I Know Too Many People in this Town...

So, I woke up at noon since I got home from work at 4:30 in the blasted morning.  After consuming an ungodly amount of pizza and buffalo wings for breakfast, I decided grocery shopping was in order.  I typically drag Makayla on my shopping excursions for company but was in the mood to shop alone.  I left her with Matt Face and drove to United.  I was shopping for fruit and veggies for Makayla to ensure she develops good eating habits when my ex-boyfriend’s friend walked by.  She said, “Hi Jess!  How are you?” 

“I’m good, how about you?” I asked her, figuring she'd say "fine," and go away.  I was distracted by the outrageous price on produce and wondered if I would be OK with allowing welfare to buy my kiddos' fruits and veggies.  I decided that the welfare card thing wouldn't go with my wallet and dismissed the idea.

Anyway, she took my socially appropriate inquery of her wellbeing as her cue to start telling me about herself.  I was a little startled by this since her last words to me were “You’re an asshole!” after I kindly asked her to get off my boyfriend’s face.  I picked out peaches and cherries while she told me about her new boyfriend.  As I was picking out plums, I saw there were fruit flies having an orgy in them.  I started dry heaving and tried to conceal my face since I figured this was not the reaction she was looking for after telling me she had just finished grad school.  She doesn’t know me well enough to know I have the weakest stomach in the world.  Just a few days ago, I dry heaved violently after scraping crusty ketchup combined with honey mustard into the garbage disposal.  Makayla likes to mix the two together and dip her veggies into her “creation.”  Hours later, as I was telling Matt about it, I started dry heaving again and he said he didn’t need to know any more details since apparently, listening to me dry heave on the phone is annoying.  Vomiting is my initial reaction to any strong emotion: fear, worry, anger, extreme happiness.  When Caleb fell down the stairs when he was one, I vomited as I tried to retrieve him.  When I learned that my Uncle Shoni had passed away, I barfed as I hung up the phone.  When I learned I had won a 1,500 dollar scholarship on the ethics of trying to interfere with women’s circumcision in third world countries, I barfed.  I am aware that this is not normal behavior but there’s nothing I can do about it.  I’m assuming when Matt does propose to me, he will need to do so with an umbrella just to be safe.  Since I told him I want to be proposed to by a light house under the stars and next to the ocean while wearing a white skirt on a breezy night, I think I’ll have a fair warning.  Anyway, I recovered from my dry heaves and alerted an employee to the fruit fly situation.  I had just witnessed her pulling a cooler down for a customer from a high shelf and having like, ten of them fall on top of her and I felt bad to make her day worse, but someone needed to fix the infestation.  I told Jake’s friend it was nice to see her and that I had to go since she had started asking me questions about myself.  Telling the friends of your ex anything about yourself is never a good idea, especially when your ex’s friends are the type of people who will not only deliver whatever information you give them to your ex, they will create an extremely crude version of what you said.  If I had told her, “Yeah, life’s good.  I just cured AIDS,” she would tell him, “she said you gave her AIDS.”  That kind of thing.  Even though I bid her farewell, she continued speaking to me which was irritating.  First of all, a grocery store is not the place to play catch up.  That’s what margarita bars and tumbleweed throwing competitions are for.  Duh.  I listened a few more minutes, doing that whole walk away slowly thing while checking the time and repeatedly saying, “I have to go,” and she still didn’t get it.  After seeing that this girl’s ability to pick up on social cues was on the same level of Muammar Gadaffi, I just abruptly turned and walk away.  When I got home, I gave Makayla some cherries so she would have antioxidants radiating throughout her body and told Matt I know too many people in this town.

Someone Should Let Matt Know...

Excuse me, but I am going to need someone to go ahead and let Matt know that tickling is not a wrestling move.  Matt and I often times enjoy what I like to think of as competitive battle.  Matt’s idea of competitive battle is to tickle me and kiss me.  I have told him many times, “While we are wrestling, we are enemies.  Do not kiss me.  This is a competition, goddamit.”

