys talking.  What better time and way to have a sweet evening with my little cherubs?  The sky was a beautiful shade of blue and the clouds looked like cotton candy in the sky.  To get a sweet conversation started, I asked the boys to tell me what the clouds looked like to them, if they saw any shapes in the sky.

Boy #2 started with his description first.  “I see an elephant.”

Aww!!  My sweet boy!!  He saw an elephant in the clouds!

He wasn’t finished.

“And the elephant has his trunk pointed at a hawk’s butt and the hawk is farting so the elephant can sniff up the fart!”

They both erupted in laughter.  My sweet parenting moment was ruined!

I groaned and they took my groan as an invitation to continue.

“There’s an alien’s head in the sky!”

“There’s a letter T and a bear.  It stands for teddy bear!”

“There’s a dinosaur on your side, Mommy.  It’s just opening it’s mouth.  No, he’s eating the crown of a king!”

“Three horses being shot at the same time by a number 3!”

“I see a Megalodon eating a queen conch!”

What’s a mother of boys to do?  I laughed with them.  It’s not like I was shocked by their imaginations.

Later during the drive, I asked them what they wanted to eat at the game.  Boy #1 spoke up first,  “I’m going to eat garlic flies and a hot cat and a hambooger!”

“That’s a lot of food, boy!” I said.

“Well Mom, I’m a hungry boy!” he replied.  Then he shrieked in disgust, “Eww, Mom!  He ate some of my hair!”

I should’ve expected this.  It’s not like I’ve never met my boys before.

1. There are no electronics.  If you’re sick, you can sleep or read in your room.

This one usually gets the straggler out of his grumpy mood and well on his way into school clothes and out the door.  If it doesn’t work and the parent at home has still been duped, there’s the next rule.

2.  If you’re sick enough to stay home, you’re too sick to speak.

This one can seem a little rough.  Obviously, I don’t mean that they can’t tell me something important.  I mean they can’t stand in front of me while I’m working on my literary career (ha!) in the morning and jabber away about nothing at all until they’re blue in the face.  I’ve fallen for their ruse.  I’ve let them stay home.  I will baby a sick little boy.  I will not listen to endless observations from a non-sick child on a writing day.

My rules might sound a bit draconian, but the boys have learned how to pull the wool over my eyes.  It’s adapt or lose my standing now.

Last Friday, the little boys and I went to the Rialto Theater in Denison with a friend of mine and her son.  It’s a fabulous old theater in downtown Denison which fortunately made it through all these years intact.  A couple of local guys bought it and renovated it, keeping the feeling of a fabulous old theater still in place.  The theater still has the original seats (I’m assuming) and curtains that can close across the screen.  The movie screen can be removed for stage performances.  It’s a really magical place and I’m glad they spent the time and energy to bring it back to life.

So Friday night, the boys and I went to see the original Superman at the Rialto with a couple of friends.  I told them in the car on the way home what our plans were for the evening and they had a few questions about the movie.

Logan:  “How long ago was it made?”

Me:  “1978.”

Trip:  “Was it in black and white?”

Me:  “Just how old do you think I am?”

Trip:  “You’re 34.”

Me:  “When do you think they started making movies in color?”

Trip:  “1993.”

Me:  “You little demon!”

Logan couldn’t speak because he was laughing so hard.

So we got there right as the movie was starting.  There was no one else in line, so we bought our tickets and helped ensure they would remain open by buying stuff at the concession stand I would normally have insisted we get at the grocery store first and three drinks instead of one.  The three boys raced up the stairs to sit in the balcony and my friend and I dutifully followed, while I said just loud enough for them to hear as they were going up the stairs that there were ghosts up there who might get them.  They ignored me.

We sat on wooden seats and watched Superman on a far bigger screen than would fit in someone’s house with theater quality surround sound.  I laughed at the hairstyles from the ’70′s and at some of the special effects.  The boys were entranced, or at least they were during the action scenes.  Not one of them cared for the romantic scenes.  My friend and I must have been asked 12,837 times during those sweet, romantic scenes when the movie would be over because they were grossed out.  Fortunately, action scenes followed.

