Bacon, eggs, and brains

#5’s birthday is just days after school starts. When he started kindergarten, he was still four years old for a few days. I know a lot of parents that would have waited to start him in school. Thankfully, they don’t live in our house.

His favorite thing in the world is bacon. This year his teacher celebrates birthdays by having every student write something nice about the birthday kid and draw a picture. Then she takes all these sheets and staples them together in a book for the birthday kid. #5’s book is full of variations on: he’s smart, he’s funny, he likes bacon.

Inexplicably, his second favorite thing in the world is zombies.

The other thing that happens right after school starts is school picture day. I don’t remember school pictures happening so quickly when I was in school. Probably my mom is just a better parent than me and was way more on top of this stuff than I am. But honestly, it’s the second or third day of school. I can never remember which.

All the kids get a billion pieces of paper on the first day of school, which I promptly put in The Pile, to sort through eventually (that’s a total of five billion pieces of paper, for those of you following along at home). Somewhere in there are the order forms for picture day. I never get through The Pile in time for picture day, because it’s like tomorrow, or the day after. Hell, who am I kidding? I never get through The Pile, period.

Luckily both the school and the kids know this. The school knows how to get my money for pictures, and the kids know to wear their favorite clothes on the right day.

They also know not to remind me it’s picture day if they think I may have something to say about their choice of clothing.

This is the t-shirt (yes, t-shirt) #5 wore for school pictures this year. Be sure to check out my mad ironing skills in these pictures.

This is the shirt he wore for school pictures last year.

This is the shirt I bought him for Christmas this year, which I have a
sneaking suspicion may end up in school pictures next year.

Everyone’s a Critic

The Puggle, Casey, aka the Evil Brown One, has a far more subtle personality than her brother.

Jack the Fuggle is fierce and in your face with any toy he can find the instant he wakes. Casey sits and watches him play. When she jumps in, it’s pathetic. She may be genetically superior to him in every other way, but she can’t hold on to a tennis ball to save her life.

Jack was housebroken by the time we brought Casey home three days later (which is a whole other post entirely). He had a minor setback when she joined the household, but he got it together. He learned within a week to ask to go out, and rarely had accidents.

Casey couldn’t be bothered. She had a great deal of sleeping to do, and too much table food to steal to deal with these petty concerns. If it was raining, she preferred to go on the floor.

But lately, she’s developed some communication skills. She has started to learn how to ask to go out, but. . . indirectly. Passive-aggressively. The way all the girls in our house communicate. She’ll sit slightly closer to the stairs. She may gaze in the general direction of the front door. These signs are far too subtle to be noticed by the heathens, but I see them. I respond.

That’s how it started, anyway. Casey is now drunk with power regarding her newfound ability to communicate. Whenever I sit down to write, she comes and sits in front of me.

She stamps her feet.

She whines.

She dances.

She paws at me.

I have responded to this in every way I know how to respond to a dog: I’ve taken her out, I’ve fed and watered her, I’ve rubbed her ears, I’ve rubbed her belly. I’ve tried to engage her in play (to the best of her ability). I’ve given her bacon, for pete’s sake. Nothing ceases the stamping and whining and dancing. Or chewing of cables.

Me: I don’t get it. She only does this when I write.

CC: Isn’t it obvious? She thinks you’re a hack. She’s saying, “If only I had thumbs I could make her stop!” But she doesn’t.

Me: So she breaks my concentration and chews my cables. Oh my god, you’re right.

Bitch.

Bacon, unchecked.

This better when you know that #5, eight years old, still has a very sweet sounding inability to properly say his r’s, which we are assured he will grow out of any minute now.

October. My father and stepmother (Southern Baptists) are up from Kentucky for a visit. We (Heathens) are having a Sunday family breakfast. CC has cooked an amazing spread. Nobody is paying attention to how much bacon #5 is eating. Before long, there is an empty serving dish next to him; a dish that once held more than a pound of bacon.

He has been staring out the window, looking deep in thought. Still staring out the window, he speaks. He bestows the following upon us, and we are left in a stupefied silence trying to make sense both of what he says and the quanity of bacon he has ingested.

#5: In squirrel church, God is an acorn.

Some days I wish I still drank.