Ginger Unplugged

So, I think it's very possible that I'm losing some of my hearing. This first occurred to me several years ago at the Disneyland equivalent of a book club where a woman I didn't know was trying to talk to me while 50 other women I didn't know chatted in a crowd around the divine artichoke dip. Not being able to even yell loud enough to convey the thought, Hey! I can't hear you!! I dutifully smiled and nodded and before I knew it she had completely held and exited the conversation I had no idea was coming to a close. As she wended her way through mobs of passionate book lovers, I deeply hoped that I hadn't smiled and nodded at something terribly embarrassing to us both. My family has caught onto this and there have been a lot of whispers around here which sometimes I DO hear, and sometimes I've been told about. Here are my favorite three from just the last week. Whisper 1 Sleestack: Waaaa-haaa-haaaa (this was not the whispered part). Monkey: That...

I always thought my kids would whine things like, "But Mom! Everybody's doing it!" And, "Just this once!" My kids? No. They whine, "But Mom! The moon phase is perfect for it!" And you know what? I have to give in. I've been preparing for the other whines for a decade. With the moonphase argument...I got nothing.

Tom Clancy once said, "Every person you meet is another opportunity to learn." He said it like it was a good thing, but after my latest camping experience I've just had a crash course in people--and it wasn't my favorite. We pulled into camp to find a boyscout troop taking up one of the areas and three single guys taking up all the rest. My dad quickly made friends with RON who said we could share his fire pit. JOE said we were good to pull in as well. Unfortunately, we didn't check with LARRY as he wasn't even in our immediate vicinity. Had I known about LEO, we may never have pulled in at all. Before we'd been there long, Larry (the guy we didn't check with) had turned up his eclectic oldies-country-jazz-big band music as loud as he could without blowing a speaker, then waited for me to go fight with him about it. Honestly, some of it wasn't bad, but I swear he was trying to find all his B-sides. I was really nice as I told him my "s...

It sounds like screaming singing.

This afternoon, Monkey suddenly started jumping, spinning and rolling on the couch all with his eyes closed. "Uh, Monkey, what are you doing?" "Dancing like the wind." "Why are your eyes closed?" "The wind hasn't gots eyes." Silly me. After he crashed a few times, he declared he was now going to do the "Blinking Dance." That's where "you keep your eyes wide open and never ever close them except to blink really, really fast."

Crash: What's Mom's name? Monkey: Ginger. Crash: What's Dad's name? Monkey: Dear.

We were on our way to Crash's first outdoor performance of the musical Coconut Island. Crash was moping in the van and saying (and I quote), "Musicals are a pit of humiliation with no point." I was hoping Husband would offer encouragement having been in many, many musicals himself. But no. So I nudged him. Me: "Have YOU been in any embarrassing musicals, Husband?" Husband: "Ooooh yes. Dracula and the Bogus Pompadour." Crash: Pompadour? Husband: Yeah. It's a really bad hairstyle. I was Dracula with big hair. And the whole thing was written and directed by a guy we called Captain Cloud. On off nights I was Hulk Hogan and got to rip off my shirt and stuff. He ends up defeating Dracula's pompadour you know. I'm not sure it helped Crash feel better but he did stop complaining.

Our house is currently covered in balloons--well, at least the floor of our house. Monkey has taken to setting them over the heater vent to see them float, which is pretty impressive I have to admit. He is also enjoying playing with a brand spankin' new Thomas the Train bouncy ball. For whatever reason, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to teach him the science of "Heavy and Light." Me: Hey Monkey, those balloons look so cool, do you think your ball will float? Monkey: Yep. Me: Let's try it. (The ball doesn't float.) Me: Why do you think it doesn't float? Monkey: I don't know. Me: Is it heavier than the balloons? Monkey: Yep, it's heavier. Me: The balloons are lighter. Monkey: Oh yeah. We don't have dark balloons. Me: No, I mean the ball is heavy, not light. The balloons are light, not heavy. Monkey: Right, the ball isn't light like the Sun. Me: Well, true. But it's heavy. That's why it doesn...

This is Monkey's art which he calls Mad Cat. He is obviously very good at capturing emotion with nothing but a green dry erase marker. "Why is the cat mad?" I asked. "His parents left him with a babysitter." Nice.

because I just can't take it! All those medals won in swim meets across the nation should be given straight to the parents of those swimmers. Those kids just had to swim. Do you know what their families had to do? First of all there are those practices every single weekday (and weekends for older swimmers). And it's not like you can stay with them while your little ones play at the park like with soccer or baseball. It's just a heck of a lot of driving. Now I've just attended my first swim meet--what a madhouse. These are my top seven most hideous moments. 1. Being told to go through the women's dressing room to get to the pool. "All of us?" I asked with my 5 children, including 10-year-old Crash in tow. "It's the only way," I was told. That's a direct quote. Well somewhere along the line Crash got kicked out or something because when we emerged through the maze of benches, lockers and teeny-tiny tiles--no Crash. I put three childre...

Princess: Dad, what does 'hyperverbolate' mean. Husband: It's when you use too many verbs in a sentence.

"Mom, you know how when you think it's like a voice talking to you in your head?" "Uh, sure." "Well I find it works much better if there are two voices and they talk to each other."

Crash ended his prayer this morning with "...and please bless that Monkey won't be evil today." Husband put forth the theory afterward that "there are limits to miracles the Lord can perform." _____________ Later that day it was determined that Monkey had been much more agreeable and happy than usual. Just FYI. Thanks, Lord.

Crash: "Oh WOW! My crystallized jellybeans RE-FORMED!" And by  Crystallized Jellybeans he means jellybeans he chewed up and spat out and left in a backseat cup-holder to rot. Butterfly: "Uh...that's a...Cheeto."

This was uttered around my kitchen table just yesterday: "Spread eagle on top of a farting chicken, now there's a place I never want to be." Closely followed in funniness by the conversation: "A cricket, get it!" "I can't, the antennae are missing!" "What happened to them?" "Baby must have gotten to it first." Which was a delight to listen in on compared to the most inane conversation of the week: "Most tornadoes are a mile wide." "Are you sure? A mile is pretty big." (Big fight over how sure Tornado Boy is that most are a mile wide.) "I am thinking that maybe most are a mile tall," I offer in consolation. "How can they be a mile tall? Clouds don't get that close to the earth." "Are you crazy? Clouds even touch the earth all the time, it's called fog." "Yeah well tornados don't happen in the fog. Plus, if clouds are so close to the earth then why does it take us ...