No Ifs Ands or Butts

According to our daughter, Ebony, I have a flat butt. She asked me if this was because I sat on it too much.  Seriously, Ebony?  This butt hasn’t met up with a couch since Washington crossed the Delaware. That is an exaggeration, but sometimes it seems like that long ago, back when there were no children, no pets, and no home for which to care. It is almost impossible to imagine such a time, and frankly it must have been quite boring.
In reality, days in this house begin at 5AM and end around midnight give or take an hour. By 8 AM, we’ve already put in a full day. Four kids have been sent off to school. And these aren’t “normal” kids. There is Salinna with her cerebral palsy, a total care child in a wheelchair. Salinna is sixteen now and she is a typical teenager.  She hates to get up in the morning and she won’t do a thing for herself!  We ask her if she stayed up late talking with her friends on fb. (This is a joke.  Salinna doesn’t walk or talk, but if she did…!)  And then there’s dear Alex who wakes up asking for donuts or cupcakes. We think donuts and cupcakes are a perfectly fine choice for breakfast, but , of course, meds must be taken first.  “No like medicine!” “None of us like medicine, Alex, but if you want to stay on this side of the grass for awhile, you have to take your medicine. No medicine, no cupcake.” Finally after this back and forth a few times he takes his medicine and states “I don’t wanna play outside”. Whatever. Then it’s time to feed the cats, walk the dogs, toss in a load of wash from the bed wetters’ club, followed by a regular load of wash and then feed and water Hazel, the horse and clean her corral. And if it is not every other day, there is no shower.  Mothers and fathers do not need daily showers.  They just need to wash the body parts that show.  And that  does not include a flat butt.  Next, it is time for little Rosey to be on her way.  Rosey likes the whole family to see her off to school, so whoever is available is beckoned to watch for bus #46  no matter how long the wait . Just after this, it is time to wake up Ebony who frequently can be heard running on her treadmill or practicing her vocals at 4AM. And so it usually takes a stick of dynamite to get her out of bed and sometimes that isn’t even enough.  The bus driver will often offer to ride around the block to give Ebony a few more minutes to get ready.  It would be an understatement to say that Ebony is not a morning person!
On most days, before this off to school routine is complete, our grandchildren Lucas and Evelyn (aka Devilyn) are arriving for Memere’s (my grandmother name) day care. Evelyn is the stereotypical redheaded two and a half year old, who is a whirling dervish, from the time she touches down at Memere’s until she is beamed back up to her parents at 6PM. And did I mention our baby granddaughter, Amelia lives with us along with her mom and dad? We watch her only on days ending in Y. At nine months old, with a speedy crawl, she’s become our resident “dustbuster”.
The day is filled with diapers, drop in visitors, occasional disasters and dinner. A drop in might be Freddy Love who first met us at a yard sale we held a few years ago. No telling when Freddy will come by but when he does he updates us about his wife who ran off with their pastor, or how he can cut down our trees for $800 or his plans to buy a million dollar house in Florida. Until his recent death, another drop by visitor was our friend Mr. Ray, self described as “the smartest man in the universe”.  Ever since he did some electrical work for us a decade ago, he’d stop by on a whim or by a directive from God for cake and tea. He was a man familiar with little miracles.  Not infrequently, Ms Georgia, the eccentric boarder who lives in the loft above the garage stops by at midnight to ask us to move the car or to drop off her rent money. In our universe, these unplanned visitors never fail to correspond with the disaster of the day. (lost pacifier, overflowing toilet, dog or kid or both barfing, pot boiling over, Evelyn disappearing, Evelyn in the snack cabinet, Evelyn wrapped in toilet paper and usually several of these concurrently).
So, dear Ebby, no buts about it, this butt is not a couch potato butt; but a butt worked to the bone.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on August 14, 2015.

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