Oh, Molebut!

Forget about watching re-runs of NCIS.  Forget about Netflix.  Forget about texting.

Grandpa and I gathered our daughter and husband, along with our two tween granddaughters for a night of Mexican food and game playing.

A "Game Night" is above and beyond all definitions of fun.  This was a blast as we played Balderdash.  Not just the average Balderdash, but we played the Beyond Balderdash version.

To truly understand this game, you will need to visit the above YouTube site.

The word chosen was molebut, which elicited a bunch of crazy answers. This is Sunshine's false answer:

Sunshine's version of this definition

Brilliant child.  Eleven years old, Sunshine thinks outside, way outside, the box.

Look up molebut just for the heck of it.

Forget about DVD or World of War Craft.  Game night is an awesome way to spend time together.

Thursdays

On Thursdays, one will find me flat out on the couch with eye patches and a cold ice tea.  I will be exhausted and may not answer the phone.  One would have to be a blood relative or someone I love for me to answer the phone or the door.

Watch out!  There's a foot coming...

The reason will be that I spent the day before with my two granddaughters, Bright Eyes and Sunshine, on Wednesday.  Both are in school now and amazingly enough, that’s the reason I am about as energetic as a smashed snail on Thursdays.

Sunshine is in kindergarten now and filled with joy, laughter, and an amazing collection of information, both educational and personal.  I pick her up at 1:50 pm, and we walk about 10 miles from her classroom, across the griddle called the ‘parking lot’, and to my car.  When Sunshine used a car seat, she could buckle up and be ready to go before I shut her door. 

Now, she uses a ‘booster’, which requires me to pull the shoulder harness across her, find the buckle in the backseat, and click it. She can do this in Mommy’s van.  

The problem is that our Saturn Aura has back doors that give minimum swing and has hide-and-seek buckles.  

 In order to secure my precious cargo, I have to virtually crawl into the back to find the buckle, grip it with my arthritic hands, and force the buckle in.  My rear end is hanging out the door, and soon I find it hard to breath.  “You okay, Grandma?”  Oh yeah, honey, I am just fine.

Then we go to Target for 45 minutes. My darling girl can unbuckle in 2 seconds flat, and we walk about 3 miles across the Target parking lot.  Sunshine knows every inch of this store, and she takes me to see those inches.  When our time is up, we head back to her school to pick up Bright Eyes at 2:50.  All the above gets repeated.

All told, I have buckled the girls six times, walked about thirty miles in desert heat, and am having a massive hot flash. 

 

Then we drive to pick up Grandpa, who works about three hundred miles across a desolate desert.  We unbuckle, go into his work where the girls initiate a search for candy on all the co-workers’ desks.  

 My husband does not understand why I am flushed and grumpy.  He smiles and tries to bluff me with good natured banter, but I do not respond.

I do the buckle in routine again, and we always drive to either McDonald's or Dairy Queen.  The girls get ice cream cones, I ask for a blended Margarita, and everyone just laughs.  Silly grandma.

The rest of the time with my girls is wonderful.  We do homework, color pictures, tell stories, watch a feel-good older Disney movie, and the girls sit on my lap.  That is what I live for all day:  to hold them and hear what they have to say.

Do not call me on Thursday.  I will be busy.  Please note: I do not drink, but sometimes it sounds good.

Generations

Child of my child

Lies in my arms asleep,

There, my father’s brow

Here, my mother’s smile.

Her father’s chin and her mother’s hair…

Generations and generations

Warmly wrapped in a

Soft

Pink

Blanket.

Them that has...

Back in April, I helped Bright Eyes and Sunshine plant some tomato plants.  Honestly, I thought those plants didn’t stand a chance in the whole of God’s green Earth.  But, dang it, those eight plants are loaded with red and green tomatoes.

Such promises!

So simple, a child could do it!

I, on the other hand, bought a “Topsy-Turvy” tomato planter, and prided myself on the choice of an ‘Heirloom’ tomato plant, expecting a massive overload of tomatoes every day.

Ha! Ha! Ha!  My tomatoes!

So very nummy!

Ha, I say.  Ha.  I have had maybe ten tiny cherry tomatoes, but the rest of the plant is empty.  It did not help that I discover one of those tomato caterpillar worms chomping away at it. 

It did not help that the sun wasn’t adequate, since we could hang the thing in only one spot, which gets sun from 2 to 8 p.m.  It also has not helped that I got fed up with the care it needed.

