Family Dynamics Explained

This trip home has been extremely valuable. My oldest brother and I accidentally stumbled upon a whole new understanding of our family dynamic.

While chatting away the wee hours of the night (morning?), we talked about our respective positions in the offspring order - his trials as the first-born, the unplanned; and mine as the baby of three and the only girl.

We remembered the time when our brother, the Gifted One, when still a small child, took a shit in a shoe box and put it away in his closet. He'd made something very special and wanted to keep it forever.

Our mother, upon finding this, thought that was very interesting indeed. Clever. Brilliant, you could say. A brilliant box shitter. We don't yet understand this type of brilliance. He's in a league of his own, that one.

Had my oldest brother shat in a box and put it in his closet, he'd have been carted off to a shrink and locked up until he could explain with a straight face why it's not acceptable to keep your shit in a shoe box.

Had I shat in a box and put it in my closet, it would have surely been ignored and never spoken of. Ever. Girls do not shit in boxes. End of story. Now wash your hands and get ready for dinner.

We agreed this assessment made sense because as the first-born, you have to pave the way for the parents and the future kids to come. The parents don't really know what they're dealing with. Shit in a box as the first born and you're in for a world of trouble.

As the middle child, expectations are reset and the parents believe they can improve upon past mistakes - it's a do-over, really. The first kid is the starter kit where you work out all the bugs. Child 2.0 means a whole new start. This one will be good - we worked out all the kinks with Child 1.0.

When Child 2.0 shits in a box, it must be special. A great deal of effort has been put into 2.0. He's making a statement of some kind. He's creative. Again, brilliant. Its meaning is deep and multifaceted. He's barely stringing words together into complete sentences, but someday this will all make sense and we'll be amazed.

When Child 3.0 comes along - aka Girl Child 1.0 - years have passed and finding shoe boxes full of shit in a kid's closet has lost all the luster it probably never had. What's more, there are yet new expectations.

This Girl Child 1.0 has to be better than Child 1.0 and 2.0. If she's not, we're SOL, because we can't return any of them. Whatever goes sideways with 3.0 we will simply not address. If we ignore it, it doesn't exist. End of story.

Now wash your hands and get ready for dinner.

Happy Christmas

It still doesn't *feel* like Christmas, but it helped to call the whole family and talk to parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews.

At one point the MagicJack crapped out - the phone just stopped working, demanding a break from the nonstop jawing.

But before that happened, I got a fantastic present from one of my nieces - one of many gifted children in the clan who told me English & Creative Writing is her favorite class - she's a junior in high school. That wasn't the present. Wait for it...

She's babysitting some kids in the neighborhood now and said one night they wanted her to tell them a story. She couldn't remember any stories so she started making them up. She told them a number of elaborate, lengthy stories that they loved, yet still they wanted more.

Tired of coming up with new stories, she instead told them the story of Beverly Hills Cop. I couldn't stop laughing.

Merry Christmas Bloggers!

Heartsick

I have to admit that I might be hormonal at this moment, or it could be an accumulation of stress, but I can't believe how sad I am about being away from the animal kids.

When I rolled into town Sunday night, I realized I wasn't going "home." No one would be at this house - there's no home here anymore - just the house.

A house that now smells like it did before we moved in - like someone else's house, with someone else's things in it. Not my house. And no one in it.

That first night, every noise I heard made me expect a cat to be right behind it. No cats. When I made pasta and put it into a bowl, I automatically thought to find a small dish for Henry. No bird.

This year has been difficult with David away for most of it. I hadn't realized until now how much more attached I'd become to the fuzzy kids. It's killing me to be away from them. I want to leave right now to race home to them. Because home is wherever they are and they aren't here.

Debating the Deranged

This weekend I went to a dinner party and while chewing a delicious bite of food, the person next to me asked me what I thought about gay marriage.

I told him I thought it was wonderful and long overdue. To that he said, "So you'd be OK with someone wanting to marry his dog?"

That wasn't the first time I'd heard that crock of shit. I'll never understand the ridiculous attempt to correlate two human beings wanting to marry one another with someone wanting to marry a pet. I politely said as much and to that he asked what I thought about polygamists. I said To each his own - it's none of my business.

There isn't anything new I can add to the argument supporting same-sex marriage. I want a free country where I'm free to live my life and other people are free to live theirs, though we seem to get farther and farther away from that ideal every day.

Same-sex marriage has absolutely no impact on my or anyone else's life except the two people who want to get married, so why does anyone else give half a shit whether they get married or not?

If your religion tells you it's wrong, that's your problem, end of story. But what I love about that is, Catholic priests have been molesting, raping and abusing kids for YEARS and they'll protect the perpetrators while being openly against same-sex marriage. Biggest crock of shit, EVER.

I'll never understand the opposition to something so fair and the almost total lack of evolved thinking. It's going to happen - it's simply a matter of time.

And I always have to wonder about those who are so publicly against it. I'm convinced they have stacks of gay porn strewn about 'in their closets' and under their beds. They're OK with taking it up the ass in private while the wife's out of town, but let a same-sex couple be a legal family? No way! Harder, Bob! More lube!

At any rate, someday maybe we can marry our pets, too. I've met many dogs who are finer people than most people.

Future Captain of Industry

Happy Graduation Dylan! My nephew is off to college and the big, wide world. Maybe he'll hire me someday.