When Pigs Fly

One joy of being part of this family, is word games. We try to keep the mind games at a minimum, but we all love to play with language. Examples, horrible and otherwise:

One day Middlest and I were going somewhere in the car. She said something extremely clever and probably a little disrespectful, and she had long since moved out of the house, so I couldn’t send her to her room to think about it. It was funny enough that I snorted involuntarily, and I told her that she was “such a smart@ss.” Without missing a beat she came back with, “Well Mom, at least I’m not a dumb one.”

So that’s now one of the family taglines: “At least you’re not a dumb one.”

The children’s father and I shared a love for the Marx Brothers, particularly Groucho. My favorite of his jokes was the one where he wisecracked, “I shot an elephant in my pajamas once … What he was doing in my pajamas, I don’t know.”

One day I used the word “irrelevant” in a discussion. And he [the children’s father, not Groucho; I need to come up with a pseudonym for the children’s father that is memorable and evocative and still respectful] grinned and replied, “in whose pajamas?”

It’s now another family tagline. It nearly got LittleBit in trouble at school week before last. One of her classmates said the magic word, and LittleBit instinctively responded, “In whose pajamas?” and then tried to explain, which was entirely wasted on her culturally illiterate classmate.

[Soapbox? What soapbox?]

Recently we were driving from seminary to the high school, and LittleBit was talking about the phone company ad that uses the phrase “when pigs fly”. And she said, “It could happen. There are flying horses. Pegasuses. Why couldn’t there be pigasuses as well?”

All the while I was thinking, “Hippopotami. Pegasi? Pigasi?” while snickering mightily and trying to stay in my lane.

We have fun. It’s like Lorelai and Rory [Gilmore] on the days they were getting along. We take turns setting up the punch-line, and we take turns running laps with the punch-line all around the field.

And the crowd goes wild…

The Wallet Thief episode just gets better. As I was driving LittleBit to school from seminary yesterday morning, [you are right, most of our Meaningful Communication takes place in the car, after seminary, before school] I noticed that she was feeling as teary-eyed as I was. She asked me, “Do you ever just want to go to bed and pull the covers over your head for about a week and hope that everything goes away?”

I told her yes, I am familiar with that feeling. I might not know exactly how she was feeling at this moment, but I’ve been close enough to it in the past that I can definitely sympathize.

She told me that not only was she going to file a report for the theft of her wallet, she was probably going to file a sexual harassment charge on him “while I am at it”. This, as I was turning a corner. I managed not to jump the curb.

“Oh *really*? What did that little bozo do?”

“He makes lewd comments, and he stares at me *there*. And I’ve had it.”

Even if nothing comes of it from the school administration [though they take these charges pretty seriously nowadays], I am so proud of her for standing up to this particularly nasty sort of bullying. No wonder she wants to punch him in the face! I’d like to help her. Kipling is right: the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

It is a very good thing for this young punk that I am not a 17-year-old male, because I’d take him out behind the woodshed and talk to him by hand, as my mother might have said. And it is a very good thing for him that LittleBit has too much class to tell her band of acquired brothers “sic ‘im”. Because she has quite a posse of them, and some of them are tall and wide and impressively muscular.

Update on the update: when I picked her up last night from All State tryouts [she did not get picked for Round 4, huzzah, we are *done* after tonight’s concert!], she said she had filed the theft complaint, and he had responded, said that he didn’t know for sure who had done it but had some ideas of his own and would try to get her stuff back for her.

At moments like this it would be so nice to have an Uncle Guido in the family. However, this tribe is about as Celtic as you get [we are not counting the Swedish infusion from their dad’s side or the German one from mine, for the moment], the best that we could do would be to stuff him in the closet with a bagpipe CD at full throttle.

She has not filed on the other charge. Maybe this little come to You Know Who meeting will forestall any repetitions.

I think I finally have Brother Sushi’s tie whipped into shape. One of my last acts yesterday morning before leaving for work was to spray it and steam it. There’s a tiny hole along one edge, not from moths but from where I pulled the sewing threads out to remove the lining.

I’m planning to go to JoAnn’s later this morning and get a spool of sewing silk to re-stitch the lining. I was really pleased with how well that [silk thread] worked when I sewed the zipper into LittleBit’s hoodie. I think it will be a simple matter to reinforce the hole while I’m putting it all together. We shall see.

I also need to pick up a printer cartridge. There are letters waiting to be printed off, and I want to get them into the mail.

I got two of the four batteries for my camera charged up while at work yesterday, and much knitting done last night. Brother Sushi and I postponed our monthly outing because he had a bug last weekend. So I picked up pizza on the drive home, and he brought over Under the Tuscan Sun, and we ate and watched and occasionally paused the movie to talk about something it reminded us of, and I knitted. I had seen it before, *and* I had forgotten about that love scene. Oye.

I’m not comfortable watching love scenes, because my attitude about sexuality is to sublimate mine within an inch of its life, unless and until I remarry, at which time I want a real honeymoon with no distractions. [I hope that is sufficiently discreet for my children’s delicate eyes.]

I particularly am uncomfortable watching a love scene with a JustFriend like Brother Sushi, because he’s got the same standards. And presumably his own righteous ways of channeling all that lovely energy. So I leaped up and grabbed my knitting, saying something brilliant like, “OK, this is where I grab my knitting, la la la I can’t see them.” And he said, “Isn’t this what we have fast-forward for?”

Oh. Yeah.

It was very “ack, where’s the remote, and how do we fast-forward through this?” We are both reasonably competent with technology, but that little episode would have made a good YouTube.

This time last year I was dating Brother Abacus. This time next year I may well be dating The Good Brother. I need to find the box with the lip wax. I’ve just been dealing with random stray eyebrows [the ones that have migrated down to my jawline] via tweezers since we moved, but I want to sit down this weekend for some Basic Chick Pampering. All the little stuff that I more or less keep up with but typically not all at once. I hardly ever have to shave my legs anymore. [I wish they would pass that secret on to my pits, but I am not holding my breath over that one.] I actually know where the pedicure stuff is. My manicure is good until next weekend; I need to call Nail Dude to see if he is heading out of town for the holiday, or if he will be at work next Saturday.

And hand lotion season is upon us. If there is even the slightest chance that I might be holding hands, I need to get them moisturized. And keep them that way.

But now it’s time to put on my shoes and take LittleBit to rehearsals for tonight’s concert.