Being the dutiful blogger I am, ahem, I took more pictures in the dark with no flash.  You’re welcome.

I tried to get a picture with my camera phone, but it was dark and the picture didn’t come out well.  The owl hopped to a closer branch, still curious, still watching and simply sat there until I finally got too cold to stay where I was.  I ran into my in-laws house to get the boys, rushing them and my mother-in-law into shoes to go see the majestic creature, but he was gone.  All I had was this picture, which the little boys thought was very cool.

I’ve published my first collection of short stories!  Here’s the link

For the first time, I simply took all of the ornaments out of their various containers and boxes and laid them on the coffee table.  The boys picked out which ornaments they wanted to hang and where.  They remarked about remembering certain ornaments and asked who gave them others.  After I broke my third ornament of the season, I decided this was a good year to keep the fragile ornaments in their boxes and in the closet. 

Logan was the last to break an ornament and even though he had heard me say several times that they were just things, material things, and nothing would really change in the long run if they were broken, he got really upset.  A tear rolled down his chubby cheek as he picked up the shards of glass.  I took the glass shards from him, gave him a hug, and told him the really important thing was the time we spent together, not the material things we owned.

I realized tonight that this would probably be the last year the boys believe in Santa.  There are two reasons for this.  First, both boys have requested a laptop for Christmas.  Ed and I are both adamant they are too young for such an extravagant gift.  They are still too young for used laptops too, though maybe next summer they’ll get hand-me-down laptops.  The second is that Trip has been asking for one of those Elf on the Shelf creatures and I steadfastly refuse to participate in such nonsense.  I am a mediocre housekeeper on my best cleaning days and I sure as hell have no intention of making a mess in my own house just so i can blame it on a stuffed toy and clean up my own mess later.

With those huge disappointments looming, I’m fairly certain each boy will figure out the truth about Santa.  Either way, we will all be okay because I think we’ve finally gotten this Christmas thing down.

Yesterday, this nameless child ate ribs for dinner.  Actually, both ate ribs, but only one was affected this way.  He was fine all evening long!  He played a shooter video game with his dad while his brother was sent to shower.  Immediately after finishing a round of this game, knowing it was his turn to shower, he claimed to have a headache and then a stomachache.  He carried on until I told him that if he was so sick, he should just go to bed.  He came back downstairs about thirty minutes later with a red face and a tear in one eye, saying his stomach hurt very badly.  I took him upstairs, suddenly worried I had missed something important.  The boys have never faked an illness for more than a few minutes.  For this bellyache to still be an issue, this boy must really be having issues!  So I took him upstairs, cuddled him, gave him a couple of tums, and cuddled him some more.  I may have poked and prodded his belly to see if he had a hot appendix.  He didn’t.  He asked for some water while his brother asked when it would be his turn to be cuddled.  He told me his tummy felt better, then he pointed at his throat.  “Are you going to puke?” I asked.  He nodded.  “Well, get up and puke in the toilet!”  Off we ran, his brother close at our heels.  He did get sick and I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but his brother was most impressed.  I put them both back in bed and the sickly boy, as I was tucking him in, smiled at me and said, “I don’t have to go to school tomorrow.”

Normally, I wouldn’t care, but today is my Wednesday off.  I like my Wednesdays by myself.  I jog at some time during the day with Ed the Awesome and then we have lunch.  They boys are supposed to be at school until 5:30 because they have a sports class after school, so I get the entire afternoon to myself.  I write my fiction and when a scene has left me, I clean the house a little.  (Not too much cleaning.  I don’t want that to be misunderstood.  I do as little of that as possible.)

