Home again Home Again Jiggety Jig...Izzy gets VD...

We were walking on the beach and I reached out to hold her hand.
Isobel: "Daddy?"
Daddy: "Yes my sweet Babu?"
Isobel: "Daddy what does the chimp in the movie say?"
Daddy: "Pass the banana pudding?"
Isobel: "No, the movie where he talks. What does he say? Take your hands off me?"
Daddy: "Oh. I know what you mean. The chimp doesn't say it, the guy does."
Isobel: "So what does he say?"
Daddy: (doing my best Charlton Heston) "Get your stinkin' paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"
Isobel: "Get your stinkin' paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"
Daddy: "Yep, that's right."
Isobel: "No really Daddy, let go of my hand I don't want to hold your hand."


"It's oh so nice to go traveling but it's so much nicer to come home..." In who's twisted book?
We were sitting in the sun, on a beach on a foreign shore where people wanted nothing more than to make us happy. Our toes were in the sand, our faces were skyward and hope was springing eternal...maybe that was the pelican slide...It's the same every year, we step off the plane, have a drink or two eat a lot of god damned meat and then it's time to go home.
It did seem this time around, that by the end we were ready to go home. There was still an air of not wanting to leave...it IS the Mexican coast after all. But between American tourists who hate bagpipes at sunset,( really!!?? yeah, uh-huh...) the downhill bed, the boy's first taste of love gone sour, and flat foot paralysis, it seemed we had had enough. The minions never did get their passports sorted so Isobel was ready to go too.
I'd like to say that something fiery and eventful happened on the plane. Isobel freaking out or The Boy rushing the forward cabin unless he was given free wi-fi but the simple truth is nothing like that happened. Nothing like that ever happens, my kids are excellent fliers. Polite and quiet and have been since the beginning. In addition, both are unbelievably charming and usually have a crowd of service personnel around them at some point during the flight. Free snacks abound when Izzy flies... She is available for rent but she demands half the cut of Bits and Bites.
We were tired from the flight and the sitting in that horridly uncomfortable position and the kids were a little wrangy. The Boy's meds had all but worn off and Izzy is just Izzy. The fact alone that they were cooped up for nearly five hours and didn't try to take over the plane is amazing in itself. On the way through customs The Boy had a case of goofy and Izzy hung off the inspection table. Mrs. Narrator and I tried to impress on the children the importance of behaving when the Government is concerned. (Izzy is still wondering what they strip when they search) The inspector gave her a half a grin and waved us through. We were in the van and half way there before it really hit home, that we were home...and the snow was falling.
Mrs. Narrator had a four hour derby practice on our first Sunday back and so it was the kids and me. The Boy played his video games and Izzy spent most of the day upstairs watching T.V. There wasn't a lot of speaking going on and apart from the sun tans we all have, it was any other Sunday around this house. I guess we re-acclimate quickly...some of us anyway. Mrs. narrator came home early, limping. Not because she had injured herself at practice but rather from the break she had taking prior to and including the vacation. She hobbled upstairs and I brought out my cane for her to hobble around on. It lasted about six seconds or one trip around the living room with it.
Izzy grabbed hold of it and immediately turned into a wizened old woman. That act also lasted about six seconds and soon she was wielding it like a mighty staff. And lo the minions did quake!
It was then the beginning of a new week, back to reality...back to work and school and the mines or wherever the minions go when she isn't watching. One odd thing I had noticed since our arrival back home, was that Izzy seemed to be doing all her T.V. watching upstairs in our room. Not unusual in itself but at some point, she will get bored being alone and come downstairs to check out what we are doing. This time, she did not. Not at all since we came home. Monday after school, I went up stairs to see what the new excitement was all about. She had laid out a picnic of sorts. The bag of snacks we had been eating on the plane had been emptied and it's contents laid out carefully on the floor in front of her. She hadn't heard me come upstairs (or maybe she had and just didn't care) and I saw that she was doling out rations to her impassioned followers. "Some for you and you..." She was helping herself too, naturally. She would wield the cane like a sword and threaten starvation but everybody seemed to get something to eat. (I'm guessing this because nobody was told that they weren't going to get anything) I walked into the room and she gave me a look that said "Oh my god, I'm going to get screamed at." I took a deep breath and then calmly told her to make sure no garbage was left in my bedroom.
"Some for you and you and you..." I've never heard call them by name but I sure hope she starts too. I have a great idea for a minion merchandising deal...and all the while I thought it was mouse crap I kept finding upstairs.


It's that time of year again that I dreaded when I was in school. I would spend no small amount of time on the evening of the 13th, carefully preparing an assortment of officially licensed Star Wars cards with clever expressions like' Valentine, you're out of this galaxy!' (I might be paraphrasing) Making sure that everyone in my class got one and that I had given the extra flashy or clever ones to the people I really liked... Amy Hammer always got the best ones. It was difficult to sleep the night before, I knew what was coming. I hoped year after year, that it would be different. It never was, year after year.
February the 14th would come and shortly after lunch, all of our school work would be put away and out would come the paper lunch sacks filled with the home made and store bought Valentines. The contents of the bag would be emptied and you would tape the empty bag to the front of your desk and wait for the greetings of friendship and the swooning words of love to come your way. O.K. maybe not swooning words of love but attention from the girls you had a crush on, could make or break your whole year.
I would hand out my cards, grab my piece of paper towel full of chips and popcorn and take my rice krispy square somebody always made all this stuff for these things but I don't believe it was ever my Mother. She may have, she is an excellent cook but I don't remember ever taking food to school for one of our class parties...I'm wandering.
I would go back to my desk and eat my snacks but not look in the paper lunch sack taped to my desk...I didn't need to. I knew what was in it. It was the same every year. Now I know what you are thinking, 'Ah poor Sid, no Valentines." Not quite. I would get one from Jaimie Seibel every year and one from Carolyn Weber and one from Esther Alexy. But that was it. Three lousy Valentines and from the three people I spent almost every waking moment with. I made out 24 Valentines and got three back for my trouble. From three people who were as odd as me... Why the walk through Hallmark Holidays Past?
Today is Valentines and being the dutiful father, last night I got Izzy and The Boy to fill out Valentines cards for each of their classmates. Mrs. Narrator's suggestion and my total agreement (though for different reasons I suspect) was to just sign the FROM part of the card. My thoughts were that nobody would get the wrong idea and Mrs. Narrator was thinking it was half of the work and none of the name remembering. In retrospect, what six year old is gong to get the wrong idea about Isobel from a Hello Kitty Valentine?
I told Izzy that it was a silly holiday and that if she didn't get a lot of cards, it didn't matter. People like her for what's inside and who she is. No card in the world can make that better or worse. She seemed O.K. with that, if not a little worried about the prospect of not getting any valentines...maybe I shouldn't have said anything? The Boy seemed a little apathetic about the whole thing and I think he did it because he didn't want to feel odd if he was the only one with no cards to give.
So Izzy came home with a kleenex box (brightly decorated with seven and one half pounds of tissue paper) over flowing with Valentines. She said she got more than one from some people in her class and she wasn't sure but she thought that she got the most Valentines of anyone during her class's Valentine's day party. She got a card from the teacher and some gum and cinnamon hearts from a boy in her class. She also said she didn't have time to eat all of her lunch because she was too busy reading all her cards... I saved her a plastic heart ring from one of the cupcakes somebody brought into work today. It's on the floor at my feet as I write this... Anyone who can charm a plane full of flight attendants all the way to Mexico and back has nothing to fear on Valentine's day, least of all an empty lunch bag...is it wrong to envy your kid for being more popular than you were?