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I remember a while back Angela’s daughter was freaking her out a wee bit by telling her morbid things about her future. The past few days Laylee has been telling me what we should do when our house falls down. Has anyone told her that Seattle is expecting a major earthquake any day now or do we just read too much about the three little pork chops? I promise our house is not made of straw.

However, Laylee is fairly certain that it will be falling down soon. When it does, we are to evacuate immediately and go live at Grammy’s house until our house gets put back up again.

Then today she told me that tomorrow we are all going to die. Um, thanks for the warning. I asked her if tomorrow was the day the house was gonna fall down. She said “no”. We’re just gonna die. So if I don’t post…

Now I will share with you something else that’s been disturbing me into hysterical laughter:

So Piglet’s gonna get blown away, huh? What kind of hood is this Hundred Acre Wood?

How do you get your kids to work FOR you, not against you? Last night we gave Laylee her first allowance so we could teach her about saving money and paying tithing. She was pretty much stoked that 5 of the shiny monies (dimes) went into her pink pig’s belly.

I’m not sure if she understands the tithing thing but she did keep saying that her savings box was for college. We gave her several options for the use of her 40 large, but she insisted that her savings were for college. Nice. At this rate, she will have her bachelor’s in approximately… never.

When I explained what allowance was, I told her that she would also be expected to do more “responsibilities” around the house. She was very excited about this plan. Responsibilities = big-girlness. Big-girlness = eating as many peeps as you can fit in your mouth because you’re tall enough to reach the cupboard of coma-inducing refined sugar products.

Currently she helps me set the table, clear her place, “make the bed” (cackle), and “dust.” Not bad for a three year old, but I still don’t think she’s earning her keep.

When we were young, my mom made chores fun by having us “play vacuum cleaner” (Dealers were exempt.). Yes, she trained us all to be dealers. We also tried various chore charts. These were more fun when we were younger and not as able – To Deal. (Isn’t that the name of a Mandy Moore flick?)

Some were not so much fun, such as the “15 minute blitz.” This involved my mom running around like crazy, talking really fast and peppily urging us on like a cheerleader as we tried to make it look like our limbs were moving quickly to clean the house, while making sure that we were cleaning less than our siblings. I HATED the 15 minute blitz with all of my soul. I am SO using it on my kids. I will also be singing the “Good Morning To You” song as I flip on their light and sing tales of orange juice and “get out of bed you lazy bum.” They will LOVE it.

How do you get your sweet little freeloaders to start earning* their 25 cents per week, not to mention all the food and toilet paper they consume? (Yes, I do mean eating toilet paper. Another day, another story about my kids finding ways to be absolutely disgusting at lightning speed. If I’d just been two seconds faster, I could have stopped it. Two seconds slower and I wouldn’t have had to witness it. But hey, I dip my Oreos. I guess TP ain’t the only thing that tastes better when wet.)

*I don’t think chores should be directly linked to allowance. I’d love your opinions on that issue too.

Laylee’s speech seems to be regressing this weekend. She’s picked up this really annoying version of baby talk that sounds more like a 23-year-old imitating a baby for a Saturday Night Live sketch or an idiot Munchkin that was too mentally slow to be allowed to welcome Dorothy to Munchkin Land in song.

I’m not sure if she thinks linguistically-deficient-demented munchkins are cute or if she just hopes this new way of speaking will scare us into giving her what she wants. It is rather scary. I had trouble explaining to her what “annoying means but I do think she caught my stop-talking-like-that drift. She told me that she wasn’t doing it. It was actually her little yellow clip talking. Also scary.

Language is important.

I found that my doctor took me much more seriously this week when I used words like “concerned”, “acute”, and “localized”, rather than my previous visit where I said things more along the lines of “freaked out”, “it kills”, and “seems weird to me.”

I remember leaving the previous visit feeling invalidated and disappointed that she hadn’t taken my concerns seriously. I was ticked, dude.

This time around tests were done, recommendations were made and I have to say, BTW, it still kills, but I have a follow-up scheduled.

So, the moral of this post is, you get more from people when you speak their language. My doctor’s language of choice is not freaked-out-new-moma-ese. My language of choice is not developmentally-delayed-munchkin-ish. And I know the yellow clip is not culpable.

This has been sort of a motto (sometimes excuse) I’ve used throughout my life for my desire to see the humor in nearly any situation. At times it’s served me well, lightening the mood at a crucial moment, and at other times it’s gotten me into trouble.

This blog, often categorized as a ‘humor’ blog, was created as an outlet when I was going through the hardest period of my life to date. I was in so much physical and emotional pain. What could be more natural than writing about my life in a way that would crack other people up?

The first time I remember this concept being discussed was at my grandpa’s funeral. He had died suddenly and it was traumatic for all the grandkids. On the way to the funeral, we stopped for some fast food. As we were loading the drinks into the van, my mom started it up and it immediately lurched forward, drinks exploding everywhere. Every surface of the van was drenched in soda, not conducive to a long car ride. We drove all the way back home, cleaned out the van, put tarps on all of the seats and started out again. Along the way we saw a rainbow and I remember my mom producing giggles by telling us it must be a sign from God that he would never flood the van with soda again.

