Unique Like Everyone Else

Epiphany

Today, January 6, is the Twelfth Day of Christmas, Epiphany, the day it is said that the Three Wise Men's journey culminated in the Revelation of the  Baby Jesus--God revealed in physical form.

 

 

I was chatting online the other day with an acquaintance from England about when people take down their Christmas decorations.  She said that she generally takes them down somewhere between Jan. 3-5 because it is considered bad luck to keep them up past Epiphany.  I had to laugh (and thank my lucky stars!) because I have always used Epiphany as an arbitrary date that the Christmas decorations can come down NO SOONER THAN.   Haha!

The word "epiphany," based on this divine manifestation, can also mean

"any moment of great or sudden revelation."  (Collins English Dictionary)

On this twelfth day of Christmas, 2012, I had an epiphany.  There were presents that I had squirrelled away that I totally forgot to put under the tree on December 24th.  Whoops! 

So I put together a little festive lunch with the Christmas Crackers I'd also forgotten to bring out when my mom and dad were here (and some Cheez-Its that J-Boy has now dubbed "Epiphany Crackers" to go with the Christmas Crackers) and gave the kids their bonus gifts.

 

 Happy Epiphany, Everyone!

 

Big Daddy: He Can't Help What He Is

Big Daddy and I were out running errands the other afternoon.  We were feeling pressed for time with yet another evening meeting at the school (J-Girl's this time--Freshman Parent Orientation with focus on college planning and strategies to get 'em there).  We made a pit stop for gas and made an impromptu decision to just grab dinner from the adjacent Del Taco.  Divide and conquer:  while I attended the pump BD made the food run. 

I was hypnotized by the digital display, thinking about how I was simultaneously filling my tank while draining my bank account, when I was approached by a nice looking twenty-something, greeting me kindly, but obviously wanting something.  Could I spare a couple of bucks so he and his girlfriend could catch the bus?  Well, I never carry cash and told him I had nothing, glancing at the pump display to see if I could cut short and get out of there.  Shoot.  I almost forgot about Big Daddy.

Big Daddy is the sucker nice one in our relationship.  And since the stranded couple was still lingering, looking ready to challenge my claim of no cash (Really?  Even 50 cents would be a big help, ma'am.) I offered him up to them.

Me:  "Well, my husband is over there in the Del Taco if you want to check with him..."

Him:  "In the Del Taco?  Uh...I guess I could...How will I know who he is?"

Me:  "He's tall, dark, and handsome."

Him:  "Tall, dark, and handsome, huh?  Ha-ha. Ok..."

Me:  "Oh...and I think he's wearing  a blue shirt and brown shorts."

Big Daddy comes strolling out of Del Taco with a big grin on his face, shaking his head.  "You're such a dork," he says when he reaches me.  Beyond him the guy is waving two dollars at me and yelling, "Thank you!"

A few days later we were in Barnes and Nobel when a stranger gives me a great big grin and hello.  "Ha-ha," I say to BD, "he thinks I'm someone else!"  "No," Big Daddy replies. "I was just over by the magazines and he called me tall, dark, and handsome. So, yeah, he knows you...dork."

Hey, I just call 'em like I see 'em.  And as for being a dork?  Yeah, I can't help what I am either.

 

Who's Your Santa?

I was folding laundry yesterday.  Christmas was a solid eight months ago, today being Sept. 2, right? 

 

 

Wait a minute -- I think these pajama pants are actually from the 2009 holiday season.  So that is a good year-and-a-half-plus that these babies have been making their way through the Flaherty Fluff 'n' Fold.

 

 

This is not a post about wearing Christmas clothes off season.  No, I really couldn't care less about what is worn when or with what.  White pants after Labor Day?  Go for it.  Flannel PJ's with a Santa motif in summer?  Knock yourself out. 

 

 

No,  this post is about unknowingly, yet perhaps, subliminally encouraging your now twelve (then ten!) year old kid not only to drink beer, but to "heart" beer and to share beer, and to drink beer in large quantities. 

 

        

 

Eighteen months have passed, and yet, I never noticed that the new jammies the Christmas Elf delivered to J-Boy one joyous Chistmas Eve had anything other than cute polar bears with eco-friendly messages mixed with rockin' guitars,  skulls in Santa hats, and the smarmy "Who's Your Santa?" designs.  I guess I...I mean, that Elf needs to be a more careful shopper now that my baby has outgrown the mainstays of the kids' department.  These PJ's are an Adult XS.

 

Hey, J-Boy!!  Be a good lad and go crack Mama open a cold one, will ya'?  Atta Boy!

 

Ha!  If you could only feel the discomfort he is emitting while indulging me with this pose!
I sure do love that kid! 

Now, seriously, give me that beer...

 

Rookie Move

Summer's here, poeple. 

Don't forget to put sunscreen on the tops of your feet!

 

 

This, after being made fun of for buying enough SPF 50 at Costco
to protect half the beach all summer long.

