The Day I Made a Big Dramatic Threat to Run Away From Home

*Disclaimer - As with most of my posts, I am sharing my stories as best I can remember them.  I know I am prone sometimes to embracing inaccurate memories of my childhood, but I figure that's what the comments section is for.... my family can always leave their corrections below.  :-)

The more Kaycie starts to express herself and vocalize her pleasure or displeasure with life at the ol' homestead, the more I find myself wondering when she will decide to run away from home... just like her dear old mother.  Actually, when I think about it, she is probably pretty close to the same age I was the night I decided to unleash some serious runaway drama on my family.

Lord only knows what it was that was eating me.  When you're a kid, everything seems like a big deal... after all, you only have so much control over your life and a small portfolio of decisions you are allowed to make.  Whatever it was, though, it really had my overalls in a knot.

Wait... I have a strange feeling that I was feeling like no one in my family was paying enough attention to me (me? wanting attention? no!).  Anyway, I think I had stewed for a good day and a half when I decided the solution was to run away from home.

Now, my only research on running away from home consisted of the careful study of the dog from the hit Canadian TV series, "The Littlest Hobo" (excuse me for a moment, while I lamely wipe away a nostalgic tear) and representations of train hobos from cartoons.  All I knew was that train hobos had sacks on sticks, and the littlest hobo always kept moving... never settled in one spot for too long.  Good tactics to know!

So, after sulking around our house for an hour or so, looking as sullen and misunderstood as possible, I sidled into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, a jar of peanut butter and two pieces of bread and went upstairs to my sister's room.  While I made a peanut butter sandwich, I filled Tharen in on my plan.  I was running away.

My sister was always fairly practical, so as she listened, she only wanted to determine if she could find me if she wanted to visit, and also if I had enough provisions.  I assured her that things would be fine on both counts.  My plan was to spend my first week in the barn behind our house, and after that, I was going to move my camp to our neighbour Christa's (who has changed the way I shop, by the way!) house - probably in their screened in porch - so I would be close by for a while.

As for food, I had a rock solid plan.  "See this sandwich?" I asked while ceremoniously and gently laying the sandwich in the centre of a bandana and tying up the four corners to fashion the first of the many, many, many cloth sacks that I have made over the course of my life.  Just ask my husband.  When clean laundry gets the best of me, I declare - "let's just make a hobo sack!" and I throw all the clean clothes onto a bedsheet, tie up the four corners and toss it in the corner of our bedroom.  Hey... at least it's contained and cat hair resistent! 

Oh yes... back to the sandwich.  I said to my sister, "I am going to cut this sandwich into half every day and eat one half and leave the other half for the next day.  You can always half something, so I will never run out of food!"  As my sister looked on skeptically, I was like Ralphie from A Christmas Story, looking off into the distance, nodding my head and relishing the genius of my plan.  In actuality, I had totally stolen the idea from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Charlie rations his chocolate bar to savour a taste every day when he was dirt poor.  I think I got a lot of my "genius" ideas from books I read as a kid.  Like the time I appointed myself the emergency medic for the junior yard in elementary school and brought a first aid kit to school daily.  Somehow that idea was inspired by the Encyclopedia Brown series.  Strangely enough, I was embraced as yard medic by my schoolmates for three days straight until I got sick of handing out bandaids and missing precious jungle gym time.

Anyway - feeling very confident in my plan, I tied my sack onto a metre stick or something equally "found" and I walked the long walk downstairs to announce my departure to Mom and Dad.

I stopped dramatically at the doorway to our living room and cleared my throat.  Mom and Dad looked up and smiled.  Then Mom said something totally reasonable like, "Hmmm.  I see you have a hobo sack.... what's up, honey?"  I declared that I was running away due to the disproportionate amount of attention everything else in the house got in comparison to me.  And then I just stood there... because OF COURSE I didn't want to sleep in the barn now that it was dark outside!  Squirrels lived in our barn!  And it was probably haunted!

Mom, the skilled communicator that she is, calmly and empathetically said, "Wow.  I'm sorry you are so upset.  Do you think you have eveything you'll need?  Where will you go?"