His reply is to typically hold me down and face rape me as I threaten to spit on him.  Matt has advantages to wrestling that I do not.  For example, he is physically capable of picking me up and lying me down on the floor so he can straddle me and tickle me until I scream and threaten to pee on him.  He likes to tell me, “that’s what the steam cleaner is for.”  Whatever.  I cannot physically put Matt to the ground without kneeing him in his man area, which I would never do.  So in order to wrestle, I have to ask him to lie on the ground which is humiliating.  During the act of battle, I am typically totally overpowered by Matt, unless I get extremely enraged.  This happened last night.  After infuriating me by forcing his man kisses during our wrestling match, he decided he would take it upon himself to LICK the inside of my ear.  Matt knows my ear is one of the few orifices I do not find enjoyment in being penetrated.  Yet he did it anyway.  The feeling of his New Jersey bred slobber, the knowledge that such a foreign culture had physically entered my ear, sent me into a rage.  I pushed him away from me, even though he was pinning me down, and for a second, was slightly alarmed that the force of my push would result in a severe head injury because he fell backwards so quickly near the wall.  He recovered well though, and as he came after me, I lunged at him, used all my limbs to pin him down, and thoroughly tongue raped his ear.  As I dry heaved on top of him, trying to enjoy my victory of FINALLY overpowering him, he claimed he was overpowered because “he was laughing too hard.”  I do not recall Matt laughing whatsoever.  After I assured him I was not going to vomit on account of his ears tasting like Star Jones, I let him know that he had physically been overpowered by me, a girl, when I was in a condition of what I like to refer to as “a fit of tickle and spit induced rage.”  Even now, he maintains he was not overpowered, but just laughing too hard to do anything about my warrior instincts.  I maintain this gives me a perfect excuse to call him a douche monster and let him know that any cop in West Texas would not only throw tickets at him through his open driver’s side window, but also make fun of his sissy accent. I find endless entertainment on account of his heritage. 

       Wrestling is not the only sport that Matt likes to cheat at when I win.  Let’s take darts for example.  Matt likes to beg me to play darts with him after we have both opened a cold beverage.  I nearly always start off winning, but by the end of the game and four beers down, I only want to argue with him about politics and religion and make sure he knows that I am not 100% certain that I’m OK with reproducing with someone from a third world country.  So I’ll purposely screw up on darts and let him win so he’ll entertain my conversations.  He claims this is a lie.  Are you going to trust a West Texas girl or a dude who calls a remote control a “clicker” because of his Yankee culture?  And let’s not mention the sport of being hot.  I know how to pop my butt in many different black girl modes and can move my hips like a raging Spanish homosexual man.  I had a luscious black girl named Neecee show me how to properly snap my fingers with “attitude.”  No matter that she let me know after a few lessons that I was nothing other than highly offensive.  So what if my dreams of being ethnic were forever ruined?  Matt’s idea of being a sexual beast is to hiss, “Yeeesssss,” when I announce I am ready for penetration or to hop on the bed like a spider monkey grin at me like a serial killer when I tell him I’m feeling stimulated after watching him do man stuff.  Never mind that I enjoy a solid chest bump after vigorous fornication or pop out my stomach to show him the result of what unprotected sex would be and ask him if I’d still be hot, I’m still WAY better at being a seductive sportsman. 

