A quiet day

It's 11:43am on Sunday as I begin typing this. I've spoken three words since 5:15am. Seriously. Mrs. Redneck Chatterbox herself has been eerily quiet. Why? No, I don't have laryngitis and the cat doesn't have my tongue.

I'm alone.

Paul went to work and the little divas spent the night with their Yaya. I got up with Paul at 4:30 this morning, made some blueberry muffins, cleaned the kitchen and really did have every intention of just staying up and cleaning my house, but then I sat down on the couch to watch James Blunt's new video and the next thing I knew it was 9:45. Oops. See, my plan was to get up early, do oodles of cleaning and then take a little nap this afternoon when the rain moved in. But instead I just added my nap to my night's sleep, with a little break in between. No worries, though - I feel amazingly refreshed. I can work in the rain now.

Normally when I'm alone I talk to myself or at least sing, but today I've just enjoyed the quiet. I really have needed quiet. I usually put in my 3-disc Statler Brothers' collection on days when I'm in a cleaning mood, but today I've left the ol' boys in their case. Some other time, fellas. Today I'm listening to the quiet.

The kids and I went clothes shopping yesterday after gymnastics. Poor Sam outgrew everything from last year, save for one pair of sweats and two long-sleeve t-shirts. Seriously. The boy had a major growth spurt this year. He didn't even have any pajamas. So I bought him some new sweats, camo pants, a coat, a Lightning McQueen wind suit (I figure this is the last year I can get away with buying him outfits like that) and that was just at Wal*Mart! At the resale shop I got him 8 Gap and Old Navy button-up shirts that would've cost me an arm and a leg if I'd bought them new, something I refuse to do. I bought Abby one Gap dress when she was a baby because I had money back then. I heartily boycot Gap now. It is not for poor rednecks. I have no aversion to shopping Old Navy, but it's in Joplin and I just don't get there that often.

The girls also got pajamas at Wal*Mart and I, being the magnificent Aunt Kiki and mother that I am, bought all 5 kids a Halloween shirt. I do this every year. It's my thing.

Sam had been in the cart so I could hold clothes up to him without having to squat down so much. When we were done, he wanted out. I had pushed the cart up against a rack of clothes and didn't think anything about him swinging one leg over the side of the cart to get out. All of the sudden I heard a scream. I turned around to see my son white as a sheet, doubled over, but strangely not on the ground. He was floating. Abby said, "Oh my gosh! He's hanging there!" I pushed back the clothes on the rack and sure enough, my son was straddling a clothes rack. I assumed he'd racked himself. Yes, pun intended. Then I heard him gasp, "Cutting me......it's cutting me!"

In that moment I envisioned the ambulance loading my son and his torn-to-shreds nutsack onto a stretcher and whisking him off the hospital where they'd eventually tell me I'd get no grandkids outta that one. I lifted him off of the rack and stood him on the ground and again my overactive imagination envisioned him hemorraghing from the nutsack (I just like typing nutsack, by the way) before the ambulance could even get there. Then I jerked his sweats down right there in the boys department of Wal*Mart so I could scar us both for life.

Fortunately, turns out he just scraped the inside of the back of his thigh. I say "just" scraped it, but really it is nasty looking. It's going to leave a mark for awhile and of course, he's totally playing up the limp that seems to have been caused by his scrotum's near-death experience with a clothes rack.

Friday night, Mom took us all out to dinner at Josie's in Scammon, KS. I don't know where these Kansans learned their Italian cookin' skillz, but they learned them well. Kady was enjoying her spaghetti and ginormous meatball so much that the last bite she took couldn't be swallowed without a couple of those "my stomach is full up to my throat and I must now gag for you". We were all miserable when we left. I mean, so miserable I felt the need to purge.

Paul, Bub and TotTwo rode in one car and we girls rode in the van. On the way home the girls started doing cheers. I am not a big fan of elementary school cheerleading. I find the cheers so annoying that it's almost enough to make me pull my daughters out of public school until they hit Middle School because whether your daughter is a cheerleader or not, they will learn the cheers. A few of Ab's and TotOne's friends are cheerleaders and dammit, our girls have learned the cheers. After having to tell them, "Kiki is my name and blogging is my game/ HTML is my sign and I've got typing on my mind" about 6 or 7 times, I changed the last one to, "Kiki is my name and I hate this cheer/ If we don't stop doing it soon I will crash this van into a chat pile". I decided that we had to change the course of the van's entertainment and mumbled to Tater, "Sing something or I will drive us off of a cliff."

She started signing old Girl Scout Camp songs - the Skunk song, Sippin' Cider, Just a Boy and a Girl, and the timeless Titanic. Oy vey. I hate that Titanic song. When we finished with Titanic there were cries of "Again! Again!" Have I mentioned I hate that Titanic song? So instead I started singing Three Little Fishies. Now, this fishy song has been a favorite of our family for about 30 years. I can remember Mom and Dad singing it in the car on the way home from church or on vacation drives. And as we got older, Tater and I joined in. In harmony. Oh yes, the Singing Basses (How appropriate that we'd choose a fishy song) were quite proficient in the intricate harmonies of the chorus of "Boop boop diddum doddum waddum choo!" We really should have our own show in Branson. So, Mom, Tater and I belted out a few rounds of the fishy song and the girls were happy. All was quiet in the van.

I was thinking back to Girl Scout camp again and broke the silence with, "Hey, Mom? Do you remember 'Running Bear'?"

She replied with, "Oh, hon....it's been so long since I've run bare, I'm not sure that'd be a good idea."