Art mimics life.

With my granddaughters’ plants, the tomatoes sit happily in sun all day, get lots of water (the girls love to use the hose, any excuse will do), and had less expectations.

The girls love to take me out to see their plants, loaded nearly to maximum with lovely big tomatoes (Marion and Big Boy brands).  “Here, Grandma.  You can have some.  We have plenty,” they say to me.  I tried to show them how wonderful it is to wash the tomato off at the hose, and then eat the tomato warm from the garden, just like an apple.

All I got from them was, “Oh, we really don’t like tomatoes unless Mommy cuts them up in a salad.  Take all you want.”

Why don't I get any tomatoes?!

This weekend I will go and buy a flat of tomatoes, a cheap planter like I gave them, and set those things out.  Dang it.  I may even get some tomato food and a natural worm repellant.  I will get some tomatoes eventually.

So it is true, that old saying:  Them that has don’t care.  Them that don’t, care.  I have no idea where that gem came from, but it wasn’t from me.

Life

Horton and the dust-speck are one.

The other day when I was watching my granddaughters, I found myself up stairs and getting ready to watch a movie while we lay in Mommy’s bed. Both the girls were sick and asked me if I wanted to take a nap. It would be okay with them if I wanted. Sunshine found the TV controls, and zip-zang, she showed me how to do all the remote control stuff that previously eluded me. With “Horton Hears a Who” starting, the girls lay down, telling me I could have the middle between them. They had taken all the pillows, and the middle was perhaps eight inches wide. 

This isn’t going to work, I told them. I need more room than that. So I manually scooted them over, grabbed a pillow from the end of the bed, and climbed over them. The moment I extended my arms, they both rolled  to nestle into me. ‘Ahhhhh’. 

The Last Unicorn

Sunshine is somewhat like a puppy, which has to turn in circles a few times before finding the right spot. This time she was lying on her stomach, with her head at my knees and her feet at my head. “Draw pictures on my back, Grandma. I want a unicorn, a rainbow, a flower…” Before I drew the rainbow, Sunshine was sound asleep.

Bright Eyes placed her head on my chest. “I can hear your heart beating, Grandma,” she whispered. I wiggled my fingers into her mass of brown hair, and lifted the strands up to let the heat escape. She sighed, and blinked, then was asleep.

That left me with Horton. Before we settled in for the movie,Sunshine had found one of Daddy’s clean socks and placed it over my eyes just so. "Here, Grandma.  This will help your headache."   I could look down my nose and at the TV, if I wanted. 

When Mommy/my daughter came home, she found us three just like that. “Oh, my, that is precious.” I agreed with her.

Life can’t get much better than that.

It's Gonna Happen!

“It’s gonna happen!”  Truer words have never been spoken, and certainly never by an 18 month old brilliant little girl. 

Bright Eyes started talking very early; in fact, she was barely ten months old when she turned to her parents and asked, “Where BAH go?”  BAH was her word for “pacifier” or “binky”.  They blinked a few times and told her that bah was by the TV.  She turned, saw it, and picked it up.

Since then, Bright Eyes has been a talking machine, able to hold her own with just about any adult. Her pediatrician says he’s never encountered such a verbally gifted child, I write with my ample chest inflated in humble pride.

It's gonna happen.

When Bright Eyes was 18 months old, her father was settled in the rocking chair, playing with my daughter's Game Boy ™  while watching Bright Eyes and the newborn Sunshine.  Bright Eyes looked up from putting all her stuffed animals down for naps, shook her head, and told him that “…Mama doesn’t like it when you play with her toys.  You’re gonna get in trouble.” 

Daddy was taken aback, and told her that Mama would not mind if he played with the Game Boy.  But Bright Eyes was not impressed.  She didn’t even look up at him.  “You’re gonna get in trouble,” and then she sighed.  “It’s gonna happen!”

Apparently, Bright Eyes had learned this lesson, and heard that phrase many times before.  She was simply sharing this bit of wisdom she had amassed in her one-and-a-half years of life.

One way, my way!

Now, whenever there is a possibility of negative outcome, that is our own catch phrase, “It’s gonna happen.”  When we need a good laugh after dropping a plate of spaghetti on the carpet, we say, “It’s gonna happen.”  When Sunshine and Bright Eyes are standing eye to eye, and there is blood in the air, I tell them, “It’s gonna happen” and the battle scales down. 

You can borrow this phrase if you want.