       Swimming is also a sport that Matt likes to cheat at.  At the pool yesterday, after deciding to neglect my motherly duties of ensuring my child isn’t a victim of drowning or a noodle attack, I instructed Makayla to sit on the step and challenged Matt to a swimming contest.  The goal was to get to the number four on the other side of the pool.  While he got there first, I was distracted on account of my bikini falling off and ended up swimming further than he did.  It was decided by myself and the lifeguard who I didn’t even bribe, that while Matt got to the number four first, I swam further.  This obviously means I would have won had I not lost track of where I was going.  Then we had a diving contest.  Since Matt refused to do backwards diving and insisted on diving off an actual diving board, I lost horribly.  I have been victim to many an injury on a diving board on account that I am as agile as a rhinoceros giving birth.  I wanted to just dive off the side of the pool but Matt insisted on diving off the dangerous ledge.  He went first and did some sort of Marine, swift, perfect form type dive.  When it was my turn, as I instructed my body to not hurl itself onto the concrete on the side of the pool, I did some sort of weird dive thing that was more like a front flip.  I haven’t dived since last summer.  I needed practice.  I gave Matt this information and challenged him to a back diving competition since I am somehow better at doing things backwards than forwards.  He claimed his ears would get infected with any more diving.  I am certain this is an excuse because he knew I would dominate him in this activity.  Oh, and how about wall climbing?  I let Matt know I would be dominating him in this sport and he managed to get higher on the wall than me on the hardest part.  It’s not my fault I’m afraid of heights and he’s not, Ok?  Anyway, I allowed Matt to have that victory.  I like to do at least one good deed a day and was ready to have that burden out of the way.  It’s like the time when we went to the batting cages and I forgot my batting glove and the vibration off the bat was really messing with me.  As Matt whacked balls towards my face, I realized that while it might LOOK like he was better at baseball than me, he was only being fooled on account of me forgetting my batting glove.  I consider myself to be a highly obnoxious person but I am still able to let a competitor know if he or she is better than me.  Like, Matt is better than me at growing unusual amounts of man hair.  Why would I take that victory away from him?  He is better than me at giving each other piggy back rides and picking each other up.  The first and last time I tried to pick Matt up, I injured my back in such a way that I lied in the hallway for twenty minutes and told him to “go away” whenever he tried to assist me.  Matt is better at working on cars than me since I don’t need to know how to do all that crap because that’s what he’s for.  He is better at social skills because annoying people are typically told by me that they are full of horseshit, and he just smiles and ignores it.  So I am totally willing to admit that Matt is better at certain things than I am.  But when it comes to things he is clearly cheating at, I really do think he should have some sort of consequence.

The Helicopter Mommy

So, after the disaster that ensued after trying to bake cookies with Makayla, we decided that an evening of her riding her bike would be a good way to deal with our disappointment.  Honestly, I wasn’t disappointed or surprised since my baking abilities are equivalent to that of a squash, but Makayla was devastated that Matt’s cookies ended up resembling mashed potatoes and tasted like earwax.  So I wrapped her up in her child safety devices and jogged behind her as she rode her bike up and down the sidewalk.  My biggest fear in the entire world is having some pedophile snatch one of my offspring and I am quite ridiculous, according to most, when it comes to ensuring that a pedophile is never given the opportunity to steal them.  So I jogged behind her as she rode her bike, and she fell twice.  I treated each experience as if Hiroshima had just happened and was horrified to think of my child having her face maimed by the bicycle chain, which has happened to me on two separate occasions.  I admit, my behavior was extreme and ridiculous.  The first fall, she somehow managed to land head first onto the concrete and I was thankful that I was thoughtful enough to not only require she wear wrist, elbow, and knee protectors, but a head protector as well.  She was scared by the fall and it took a bit of coaxing to get her back onto her bike but she did and then flew off like lightning, enjoying the feel of speeding on her bike, only to break suddenly and skid across the sidewalk.  The second time she fell, she shooed me away, as I tried to inspect her for internal injuries.  Matt came home after we had been outside for nearly an hour, and tried to show me the way Makayla leaned to the side as she rode her bike.  By then, I was sitting on the back of his truck, having allowed Makayla to venture four houses down without her mother running after her with arms around her in the event she plummeted to the ground at any second, or a pedophile jumped out from a bush.  Matt was highly annoyed that I refused to watch him and refused to take my eyes off Makayla for a single second. 

“Just come do your demonstration over here, so I can keep an eye on the both of you,” I said, motioning for him to come from behind my back, to the direction where Makayla was riding.

He said he’d tell me later and started unloading his car.  I knew I had annoyed him but wasn’t too worried about it.  A conversation about a child who has bad habits in bike riding can be discussed at any time.  A child being snatched by a pedophile can happen in the three minutes you look away.  Matt determined that I was “coddling” Makayla and let me know that I just needed to let her be a kid.  This idea was only further influenced when the next door neighbor’s boyfriend pulled up in his truck.  Makayla stopped her bike, came next to my side, and said, “I will wait until he is inside of his house because I don’t even know that guy.”  She watched him as he got out of his truck, went into the garage, and closed the garage door.

“Do you think it’s safe to ride past now?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” I told her.

She rode to the fourth house, turned around, and let Matt and I know, “That guy will probably steal me.  That’s why I had to wait until he was gone.”

“He probably wouldn’t, but you don’t know him, so you never know,” I told her, “He probably wouldn’t, but he might, so it’s best to stay near Mommy if someone you don’t know comes around.”

It’s not like Makayla has zero social skills.