Instead, this morning there is the trill of automatic guns on a video game and a child bouncing on my couch.  School policy states children must not return to school until they are free from fever and vomit for 24 hours.  My children know this.  The little devils read only the parts of the school policy they want to read.  You should feel sorry for him though.  He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going shopping with me later.  He hates shopping.  I bet the next time he eats something too rich for his belly, he goes to school no matter where that rich food ends up.

I took the boys to see The Rise of The Guardians last Saturday and then Ed and I both took the boys to see the new Bond movie the following Monday.  You won’t get any spoilers here, but both were absolutely fabulous!  Anyway,  Logan and I spent the entire time during The Rise of The Guardians talking to each other about the show and being surprised by the show.  One of the fabulous things about children’s’ movies is that children are expected to talk during the movie.  As long as the parents occasionally shush their child, you can have a conversation at almost any decibel level.  When we went to see the Bond movie, it was Monday and the theater was almost empty.  Logan sat next to me and, as usual, we talked almost the whole time.  He told me about the different weapons being used and accessories for said weapons.  I would scream and thrust my arms out in a defensive maneuver whenever something startling happened.  Ed would shush us every few minutes.  I wonder how much of the movie Ed actually got to enjoy because that kid and I are very talkative and we both have issues with volume.  Ha!

Anyway,  it dawned on me that there was probably a method to my mother’s madness when she made me and Jacob watch all of those scary movies as children.  It’s funny to watch your children freak out at a scary movie!  It’s funny to watch me watch a scary movie because I freak out!  It’s really funny to watch Logan jump up and down while watching anything which might be classified as mildly startling.

I suggested this theory to my mother.  She told me I was wrong.  She said I couldn’t have been more wrong.  She said she had us watch those movies so we could be prepared for whatever might happen.  It’s a dangerous world out there and we needed to know what could happen.  I think she’s got an interesting cover story.  She said she’d never laugh at any of her children and really, she probably wouldn’t.  I, however, am not quite like my mother.  I find many things my children do hilarious.  And when they’re adults, I plan on telling them all about the funny things they did as children.

Slightly off topic, but I’ve recently come across a quote I really like.

Write Drunk.  Edit Sober.  Earnest Hemingway.

That guy must have been brilliant.  (Yes, I know who Hemingway was.  I’m not that drunk yet.)  (Mom, relax.  I’m kidding!)

Anyway,  on to the list!

1. Kid Who Looks Like A Monkey.  I mostly liked this one because we’ve been teasing Trip about his enormous ears lately and he is very proud of them.  He has even told his teachers that he has ears like a monkey and they should be jealous.  The little dude is a chick magnet though, so maybe he’s on to something.

2. What Happens to Boys Who Are Raised by Neurotic Mothers?  Dear God, I hope they turn out okay!  Otherwise, mine are screwed.  I think they’ll turn out just fine in spite of me.  Or to spite me.  They’ll probable live as far as humanly possible one day from their dear Momma, but it’ll just be so I can visit them in exotic locales.  Right?  You know what’s really troubling?  Someone found my blog with that query.  And they received absolutely no help at all!

3.  Jacob Hates You.  I don’t really get this one, but it makes me giggle anyway.  Maybe that’s the Pinot?  There are some mysteries the world will never solve.  In any case, I am Jacob’s favorite sister.  I might also be his only sister, but that is not the point.  I am his favorite sister because he thinks I am awesome and no one should ever disillusion him from that opinion!  That, and he’s right.

4.  Box Fight.  That was it:  “box fight.”  What in the hell is a box fight?  I wish I knew.  I’m a child of the 80′s and I absolutely love boxing.  I still watch it on whichever channel shows it late at night when I’m the only one awake because Ed hates it.  Or he just thinks I’m slightly weird for watching people fight in a ring.  I really do love it though.  I remember Mike Tyson fighting on HBO back when HBO was the only movie channel available.  Or were we just poor?  I’m not sure if there were other channels available back in the dark ages and I have no intention of finding out now, unless you, dear reader, just remember that kind of thing off the top of your head and would like to provide me with that little tidbit of knowledge.

