The Quote Board

When we moved into our new place, I bought a couple of dry erase boards to put up. My original thought for them was notes to each other, the receipt from the last orthodontist appointment as a reminder to make the new appointment, that kind of thing. Instead, the only thing that happens on them is we write the funny things that get said around us down, replacing them only with something funnier.

Best story so far...

We are hanging out of the porch, over looking our quiet green backyard, our clothesline that I love to fill with our clothes, and all of our neighbor’s rooftops. I love my porch more than any other place in the world probably. It's peaceful, and encourages happiness.

Holly is performing her gymnastics feats on the tops of the stairwell and porch railings, as if they are parallel bars. She only makes me a little nervous, but she scares the hell out of her cousin Sammy, who’s been staying with us on and off this summer. Sammy just graduated high school, and has a very well developed sense of humor for her age. Plus, she’s a straight shooter. She calls life as she sees it, because she believes in herself enough to own her own spot of soil in the universe already.

Georgia is talking, not necessarily for the purpose of communicating, just talking. We all half listen, me sitting in my purple chair with my feet up on the cooler. I thought of getting a table to put my things and my feet on, but then where would I put the cooler? This just seems easy.

We probably have a wasp nest somewhere near our porch. They show up pretty frequently, but they leave easily enough. They aren’t taking over. And really, wasp nests are not a Shelly job. I would have to go ask for help to even investigate this problem. So far, we’re living under a quietly-ignore-the-wasps policy. Don’t piss them off. The only problem so far has been that Somewhere doesn’t observe this very well. She keeps trying to eat them on our way up the stairs.

A wasp comes near Georgia on her end of the porch, and she kind of spazzes out. She starts yelling, running around. I yell to her from across the porch, not even sure if she’ll hear me when she’s in freak out mode. “Bee’s can smell fear, Georgia!”

Sammy, without missing a beat says, “Yeah, and you reek.”

Until yesterday it was on the message board. We hadn’t found anything crisp and edgy enough to knock it out of first.

My mom, Pat, recently moved into some senior apartments. She has a plethora of health problems, but at the moment is fairly healthy. Her cardiologist orders a heart monitor once a year and yesterday just happened to be her day to wear it for 24 hours. The monitors have a large box to record information that protrudes out of the belly of the wearer. Yesterday, my mom’s new friend Millie was coming over to my mom’s apartment to grate zucchini, because apparently my mom has a fancier gadget for that sort of thing.

When Millie knocks, my mom opens the door and says “I’m not just happy to see you, Millie. I’m wearing a heart monitor today.”

Obviously, I owe my mother a great debt of gratitude for my sense of humor, although my dad is kind of warped in that department, too. Still, the joke was lost on poor Millie, who stayed silent. But I got a new winner for the quote board…

Stinky Days

The girls are flying to Washington, DC to go see Holly’s dad and grandparents in Virginia. I’m going to miss them, of course I will. They are the center of my universe, but I’m excited for the break. It’s been a hectic summer and I’m tired of hearing “Mom” every five minutes. I’m ready for a little quiet. Rob, Holly’s dad, schedules the flight for Friday night at 7pm out of Milwaukee, and I plan on going on to Kenosha to see my best friend Holly after I see the plane off.

Everything is going so well getting ready for the airport that I finally stop assuming something is going to go wrong. Then the dog craps in the parking garage, despite just having gone an hour before. I will myself to not see it as an omen as she crouches down on the pavement, as far from the car as she can get with her leash, while we ransack the car for a plastic bag to clean it up. The kids think its the funniest thing ever, and I’m wishing I hadn’t brought the dog, but I’m staying overnight at my friend Holly’s so I don’t have a choice. The girls say their goodbyes while I clean up the thankfully solid pile.

The girls and I find the AirTran counter easily, and talk amongst ourselves while we get checked in. I’m given envelopes to fill out, and told that since Georgia is over twelve years old and can accept responsibility for herself and her sister, there will be no unaccompanied minor fees. This is wonderful, because those can be expensive. Some airlines charge $100 dollars, on direct flights in which parents are still in charge of making sure the child gets to and from the gate.

We are informed that the plane is on time, we’ve already eaten and we still have time, so we nose around in the book store, all of us coming out with a used book. We wait in a long security line, and then head to the gate.

I should’ve realized something was up when there was no one at the counter as we arrived, not until twenty minutes before the plane was to take off, despite the computerized sign reading that the plane is scheduled to leave on time. When the woman from the airline finally arrives, she gets on the loudspeaker and informs the crowd that our plane is here, but the crew is still stuck in Atlanta, where there are severe storms. The flight crew is scheduled to arrive by 10:30 pm, but in the meantime the airline will work on getting a different flight crew. An enormous line forms immediately.

I confer with the girls, more thinking out loud than anything else, while they read their magazines. Holly informs me that we should just go to Auntie Holly’s house and try again in the morning. Georgia says we should wait it out at the airport and be done with it, both talking to me without looking up from behind their magazines. I call Rob. He says to get in the ridiculously long line and find out about flights in the morning, make sure they are allowed to fly on the last flight of the day, and then let him know.

