Noise, Noise, Noise...Two Little holes...

      She had done a few new drawings and was eager to put them on the fridge. There was not however, a lot of room left on the fridge thanks to her many works of art. Things came off the fridge and piled up in front of it.
      Daddy: "What are you doing?"
      Isobel: "What?"
      Daddy: "What, what?"
      Isobel: "What?"
      Daddy: "What are you doing?"
      Isobel: "When?"
      Daddy: "Just now, what are you doing just now?"
      Isobel: "What do you mean?"
      Daddy: "I mean what are you doing now, what are you taking all the pictures off of the fridge for?"
      Isobel: "Why didn't you just say that? I'm making more room for my new pictures, I am agonizing the fridge."
      Daddy: "That's not the only thing you are agonizing."


      Is it wrong to call your kid an asshole? I mean not out loud...OK maybe out loud at Walmart strictly for the purposes of fitting in while you thumb your way through racks of Budweiser muscle shirts or discounted neon green thongs but is thinking your child is an asshole morally reprehensible? I've been struggling with it for the last week or so...
    It seems that since the beginning of the Christmas break, Isobel has found the remote for herself and turned the volume way up...and chucked the batteries away. The Boy has his loud moments but they are usually site specific. With his fellow loud brother or over the excitement of his online gaming, I get that. (Read understand and tolerate not like.) Isobel has been steadily increasing the volume of everything. It is running and it is dancing and singing and play of all sorts. Play with dolls, play all on her own, play with the cats and play with the minions (though they don't come around much anymore) and it is all very, very, LOUD.
      Now in the normal run of things, I don't care about play of any sort. Really I don't. I have done tea parties and timed Frank Booth races through the kitchen. (Look at it!) But lately I am noticing that I simply don't have the ability that Mrs. Narrator possesses. She can tune out virtually anything-any and all forms of noise that distract her from whatever she is doing. I lack this ability, totally and completely lack it. Somebody can be speaking right to me and I can miss half of what they are saying. Incidentally the somebody speaking is generally Mrs. Narrator, this of course irks her no end. We can discuss this at a later date. However, I can be in another room, wearing headphones and listening to bagpipes at an uncomfortable volume and still hear the slightest change in volume or pitch coming from the kids.
      The Boy I get...OK, I don't get it but it's excitement-that I get. Izzy is just loud. Loud upon volume upon cacophony upon tumult. Not for anything in particular it would seem. Loud for the sake of loud.
      "What are you shouting about?" I asked her.
      "I am playing," she said. "I'm not shouting."
      "What are you playing that is so loud, let's rattle the windows and drive Dad insane?"
      And then came the dancing. Stomping and shouting and more VOLUME.
      "Why are you being so loud?"
      "It's dancing," she said. "It's a whole body kind of thing."
      "I know a really good whole body thing, it's called mime."
      "What's that?" she asked.
      "Well first, there's no talking. In fact, there's no sound at all."
      "What fun is that?" she asked.
     "I think I would enjoy the hell out of it."
      Mrs. Narrator reminded me that "She is six, sometimes she needs to just be loud and six." (Incidentally, Isobel has been seven now has been for eight days and would want me to point that out.)
      "Yes but does she have to be SO loud and six?"
      An hour later  Mrs. Narrator was asking if everything had to be loud. It apparently did because it didn't end there.
      I came to the conclusion that she was doing it on purpose, solely for the reason that she knew it was bothering us. If somebody was doing something to annoy you, because they knew it was annoying them what would you suggest that they were?
       Let me interject a bit of history here. My old man always claimed to be deaf in one ear-still does last time I spoke with him but my brother and I could be fighting inside the house while he was outside running the lawn mower and he would come in screaming, telling us to knock it off. Now I can't be certain if there was a suggestion made to barrel ever onward or my brother was being a jerk or if we simply knew that it would drive the old man buggy, but we definitely did not knock it off.
      Within seconds he was back in the house.
      "I told you two assholes to knock it off. Now KNOCK IT OFF!"
      And so dear friends the question remains...my old man called us assholes all the time and I'm sure he felt very justified in doing so....and the best we could manage was the Husky jeans rack at Kmart.
      Now I can't be certain on the particular expletive but I have heard a few muttered softly by Mrs. Narrator and directed at one or both of the children...if it were at me, it would have been loud and clear. This is how I knew the difference. I guess the best course of action is to keep my head down and join in the next time she lets one fly. Hell in a couple of years, the kids are going to be saying it about us, might as well get a few free ones in while we can.


     It was Izzy seventh birthday and so following the ancient blues tradition of the first biological child of a second son (Wait, what? ) Isobel was off to get her ears pierced. Now we had toyed with the idea of getting them pierced by a piercer-like in a tattoo shop. It seems that the piercing gun of old is not the way to go. It crushes the surrounding tissue and doesn't so much pierce the ear as it forces the piece of jewelry through the skin and all. We wanted it to be as quick and painless as possible, she was already nervous about the whole idea. They say the sharper the needle the quicker it is over and the less painful. We found out it would likely be upwards of $100.00 to get her ears done by a piercer. We decided she's tough, guns don't scare her.
     There was only one woman there capable of piercing which meant she would have to do one at a time. To her credit, Izzy was fine with it. I told her she could hold my hand if she wanted-she did. One thing I have noticed since embarking on a career in health care, I am now obsessive about watching people perform hand hygiene. The woman washed her hands and then used hand sanitizer but started to put gloves on before the sanitizer dried.
      "You know if you don't rub the hand sanitizer until it dries, it doesn't do anything." I said.
      "Oh really?" she asked.
      "Yes, really." I said. "You might want to try that again and put on a different pair of gloves. You are going to make a wound in my daughter's ears, you should have clean hands."
      It could have gone incredibly badly from that point on but she complied without further issue and I'm sure I became the storied asshole who thought he was a health inspector. She made the marks on Izzy's ears and we were off to the races. I held Izzy's hand and the piercing lady counted to three. Izzy's eyes opened wide as did her mouth but she didn't make a sound. Round two followed soon after with more wide eyes and open mouth but still she remained silent. I paid the woman who I thought might be checking out how clean my hands were and we walked outside. I thought maybe Isobel was keeping a brave face so she wouldn't be embarrassed about crying in front of the piercing lady. As we got out side I knelt down to her.
      "Are you OK?" I asked fully expecting her to burst into tears.

      "My damn ears are on fire!" she said.