As a little aside, I went out with my brother Jacob last weekend for a little drinking and debauchery.  Well, drinking at any rate.  So we went to a local establishment and had a couple of beers, but we were younger than most of the other patrons by a decade or two, which is no easy feat at my advanced age, so we walked across a busy highway (we’re in the country-it’s like crossing the street and risking your life at the same time) to another local establishment where the clientele was closer to our age and we saw a few people we had known from high school because they also hadn’t moved away and a Laurence Fishborne look-alike.  As we were chatting and discussing the merits of a life well lived, a “fight” broke out behind us.  I was as observant as ever and had to be pulled out of harm’s way by my dear brother.  Fortunately, he has become quite the quick thinker.  I turned around in time to see one guy slapping his own chest while hopping backwards.  These weren’t mere steps backwards or done in an attempt to find a space with more room for the actual fight.  These were HOPS!  He was hopping backwards like a rabbit!  And then, there were bouncers who appeared from out of nowhere and separated the two, although I don’t really know if you can separate two guys who are ten feet away from each other.  In any case, one was escorted out the front door and the police were called and they stayed for what seemed like an eternity!

In the end, I came to this conclusion:  If you’re going to get arrested anyway, you might as well throw a punch!  Otherwise, WHAT IS THE POINT??

5.  My brother’s full name.  You’ll have to forgive me for not listing his full name here, but with the last name, there are only twelve in the good ol’ USA, so it’s not like whoever typed that name into their browser could’ve been looking for someone else, but WHAT IN THE HELL, Google?  How is his full name, which I’ve never used on this here blog, associated with my fantastic blog.  (Yes, you should infer a little sarcasm there.  Self deprecation.  Whatever you want to call it.)

6.  My grandfather was in the CIA.  Dude, so was mine!  Maybe.  I’m not really sure.  The stories my mom tells about him killing people didn’t come out of her mouth until long after he was dead and she has a very, very vivid imagination.  (Mom, do not view that last statement as an invitation to describe said murders or self-defense maneuvers in the comment section.  That’s for private discussion at your dining room table where the possibility exists for us to enjoy making even more people uncomfortable.)

7.  Ed is awesome.  I think my husband may have searched this term in hopes of finding some dirt on me.  He has finally come to accept that he has received a life sentence with me for some unconscionable sin in a past lifetime.  Whatever it was, it was bad.  Poor guy.  He’s so nice now too.  You’d think a guy as nice as he is would get a wife who might cook and clean once in a while.  Lucky him, I work and drink red wine.  And beer.  And spirits.  Though not all at the same time because I learned my lesson when I was much, much younger.  Drink one at a time young lady, and you’ll be that much happier for it.  And he is awesome!  And cute!

8-88.  There were so many variations on stretch mark queries, I can’t even begin to list them all. Ladies, and Gentlemen if this happens to apply to you as well, stretch marks are permanent.  Once they rear their ugly heads, they never, ever leave.  Unless you have a tummy tuck and get those bad boys surgically removed.  That’s always an option.  But if you’re not willing to consider surgery, you’re stuck with the little reminders that your body has done something wonderful.  Mine housed three souls at once.  However, those bastards itched when they were forming (the stretch marks!) , so put your lotion on or you will be miserable. 

“It puts the lotion on it’s skin or else it gets the hose again.”  Can you name that one?  It’s one of my favorites.  I blame my seriously warped mother and the strange upbringing I endured.  I can’t believe my brothers don’t write.  Our mutual biographies read like a sociopath’s background….and her mother made her stay up late on weekend evenings to watch scary movies because she didn’t want to watch them alone. 

89-100. These were really just various queries about children and I’m hoping they were parents searching for inventive ways to photograph their cherubs.  And even though I’ve got some mad iPhone skills, they should probably look elsewhere.  I’m not very skilled with the camera.  I’m just persistent.

And well, now it’s time to  send the cherubs to bed and take the remotes away from them.  Momma wants to start watching Grimm and she needs that playstation to do it.