“I’m still shy,” she informed Matt and I earlier.  But she will warm up to someone who I am with within a few minutes.  She is polite and sweet to people, very respectful.  As a couple walked down the street earlier, she told them “hello,” and then said, “I still want to wait until they are gone before I ride my bike down there.  I don’t know those people.”

Am I overprotective?  I have had most people tell me I am.  But I don’t care.  It’s not like a have a thirty year old who is overly wary of people they don’t know.  I have a six year old little girl, who would be defenseless in the event some freak tried to snatch her.  At the park, if an adult she doesn’t know starts lurking around, she’ll come straight to my side until or unless I tell her I think the person is safe.  If someone at the grocery line engages her in conversation, she’ll motion for me to come down to her level and whisper in my ear, “Is it OK to talk to him/her?”  99% of the time, people like that are telling her what a good girl she is, or how cute she is, and I allow these conversations to take place.  I remember one time, when she was four, some freak behind us told her, “You’re really sexy, just like you’re mommy.”  When she asked if she was allowed to speak to this person, I told her no, put her in front of me, and stood facing this person until we checked out, as he wiggled his tongue at me and winked.  I then had a manager walk us to our truck.  On another occasion, Makayla and I were walking into Wal-Mart, and some dude who was sitting on a bench at the front of the store told me what a beautiful child I had and let me know he loved children.  I was automatically alarmed because I feel like a normal human male would not say such a disturbing thing to a little girl’s mother.  As Makayla and I shopped, every time I looked back, he was there.  He followed us aisle to aisle until I picked up a five year old Makayla, put her in the back of the basket, and continued shopping.  I alerted an employee of the situation and as the employee went to get a manager, the weird dude tried talking to me again.

“I have never seen such a beautiful child,” he said, “I’ve always wanted kids.”

I refused to say a word to this person, picked up Makayla, left my groceries, and went to the front to get a manager.  Sadly, in my hasty retreat, I left my wallet in the cart and never saw it again.  That evening, I carried Makayla to the car as two managers escorted me.  After the viewing of the video, the man received his own picture posted in Wal-Mart, alerting anyone who saw him to report him to managers, as he had been banned. 

Even before these atrocious people further perpetuated my fear that lunatics are everywhere, I have always been extremely careful about my kids.  When they were babies, if I had to reach over and get a thing of meat at the store, I’d keep one hand on their stomachs in the event someone tried to snatch them out of their carseat that was in the front of the basket, even though they were strapped in.  When we go to crowded places like Six Flags, I keep my kids on one of those child leash things in the event some pedophile tries to run by and snatch them.  Mommy dearest has a large clip attached to her own leash device so in the event a pedophile attempted to run by and snatch my children, they would be dragging me along with them.  That’s right people.  In large crowds, I use metal devices to attach myself to my children and still insist they hold my hand.  When the kids play at the park, I follow them around instead of sitting on the bench, to make all around me aware that there is a ninja adult ready to defend their lives.  If Makayla climbs up the jungle gym to go down a slide, I go with her.  If she runs from the slide to go to a swing, I run after her.  I don’t leave the kids with sitters.  I don’t let them play outside unless I am literally RIGHT there.  And I have had people tell me, “Honestly Jess, what’s the worst that can happen?  The chances of someone kidnapping them are slim to none.”

So what?  The fear, agony, terror, screaming for their mommy while some freak brutalizes them before he slits their throats and throws them in a ditch is more than enough motivation for me to be what some have called, “the helicopter mommy.”  I could understand if I was treating teenagers like this.  But my children are six and three.  I honestly don’t see a problem with this.