Slug Bug

When we were little and would go on family road trips, and there were no video games (what!?) or in-car DVD players (gasp!!), my sister and I would count Volkswagen bugs to pass the time.  Sun Bugs, the bronzy-gold metallic ones, were worth 2 points.  Lucky, the one who spotted one of them!

In my 'tween years I was introduced to a stealthier game: spotting out-of-state license plates.  First to see one of these babies would sock her friend hard on the arm with a triumphant call, "Out-of-state!  No return!" the "no return" part meaning, "no hitzees-backzees".  The bummer was you'd always lose the first round before you even knew you were playing. 

I guess as all things are like to do, the games morphed over time, and a couple of years ago I learned of a rendition called "Slug Bug" where you hit (slug) someone in the arm when you are first to spot a VW bug.  Volkswagen has since embraced the craze, tweaking it to call awareness to their entire line of vehicles with an ad campaign that demonstrates calling out any VW model by its color whenst delivering the blow.  "Green one!" "Blue one!"

 

 

We Flahertys tried to get a little creative with the game using our fondness of rhymes, AND to increase opportunities for gratuitous violence between us.  (Please know that is a joke...)  We added:

The "SUV Shove"

 The "Cop Bop"

 The "Saturn Pattern" which involved rhythmic poking

 The "Beamer Femur," a good knuckle punch to the leg for a BMW sighting

 The "Jeep Jab" and

 The "Kayak Smack" (rare, but my personal fave)

 

Big Daddy wanted to add one for trucks, but I told him I had a headache...

Anyway, this was a game for playing in the car.    Until one day, as we were coming out of a Starbucks we spotted two friendly Sheriff's Deputies enjoying a coffee break.  Two feet from them, J-Boy reaches up to enthusiastically wonk me on the head saying, "Cop Bop!!"  Can you say, "mortified"???  We scurried to the car where I explained that it was GAME OVER and why.  We agreed to go back to counting VW Bugs for points--convertibles would be worth 2.

Sadly, the game has fallen out of favor.  Part of the reason could be that somewhere along the line silver convertibles became worth 5 million points instead of just 5.  We have one that lives down the street from us.  Everyone knows it's there, and the game could end in two blocks if it is in the driveway and someone in the car decides to play and calls it out.

 

Sweet Revenge?

Boy, we thought our rabbit, Edward, was a bit territorial and intolerant of dogs coming to visit our house.  Who knew he would have such a visceral reaction to a guest, invited or not, of his own species!

 

 

Can one be "eaten in effigy"?

 

With all the other available candy in these baskets, unwrapped jeweled jellybeans, morsels of decadently wrapped chocolate that could be taken in entirety....

 

....he only attacked the large, rabbit-shaped items.  Clearly, a mob-like message sent to Don Easter Bunny. 

 

Notice a resemblance??

 

Well, Edward, what do you have to say for yourself??

"I made him the offer, and he refused it, so badaBOOM."

Mannequin Madness: Final Edition

Alas, J-Boy started at a new school this year, and I've been so caught up in evaluating how he is managing the change, adapting to the new program, and reveling in the excitment of how successful he has been that I completely forgot about a part of my life left behind.

 Life has its twists and turns, and relationships that were once kept strong by a common orbiting force can quickly become a part of the past, irrelevant to your current reality, your day-to-day comings and goings. 

And then I saw her, unexpectedly, outside of that circle that bound us.

 

It was weird seeing her like that, out shopping in a rural town way out in the middle of nowhere.  I could feel her eyes burn into me with recognition.  I felt I had no choice but to go up to her and say hello.

 
 

The awkwardness was palpable.  She made no effort to shed any warmth or feign social niceties.  She said that she had heard through the grapevine that J-Boy was transferring to another school, then bitterly stared into the distance as she spat seethingly about "the uncaring nature of SOME people who don't bother to keep in touch but let strangers be the bearers of news."  I knew then that she had hardened in a way that I would never be able to break through.

I was in the old neighborhood recently.  I drove by her house knowing I'd see her.  I thought about stopping in, but I knew it would be no use.  Our lives had headed in separate directions and this, this madness, for me, was over. 

 

Purpose Defeated

He's trying to make a statement with his car; it's an extension of himself, his masculinity.  The oversized exhaust, wide tires.  And yet, the "tough factor", the "cool" that he is going for is somehow neutralized... 

 

OMG! Wot RU TXTing Abt?

I'm not a big texter.  I have two friends, both about a decade younger than me, with whom I text first, call or meet second.  With J-Girl in Junior High and quickly expanding her independence, however, I see what a convenient way texting is to keep in touch with her without being too obtrusive.  So far, she mostly just let's me know when she gets home if I am not there, or if she'll be late.  But there are the precious times she shares events in her day that she doesn't want to wait to tell me like, "We have two baby tortoises in science class!" or "I got to hold Stella, the hedgehog, today!" 