At the internment, we found humor in the fact that Grandpa’s next door grave neighbor was named James Kirk. How cool to be laid to rest next to the captain.

After the family dinner, out of a clear blue sky came a large dark cloud that rested right over the house where we were staying. Down poured an amazing deluge of hail. All of the grandkids went nuts, running, screaming and laughing through the pelting storm, as sun shone all around the dark cloud. It was an amazing emotional release at the end of a dreadful day. We felt sure that Grandpa had requested the storm for us personally, sick of seeing his grandkids looking so forlorn.

At Aunt J’s funeral service, the tears were near constant. She is a woman almost impossible to hyperbolize. She really IS that wonderful, not in a “perfect” way but in a perfectly real and loving way. When my mother-in-law was discussing her talk for the funeral, Aunt J stopped her at one point in her list of attributes, semi-annoyed, and said, “DON’T LIE.” I love that about her.

At every step of the two-day funeral process, Laylee would ask us, “Is this the part where her body and spirit get stuck back together and she can move again?” Sadly, no, it never was. At one point, frustrated, she asked, “Okay. Then can she please PLEASE get resurrected tomorrow?”

Soon. Soon. Not soon enough for my taste, but I guess “soon” is relative.

Laylee had everyone around her cracking up during the funeral service. She got so bored halfway through when it became apparent that no Beauty-and-the-Beast-style fireworks would be coming from the “Snow White bed” where J’s body was lying, that she started distributing goldfish crackers up and down the church pew to friends, family members and complete strangers. On her second pass, she grabbed a handful so large, it was obvious she would be spilling them all over the place. Dan whispered to her, “Laylee. That’s too many.” She sighed, rolled her eyes, took ONE cracker from her bulging fist, put it back in the bag and continued on her mission. It took a lot of control for everyone who witnessed it not to bust out laughing.

We definitely watch too many movies on long roadtrips but it keeps us sane and it makes for some really good jokes.

At a rest stop, I washed the windows of the car and Laylee (having just watched Aladdin) asked, “Did you squeege these windows? Did you bring me here?”

At a restaurant in Sumpter, where a model train circles around several times per hour, Laylee got impatient for the train to make its next pass. She laid down in mock exasperation and began to sing the famous Snow White ballad, “Some day my TRAIN will come.”

Overall, the trip was a good one. The kids did really well. Heather took some gorgeous portraits of them in her new studio. We got to see friends and family and say “See you soon” to a woman we will never stop loving.

I’m funeraling and the family’s all together. I’ll be back in a couple of days. I don’t have much coherent to say about what’s been going on. Tons of emotion, very little sleep, much of driving, a few fun moments, mostly overwhelming.

Blog out.

Think Fast! It’s another Tuesday where I will require that you think fast or don’t think at all. I want your favorite or current favorite children’s book of all time. Don’t think too hard, just suggest one. Just one.

Okay, just this once, in my grand beneficence, I will allow you to give two suggestions. Here are mine:

1. Big Bad Bruce by Bill Peet — This is a favorite from when I was a child. I could not get enough of this book.

2. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault — We use this book as a warm up for our Daring Family freestyle rap battles. We wore out the copy Grammy sent us and I bought a new one… at a real bookstore… at full price. I know. I am insane. It was worth it.

As you can see, I only like books by people named Bill.

Your suggestions can be by people with other names… I guess… if they’re REALLY good. You can include anything from board books to Young Adult reads. Go!

Dan does not like to eat certain things, things that contain flavors, or as he calls them “tongue scorching flavonoids of misery and possible death.” (He has never actually said that with his lips. It’s more in the facial region of expressivity.)

I grew up having jalapeno-eating contests with my dad and drinking Tabasco sauce by the spoonful, like any normal child. Dan, on the other hand, shies away from many of the simple culinary pleasures of life.

Besides bypassing “cranky” foods (Laylee’s word for anything from Altoids to salsa), he also gives the thumbs down on squash, mushrooms, several sea-foods, pig’s feet and anything low-fat.

Until recently I have thought he was a bit of a wimp in the eating department, a strange departure from his usual manly, Rambo-like nature. Then I heard about Supertasters.

Supertasters are people with an unusually large number of taste buds on their tongue. They truly, physiologically “can’t take the heat.” He has not been officially diagnosed with this… disorder?… but I feel confident that if I blew up that picture and a picture of my tongue, he’d have a veritable gold-mine of the little buds in comparison to me.

The word Supertaster sounds like a heroic power, like he should be able to taste and enjoy food more fully than the average citizen. But in reality, it causes him to miss out on so much of life. He is literally crippled by his over-active taste buds, unable to perform even the most basic nutritional tasks, such as feeding himself Brussels sprouts. We weep for him.