What It's Like Being Extremely Normal

So, I went out to grandpa’s boxcar like storage thing to retrieve some of Makayla’s stuff.  I inspected everything around the boxcar to ensure there wasn’t anything of rattling, poison nature that could possible attack me and after I was satisfied I got to work trying to get the blasted thing open.  Why grandpa couldn’t just buy a box car with a door and door knob is beyond me.  Instead, you have to mess with all these bars, line them up, and try to remember which bars open what.  This process took up about ten minutes of my time.  I finally got the dumb door open and warily lurked into the length of the boxcar.  After fifteen seconds, it occurred to me that it was a total possibility that the door might bang close, locking me into a sweltering oven that would probably end my life in at least twenty minutes.  My grandparents are accustomed to me lurking around the ranch for gosh knows how long and it would never occur to them that I was in the process of getting murdered by heat stroke in a box car.  Locked in a boxcar, yards away from the house, they would be unable to hear my screams for help as my body wilted like a flower until I collapsed in a dramatic and untimely demise.  They would discover me hours later, and I would forever be known as the girl who died in a boxcar.  Not the way I want to go.  So I left, vowing to come back when it wasn’t so hot and with my cell phone.  I struggled some more with the bars, attempting to get it closed.  As I was struggling with the bars, the hugest dirt devil I have ever seen caught my eye from across the field.  In the span of about a second in a half, my mind thought it was a tornado and I thought how awesome it was that we’d be finally getting some rain.  I realized it was a dirt devil and then marveled at the thought that I was more focused on rain than a potential catastrophe.  I watched it until it dissipated which took a while.  I went back to the house and told grandpa about the dirt devil experience.  He did not respond to me but stared at his computer, looking for proof behind a law I had asked him about.  I stared at him for a few seconds with a grin, hoping to be rewarded with a comment that would amuse me but it became clear that I was being ignored so I went to pester my grandma.  I told her about how much the boxcar sucked and she informed me Makayla’s stuff was in her storage building, the one with an actual door and doorknob.  Blast.

Old Friends!!!!

       So last night I took off at ten o’clock to go hang out with my childhood pals.  My grandparents looked at me like I was a lunatic for leaving the house to go somewhere at ten o’clock at night.  This startled me slightly since they have known me since I was born and should know very well that not even the late hands of time would prevent me from going to this reunion.  I drove to a bar thing that I wasn’t aware existed until an hour previously and hopped out of my car.  Paul, one of my best friends since I was six, who I haven’t seen in forever was waiting outside and I was utterly stunned by his attractiveness level.  Paul and I attempted a romance once when we were eight and I even let him hold my hand in a bunk bed.  It lasted for three days, before he let me know he thought we should only be friends.  I let him know I didn’t want to be his girlfriend anyway.  There wasn’t much time for hurt feelings.  Our moms were great friends and we spent a great deal of childhood together.  Playing king of the mountain on hay, making fish stick picnics, terrorizing our sisters, mastering trampoline tricks and video games, getting yelled at by our moms for our shenanigans, playing board games, wrestling, reciting spelling words, comparing scabs, swimming, discussing our emotions, and my favorite, practicing our karate on Brison Higgins.  His sister and I got along well too but considering I was a boy until I was fifteen and she was nowhere near a boy, our bonding opportunities were limited.  So I saw Paul standing there and was amazed that he had morphed into a hot dude but I know for a fact that I am not his type.  I took our hug as an opportunity to feel his abs and let him know I liked his thighs.  We went in and I saw some other childhood friends and was thrilled.  Playing catch up was a blast.  We remembered the time I had written a ridiculous song about a person being killed by a fly and sang it in tune with “My Heart Will Go On.”  Paul and I recalled the time we had gotten into an incredibly intense game of tennis.  Not real tennis; where we hold each other’s hands in a half hand shake type thing and the players take turns slapping their opponents hand as hard as they can before someone lets go.  Not only are we apparently not concerned with pain during competition, our friends were watching and it was now a huge thing.  This went on for a while.  The end result was severely swollen hands that ended up bruising terribly.  I believe we were forced to forfeit when a teacher discovered what we were up to; I don’t really remember.  I know we were on some sort of band trip adventure.  And I know I didn’t lose.