Slowly I began to reveal my plan, and with the intuition and precision of master negotiators, Mom and Dad deconstructed my plan with me until I came to the conclusion on my own that I would stay home for the night and talk out how I was feeling with Mom and Dad.  I sat and ate my sandwich and snuggled with Mom while we chatted. 

I might have my details of the evening all messed up, but two things are for sure... thankfully, I never did end up having to sleep in the barn, and the sweet relief of feeling loved never felt more awesome than that night.

People (and squirrels!) Are Interesting - New Year's Edition

Happy New Year!

After all of the holiday festivities, and the notable absence of any sort of routine, our little family has settled back into our "regularly scheduled programming", and with our routine back in place... here come your regularly scheduled late night blog posts!  After a particularly successful bedtime for the kids, and a wicked awesome 3 hour nap on the couch (go me!), I am wide awake and and giddy from watching Josh Groban sing Kanye West tweets (you should check it out - hilarity!).

So... what to do with my giddy self?  Share with you the latest batch of interesting people, I say!

• Sir Swears-a-Lot:  I've got to start off with this weirdsmobile who was in the lobby of my doctor's office while I was getting my kids dressed to go back outside to the car.  This guy was standing there screaming into his cell phone a string of profanities that would make the dad from "A Christmas Story" blush!  He was using some seriously offensive words over and over and over.  Poor Kaycie looked dumbfounded.  I would have said something about his language in front of my kids except he was so angry that I was a little scared that it might escalate things.  When he was all done, he walks over to me and whispers: "My apologies for all of the cursing in front of your little ones."   What?!?!  He had the presence of mind to apologize for the f-bombs, but not to just stop the spectacle all together?!  All I could do was just look at him with this blank stare on my face.  And... he whispered his apology?  Like he didn't want to disturb anyone with his contrition?  People are so weird.

• Dapper Dan:  We were on our way to our friends' house for a visit and when we stopped at an intersection to wait for the light to turn, my husband and I both got a kick out of what we saw.  Standing at the corner was a big group of ragtag teenagers with their baggy pants and their oversized hip-hop coats, a bunch of people bundled up for the cold weather, and one young man wearing only his pristine full-on white suit with a brilliant red tie and some seriously nice shoes.  No coat, no hat, no mitts.  Just the suit... and he looked ridiculously awesome!

• The Bird Feeder Gang:  I saw three ladies at the mall sitting on a bench sharing a gigantic bag of sunflower seeds - in the shell.  And what do you think they were doing with the shells once they'd chewed the seeds out of them?  Dropping them in a huge pile on the floor in front of them - like a pile so big it had a little peak to it!  I was seriously grossed out - kind of wish I'd had the nerve to say something to them.

• Turkey Vulture Squirrel:  I will concede that the squirrel who hangs out in our backyard that I am about to describe is not a "person", but I really think this squirrel has earned a spot on this list... because he certainly is interesting.  Last winter, my daughter and I saw this squirrel jumping around in our backyard maple tree with a quarter of a large pizza in his mouth.  That might not sound so amazing, but if you think about it, a quarter of a pizza is pretty big compared to a squirrel!  And this squirrel was doing some serious acrobatics with this chunk of food hanging out of his mouth! Anyway, I'm not sure if this is the same squirrel from last winter (how long do squirrels live?), but for fun, let's say it is.  Kaycie and I saw our scavenging friend a couple days before Christmas sitting in our tree in the backyard with an entire double spread piece of newspaper hanging out of his mouth.  Then I noticed that the paper was getting smaller and smaller.  It was then that I realized this squirrel was actually trying to eat an entire sheet of newsprint!  And I'm telling you... this little sucker almost accomplished his goal!  I wish I got a better picture of this, but we did manage to grab a couple of snapshots of him on our fence on the way out of our yard... presumably off to find a stick or something to jam the rest of the weekend edition down to join the pizza!

"Arts & Entertainment.... nom, nom, nom, nom!"

We believe he may have been eyeballing the potential getaway vehicle in the neighbouring yard.

So there you have it... my latest batch of interesting people (and squirrels!).  Stay tuned for more... I'm telling you, there is no shortage of strangeness out there!