Deciphering the text lingo has not been so problematic.  She keeps it simple, mostly spelling things out, actually.  But, with a snicker sometimes she'll use the lingo verbally, like "brb!" (be right back) or "idk" (I don't know) just to be funny.  The advent of such tools as the LG De-texter allows for parents (clearly those less hip and with it than me) to translate some of the mumbo-jumbo they find when monitoring their teens texting practices. 

 

Usually my intuition is pretty good in figuring out these sorts of word puzzles.  There was a game show in the '80's called Bumper Stumpers that I felt I was pretty good at, though even back then I felt the low budget cash winning potential was not worth the pursuit of becoming a contestant.  The challenge was figuring out personalized license plates.  The host would give a clue like, "This plate belongs to a prosecutor."  AQQASHN.  Accusation (QQ is the plural of Q, so pronounced "Q's").  "This plate belongs to Agatha Christie."  MREXPRT.  MR-E-XPRT.  Mystery Expert.  Fun, right?  And who knew it would be a perfect training ground for deciphering texts.

The other day she sent me a text to let me know she was home from school.  I sent one back that said I'll be there soon.  She followed up with one that said "Nya".  I was stumped.  My first thought was that "Nya" might mean "not yet, anyways" as in "you'll be home soon, but you aren't here yet."  That seemed out of character and smarmy for J-Girl.  So I texted back, "Nya?" thinking she would decode the acronym for me.  What I got back was, "?  -Nya", which I took to mean, "Are you an idiot?  N-y-a!  Duh!"  I followed up with two consecutive texts:

"Not Your Apples"?

"Never Yo-yo Alone"?

She answered back that she was confused, Nya.  Really?  She's confused??  I figured I could get home faster than trying to explain that I was the confused one via text or even--novel--by using the phone to CALL her.

I walk in the door and she immediately says, "I did NOT get what those last two texts of yours were! What???"  So I said in my best "Duh" voice, "NYA?  NOT...YOUR...APPLES???"  "OH!!!" she says.  "That's my "signature".  It automatically signs my texts.  It's pronounced "nyah" which is, like, Japanese for "meow".  Hmm, her signature...riiiighhhhtt.  (In her defense, she says that she pushed "OK" twice before hitting SEND.  She says she was not "Nya-ing" at me.)

I'm thinking that perhaps the teens and tweens of Generation Z are heading underground with their text-cabularies.  Expanding on the United States Marine Corps implementation of the Native American Code Talkers during World War II, these kids are not only incorporating foreign or forgotten languages into their tech-speak, but also mixing in various animal dialects as well.  Should we be afraid?  Maybe.  But, there is something we can do about it.  Research.  Stay in the loop.  Use the technology to our advantage.  Here--I'll give you a leg up with Lesson Number One.  It's up to you to carry on from here though. Your kids might be integrating with one or more of the world's thousands of languages. 

 

Making a Name for Myself

I've done it.  I've become known about town as the (weird) Turtle Lady.  It started out innocently enough, as these things usually do.  But then it got out of hand, and I really only have myself to blame. 

Before J-Boy was diagnosed with Autism, we were seeing a counselor in hopes of teaching him some coping techniques to ward off emotional meltdowns.  She incorporated a cute turtle puppet and a little booklet called The Turtle Story by Eric Dlugokinski, Ph.D., "in which a wise old turtle teaches younger turtles to recognize and accept their feelings, pause and gain their composure, think about their options for action, and act on their best choice."  J-Boy seemed to buy into the idea, with a bit of a literal interpretation, and to this day will sometimes "turtle" when he needs to escape a situation or make himself feel less vulverable.

If there is one thing we've learned on this journey through Autism-Land, it's capitalize on what works and use lots of positive reinforcement.  And so we brought home a turtle, Kooper, for a family pet.

Then we brought home Dr. Jones.  Then J-Girl's sewing teacher gave us Ash and Marina.  The babies died.    We got Maui from the pet store.  While I was cleaning the tank one day, Maui wandered off in the house somewhere. I chronicled my hunt for her via Facebook status updates. 

"It's 3 a.m.  Do you know where your turtle is?  Not behind the oven."

I think those posts were the foundational building blocks of my "reputation".  We gave up on Maui.  But a month later, a MONTH later!, J-Girl found her under the TV table on top of the cable box, a place we'd looked many, many times during her absence.   She was skinny but alive. 

In the meantime, I had put Dr. Jones out back in the pond.  She wandered off within a week never to be seen again.  But, when Maui reappeared we adopted Dilly to keep her company.  When Dilly wandered off, I posted these signs around the neighborhood:

Luckily, she wandered back on her own, if not with a little encouragement from the Do-er's amazing turtle-finding dog.  (She left the pond twice more, each time recovered with the help of that dog!)  Now, however, not only did my Facebook friends know of my reptilious reputation, the neighbors did, too.  That's when Janet came our way.  And Emerald.  And Aerial.  I've become the one to call when there are unwanted turtles that need a home. 

So, what is it that separates me, Weird Turtle Lady, from becoming the Crazy Cat Lady of lore?

A thin sheet of aquarium grade plexi-glass...that's what.