Anyway, Paul wasn’t the only person there who I knew.  I knew quite a few and had a blast going down memory lane and hearing what they were up to.  After making enough inappropriate comments to determine what these people’s comfort ability level was since I hadn’t seen them in forever, I decided I still liked them.  I turned to Chris, or apparently now, Coston, and revealed to him that I had the most massive crush on him in the seventh grade and my friends and I came up with a code word for him so no one else, most importantly him, would know when we talked about him.  As a thirteen year old still angry about the fact that I was growing boobs, I had the sexual appeal of a male hyena.  I would lurk into band class and flirt with him by showing him the noises my arm pits could make and my kewl beat boxing skillz.  After being told this was not the way to go by my friends, I became incredibly shy, totally unaware as to whether or not he thought I was a raging freakshow.  One night coming home from some band thing, he and I sat at the very front of the bus, side by side.  We ended up cuddling and he put his thirteen year old hand on my chest, above my thirteen year old boobs, and I didn’t say a single word, wondering if we were incredibly close to a sexual encounter.  I wondered what I should do if he tried to kiss me.  I had never allowed a boy to kiss me other than the time Brison Higgins kissed me on the lips when I was six and I punched him in the face and then felt awful and told him he could kiss me again if he wanted to.  When I let him, I found the act repulsive.  At thirteen, the idea of smooching the very first boy who had ever stimulated my raging hormones was terrifying.  I was also struggling with the fact that I might be in the process of sinning because back then, I considered myself a superb religious teen.  He told me I was good in volleyball but didn’t kiss me or do anything else sexual.  Such a gentleman.  As he and I and my friends discussed old and new stuff, I looked across the table at him and considered what would have happened if I had ended up married to my thirteen year old Fabio like I swore to my friends I would.  Considering he appears to be a mature, functioning adult and I have the social skills of a rabid moose and the maturity of an eight year old boy, I do not see such a thing working out.  I also remember what a terror he was as a child, though he denies his heathenism, and he and I creating an actual human being together would no doubt result in a criminal.  After a couple of hours of more responsibility in a bar than I have ever shown, I hugged everyone goodbye and left.  When I got home, I saw three children crashed out on the blow up bed in the living room.  Upon inspection, I discovered that one of those children was mine and two of them were related to me.  I went to bed (or couch) and sent Matt a text message letting him know I was highly suspicious that my affection for him grew stronger the longer we’re together.  I missed him and felt really sad to be away from him at night.  I let him know that.  I fell asleep, thinking I might actually cry from missing him and woke up around three in the morning, covered in junebugs.  They were on my face and there were a few in my hair and arms.  I jumped up and flicked them off, totally disgusted that I was apparently camping though I made no such plans.  I saw some other types of bugs flying around and lied down, horrified of possible bug consumption during my slumber.  I shot Paul a text message informing him of my situation and tried to go back to sleep.  I couldn’t.  I kept having to flick junebugs off my body and was afraid they would get on me without me knowing about it.  I ended up passing out and woke up with no signs of being assaulted by insects.  Last night was a fantastic night and I’m happy I attended.  There is something special about catching up with childhood friends as an adult.  Children aren’t smart enough to know to lie to people about themselves yet, so childhood friends know a part of you that other people you meet in adulthood never get to meet.  They know your heart before it becomes cynical and your brain before it becomes responsible.  Childhood friends know a part of you that you might not even remember being a part of you, a part of you that no one will ever meet again and I think that is honestly, extremely awesome. 

The Apple of My Twitching Eye

Written the other day:

Lucky for me, Makayla did not wake up at some ungodly hour demanding I do things such as feed her and I was positive that today was going to be an amazing day.  Period.  I made coffee and Makayla said, “Feed me that coffee with your spoon like Maw Maw.”

“No way,” I told her, “that is something you do with Maw Maw.  And when you start acting like a hooligan, Maw Maw doesn’t know it because great grandmas think that great grandchildren are pure and incapable of crime.”

She just looked at me and I said, “I’m sorry.  Let me drink a cup of coffee.  I’m still kind of tired.”

“Mommy, drinking coffee will make me think of Maw Maw.  I miss her.”

So I made Makayla a very small cup of coffee.

“Put a spoon in it like Maw Maw,” she said.

When Makayla was little, my grandma would spoon mouthfuls of coffee into her.  Makayla loved it.  It’s their thing.  My grandma and I have a “thing” too but not like that.  Our thing consists more of life talks and perverted sexual innuendo.  She is like a wizard.

So anyway, I watched Makayla sipping her coffee and I sipped mine and I felt a massive headache coming.  I rarely get them but when I do, it’s possible that brain damage is being done.  First from the pain, second because according to most, I am “strange.”