But now the question arises — is he a super hero or just a poor handicapped guy forever doomed to eat bland versions of Thai food that could have been scrumptious, given the proper peppers and spices?

If he’s a super hero, hooray! Having a plethora of extra body parts beats the ability to eat scores of malted milk balls any day (until now, he considered this to be his only claim to super-herodom).

If he’s simply handicapped, then we should get one of those blue stickers for our car so that my super-power will grow to the point that parking spaces really can become the complete focus of this blog. How nice it would be if I never had to think of anything to write again. Every day I’d just post a picture of Vinny, parked in the special wife-to-the-severely-tongue-impaired parking spot at Fred Meyer and call it good.

Yesterday we had another hair-cutting extravaganza, my first since the mullet incident. At this point the layers have grown out to a length I am more comfortable with and I have learned to listen to my stylist when she tells me a particular cut might end up looking like a mullet. She KNOWS.

I just got a trim but Laylee got the real fun. We decided to give her a fun summer hair-cut. We went with a Julia Roberts in Hook pixie-cut. She was amazingly calm through the razor cut and very excited to tell daddy that she looked like a pixie-fairy-princess girl.

I love the way it turned out but considering her age and lack of womanly curvage, it’s a given that she will be mistaken for a boy at times. I spent the afternoon talking about how she looks like Tinker-bell and what a cute fairy she is.

Then Dad gets home.

Dan: Wow. You got a new hair-do!
Laylee: Yeah!
Dan: What kind of hair-do is it?
Laylee (very excited): It’s a BOY haircut!

At which point, Magoo waved his sweet little girly-finger-wiggling wave from the high chair and I busted up laughing. So our daughter is excited that she could pass for a boy and our son waves “hello” like Paris Hilton. Yippee!

And then in a moment of uncanny timing, a gift arrived in the mail today for Laylee from Peter and Heidi of the Tutu Boutique. Our little princess fairy pixie Tinker-bell got to wear the poofiest, most gorgeous dress-up item she’s ever had on her body and remind herself that she’s still a girly girl.

A while back I mentioned their business on the site because I like them, expecting nothing in return. Then they sent this “poof” and a fun princess crown and shirt to thank me for the mention. How sweet is that?

Take that High-End-Children’s-Clothes-Store-Employee-Who-Thought-Laylee-Was-A-Boy-Today. Heads up: if you want to earn a big sales commission from me, upon finding out that my child is female, please do not ask me if she cut her hair herself.

Policy note — I have recently been getting offers of free products or discounts to promote things on my blog. I want to make it clear that I would be happy to do reviews but I will be totally honest, even if you send me free stuff, so be warned. You may not like what I have to say. I don’t want people wondering if I’m getting something free in return when I mention a book or product so I promise to always let you know. And again… the honesty.

One last thing. I thought you’d like to see this. Taken this afternoon. Yes, the force is still strong with me.

Today Blackbird is asking to see the street where we live. So here we go. This is one of my favorite shots of our street:

Then there’s this:

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This is technically across the street from my house, a little walking trail. Laylee calls it the Bambi forest because we’ve seen deer there. One of our friends lives on the other side of the Bambi forest, so this is the way we walk to play dates.

I never want to move from this location. Hopefully by the time we outgrow our condo, we will be able to pass a city ordinance, allowing us to demolish it and build a bigger house in its place… assuming the neighbors don’t mind.

I spend a lot of my time waiting. I wait for Laylee to go to the bathroom, for the water to boil, for the doctor to “see me now.” I wait.

My grandma spent 20 years waiting, waiting to die, waiting to be with her Joseph again. His name was constantly in her mind and on her lips. She sure loved and adored him. Especially in her later years of dementia, she called for him constantly and begged to go herself and be with him. She waited.

For the past few days our family has been waiting. We’ve been waiting for our aunt and dear friend J to leave this world so we could all start waiting to see her again. As of a couple of hours ago, the waiting is over and now it begins again.

Her husband can wait to learn what “normal” is without her. Her children, including a son still in grade school, can wait for the urge to call out for their mother to subside. Her granddaughter doesn’t know she’s waiting yet. She will learn.

Now I wait for someone to find a cure for cancer. My mother-in-law refused to wait. From the minute Aunt J was diagnosed, Pam has been searching tirelessly for some little-know cure, calling specialists all over the country.

I wait for understanding. Every person I have loved who has been diagnosed with this disease has been taken by it. Every one was a wife, a mother and a much-needed friend. In a way I feel like I’m just waiting for the next person to go.

When I tried to explain death to Laylee, who is still waiting for me to stop crying, I told her that we knew Aunt J’s spirit had left her body but that she is with Heavenly Father now. She is no longer in pain and she is happy. I told her we were still sad because many of us on earth will miss her.

People always talk about the deceased person being happier where they are. I wonder, does their heart ache for their loved ones the way we ache for them?

Laylee asked if we could please please go see Heavenly Father too. She did specify that if she goes, she wants Dad, Mom and Magoo to go with her.

No waiting for any of us. It sounds like a plan.