Anyway, I attempted to pop a few Advil and nearly hurled on the floor as I tried to swallow them.  When it comes to drugging my body, I am capable of consuming inordinate amounts of alcohol but when it comes to pills, I have issues.  I have a gag reflex that’s so sensitive, I have already accepted the fact that porn will never be an alternative to college for me.  It comes in handy to only endure giving the minimal gift of unenthusiastic and  brief fellatio during sexual encounters though.  Makayla is used to watching and hearing me hurl or dry hurl since that is my initial response to many things, and gave me a sympathetic rub on the back as I recovered from my attempt at swallowing the Advil.  It had ended up being hurled from my mouth to the other side of the room.  Since crushing it up and snorting it would be impossible on account that it was a liquid form of pain killer, I went in search of something smaller that wouldn’t kill me when I tried to swallow it.  I found nothing.  I figured perhaps chugging huge amounts of water would cure me, thinking I might just be dehydrated.  The thirteen cups of water I had drank the day before made me think that wasn’t the case, but I like to play it safe on things like that.  So I chugged water and nothing happened and I decided I would spend the rest of the day being in misery.  Makayla started following me around the house, claiming to be bored.  I told her to go do something creative since that is my suggestion whenever she annoys me.  She refused to do creative things and insisted I play with her.  I told her I had a headache and she suggested I drink water and take a vitamin.  I chugged some water to get her out of my hair but she wasn’t having it.

“Come play with me.  Let’s do stuff,” she demanded.

“Makayla, I just want to lie on the couch for a while,” I told her, “go play by yourself.”

“If you’re going to be on the couch anyway, let’s watch TV,” she said.

“No.  Go do something that will stimulate your brain.”

Apparently, Makayla’s idea of stimulating her brain is to sit a foot away from me and stare intently at my face.  I have no idea why, but this annoyed me.  After ten minutes of trying to ignore her, she started chattering.  About nothing.

“I wish I had a dimple in my cheek like you, Mommy.  Why do you even have that anyway?”

“It’s a genetic mutation,” I groaned, “go play.”

“I don’t know what that means!” Makayla yelled, “Mommy what did you say?  I don’t know what that is!  You have to teach me!”

Trying to teach a six year old what genetic mutation means when you have a pounding headache is not fun.  After that fiasco, she wanted to know every single detail about her babyhood.  She started saying random things and every now and then I’d be able to block it out but she’d put a stop to that by saying, “MOMMY!  I know you aren’t listening to me.  Pay attention to me,” while poking my cheek.

“Makayla GO PLAY,” I told her, “I don’t feel good.  We have a lot to do today and I need this headache to go away.”

“Why do you even have a headache anyway?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  I didn’t start getting them until you learned how to talk.  Off you go.  Shoo.  Quick like a bunny.”

But then she was intent on knowing all the details of when she learned to talk.  I wanted to smack her but I’m not a fan of smacking children especially when they’re expressing annoying curiosity.  I decided Makayla was acting the same way she does every day and told myself to stop being an asshole.  97% of the time I am highly amused by her and prefer her company over anyone else’s other than Matt when he’s nude.  I hopped up and told her we’d be running errands.  She shrieked with a victory hoot and barged out the front door before I even had my shoes on.  I had to go fetch her so she wouldn’t be stolen by a pedophile.  The errands were awful.  My headache was pounding, making it nearly impossible to focus on what I needed to do.  Makayla’s chatter went on non-stop and I politely smiled and nodded and responded the best I could.  After deciding her self esteem would not be ruined by her mother asking for some quiet, I finally said, “Makayla.  Please let’s just be quiet for a few minutes.  My head really hurts and it’s hot and I need to focus on my driving.”

She did a great job for at least thirty seconds before she asked if gross water can turn your skin brown.  She wanted to know how shampoo was made.  She asked all sorts of questions that I don’t remember.  After I snapped at her, “Makayla, enough.  Hush,” she waited for a few seconds and said, “Will I die when I’m a kid or when I’m old?”

Horrified at the idea of Makayla being dead, I kind of jumped.  I wondered if she was capable of manipulation since she asked such a shocking question after being told to be quiet.

“You will not die until you’re are a super old woman,” I told her, “it will be probably at least a hundred years from now.”  I am not certain it would be wise to tell Makayla that I have no idea when her death will occur.  She is a pretty imaginative kid with a morbid streak.  She’s the kind of kid who if you told her you have no idea when she’ll die, will not be able to sleep because she’ll be wanting to know exactly when and how it would happen.

“What if you die?” she asked.

“I won’t.  Don’t worry about it.”

“You’ll go to Hell because you don’t believe in God.  It’s OK to say Hell if you’re just saying that it’s that place.  I really don’t want you to go there.  I have bad dreams about it all the time.”  She has told me this before, after being told this by someone she really trusted.  She first told Matt because she was scared to tell me and then she told me.  And she does have nightmares about it.

“That place is not real,” I told her, “No one goes to Hell.  There are so many different religions and gods, no one is going to go anywhere bad just because they don’t believe in God.”

“Clint and Matt don’t believe in God either.  So where will you guys go when you die?”

“Certainly not Hell,” I told her, unwilling to tell her I’m assuming we’d all become worm food and that’s it, “no one knows.  But if there’s a Heaven, we all go there.  Hell is a made up place.”

“Like Candyland?” she asked, “Like, it’s just pretend?”

“Yes.  It’s pretend.  Hell is a place that people made up just to scare other people.”

My headache was worse now and we suffered through the entire Bolton’s Tire nightmare with me managing not to snap at the dudes.  I am very aware that Makayla observes me in all situations, especially difficult ones and wanted to teach her how to handle them.

We got home and I collapsed on the couch and put a cold rag on my head.  Makayla stood by me and rubbed by cheek.  I found this annoying but didn’t want to hurt her feelings.  I told her I was going to take a cool bath.  Makayla likes to sit in a laundry basket right next to the tub and watch me bathe, which always makes me uncomfortable.  I strategically placed a washcloth over my bajingo and soaked.  I decided to submerge all of my hair into the water in an attempt to cool off and help my headache.  Makayla was chatting away and with my head under the water, I told her, “I can’t hear you.  Wait until I sit up.”

She took this as her cue to talk louder.  I ignored her so she sat on the edge of the bath-tub and continued.  Before I could tell her to get down, she slipped and fell head first into the tub, elbowing the crap out of my neck.  After a few seconds of violent splashing, I managed to sit up and get her out of the tub.  She was laughing hysterically.

“Dang it, Makayla,” I said, “go play in your room.” 

“No.  I want to hang out with you.”

I made a mental note to seriously address her co-dependency and considered threatening her with physical violence.  Since Makayla hasn’t received a spanking since she was three, I knew she wouldn’t take it seriously. 

“Go to your room and play.  Now.”  I told her.

She wailed and stomped off to her room and stood in the door while staring at me.  Her room is right across from the bathroom.  When she saw I wasn’t paying attention to her, she sat down, popped her thumb in her mouth, and looked at me.

“Get your thumb out of your mouth, now,” I told her.  She hasn’t sucked her thumb in over a year, except for when she sleeps.  Even then, she’ll place a pillow over her head so no one can see. 

She made a show of putting both thumbs in her mouth and I hopped out of the tub, dripping wet, got eye level with her, and said, “Enough.  If you don’t cut it out, you aren’t going to play Mario for a few days.  Go play and stop acting up.”

She started protesting, promising to be good for the rest of her life.

“Please Mommy!” she screamed, “Please don’t take Mario away!  Give me another chance!  Please!”

“Makayla I said IF you don’t behave I’ll take it away,” I said as I hopped back in the tub, “hush.”

“I would just DIE if you took it away!  It would destroy my soul!  I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed!”

“Makayla, GO PLAY,” I told her.  She takes my threats like that pretty seriously since I carry through with them and I didn’t hear from her for ten minutes.  As I was drying off, she waltzed into the bathroom and asked if I needed any help.

“No,” I told her, “go play.”

“I want to play with you.  I already played.  Now I’m bored.”

I got dressed and lied back down on the couch with a cold rag on my head.  Makayla stood next to me and rubbed my face and offered to feed me grapes.

“I don’t want any grapes, Makayla but thank you,” I told her.

“Well can I have some?” she asked.  I got up and the second I stood up, became horribly dizzy from my headache.  I swayed for a moment before I sat down to get my balance back.  Blasted kid, wanting grapes.  I got her some grapes and after I lied back down and placed my rag over my head she said, “Can I have some juice too?”  Dang it.  I got up, this time slowly and fetched her some juice.  I lied back down and she popped grapes into her mouth while she looked at me.

“Makayla, go do something creative,” I told her.  She took that as an order to fetch books and read them to me while sitting on my knees.  I was OK with it.  She is the apple of my twitching eye.