The ticket woman, who is all teeth, forced fake smiles and frazzled, assures me that the girls will get on the flight later this evening without problem, then tells me the morning flight is booked. We could hope someone would be willing to switch to the evening flight, otherwise we could try the same flight the following evening. I don’t want this process to take days. I just want to get out of the freaking airport with as little drama as possible. We will wait it out. She gives us food vouchers. We make friends with the woman next to us, a grandmother from Minnesota traveling with her three year old granddaughter, Hallie. The grandmother offers, in a funny little accent that reminds me of the movie Fargo, to take care of the girls if I need to leave. She’s harmless, I’m sure, but I tell her that I’m waiting it out, too.

The girls and I share pizzas, bananas and bottles of water before the stores close up for the night. Security shuts down, and we are forced to stay in the concourse because re-entry isn’t permitted once security closes. We are officially being held hostage by the airline and the airport. I silently hope my dog isn’t eating my steering wheel.

We make friends with a young guy with a laptop and fancy phone, who calls me “Ma’am” in his southern accent, and informs us that the flight from Atlanta with our flight crew aboard hasn’t even left yet. Which means were screwed. He says “Y’all talk funny,” which is kind of the pot calling the kettle black if you ask me, but he’s keeping us more informed than the airline, so he’s forgiven.

I call Rob again, who tells me to go the counter and tell the person there that they are putting my kids on a flight in the morning to DC, on any airline, and that they are paying for it. I’m willing to give it a shot, but this isn’t really me. I don’t bully very well. My downstairs neighbor hated me when I moved in because I have a dog, apparently she was attacked as a child. I feel bad about this, but it wasn’t my dog, and it is what it is. I just kept making her carrot cake and cookies until she softened.

When I get back, an announcement had been made that a plane is arriving out of New Orleans with a flight crew for us. They will be in by 11:30 pm, the plane is already over Indianapolis. I don’t have to yell at anyone. We will all be allowed to leave this god forsaken airport, and soon. We settle in with the grandma and Hallie, taking pictures and talking. Three year old Hallie has a fascination with cavities and informs us that she wants to be a dentist. The girls are tired but ready to be on their way. We gather our stuff to head to the restrooms one last time before boarding. The grandma, whose name I never did get, suggests that we see if the kids could sit with her and Hallie, that its late and she wouldn’t mind switching if I wanted, so she could keep an eye on them. We head to the counter to make it happen while my girls take Hallie to the bathroom. They get back just as it’s my turn at the counter.

Another employee is at the counter, one I haven’t seen in all of the past six hours. She’s blunt and short with me immediately, and she has a less well-intentioned forced smile. She asks for the passenger name and I tell her, and then pull out the envelopes. She takes one look at those envelopes and asks how I would feel about the kids flying on the morning flight. I tell her that I wouldn’t feel very good about that, my kids are getting on the plane tonight, thanks. She tells me that they actually aren’t, they are unaccompanied minors and they aren’t permitted to get on the last flight of the day. And then, to be sure I know who’s in charge, she says “We have no choice but to make other arrangements.” This is when I lost it. I will admit that I lost it, or that it wasn’t my shining moment, anyway.

“My kids and I have been held hostage in this god forsaken airport for over six hours, and I’d been assured a dozen times that my kids were getting on an airplane tonight if we waited it out, which we did. All I wanted to do was let the kids sit next to this nice lady and her grandbaby, and you’re telling me my kids can’t get on the airplane? NO. You are putting my kids on this goddamn AIRPLANE!”

To which she said, “I’m calling the sheriff.”

This is funny. Funny because I’ve never even had a speeding ticket. I’m so squeaky clean at this point in my life it’s almost sad. I would’ve been scared by the threat if it weren’t for the fact that I was so mad. So I laughed. I really wasn’t trying to be a brat, it just seemed so funny. The woman behind the counter didn’t like the laugh.

So I ask, “You’re calling the sheriff? For what?”

“Ma’am, you raised your voice at me. And swore.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that was illegal. Hey, swearing and raising your voice is illegal everyone, just so you know! They’ll call the sheriff.” I might as well address the crowd, the line has stopped moving completely and they are all doing nothing but watching us anyway. I don’t really like being the center of attention, but I am a firm believer that if you’re going to do something, do it right. Or at least get the masses on your side.

I chuck my cell phone to Holly and say “Call your father”. The woman behind the counter tells me to get out of her ticket area. Freakin’ gladly, lady. She’s already on the phone, and two other employees are trying to calm her. She’s pointing at me. Pointing. Still talking about the goddamn sheriff. I’m five foot three with shoes on, not even 150 pounds. And I’ve been recently run through a metal detector. Come on. I don’t even have three ounces of liquid to my name to throw at her. Somehow, it’s Georgia who’s talking to Rob on my phone now, and she’s in tears. Did I mention that the dog is still in the goddamn car?

The other woman who’d been at the counter all along comes rushing over to me. She asks for the kids envelopes, and pulls the boarding passes out of them and hands them to me. She says “You didn’t pay the unaccompanied minor fee, right?”

I’m thinking, what the hell, now they want money?

“No…” I say, trying to get calm.

“Okay, that means that your holding the kids boarding passes, which means they are just passengers. These envelopes are for unaccompanied minors, so I’m going to rip them up. You didn’t pay the fee, and they are not unaccompanied minors. Do you understand?” Her voice is soft. She’s risking something for me, I know this.

“I understand.” I tell her, and she rips both envelopes in four and tells me to get the kids in line. The grandma is right behind me, telling me that she switched her seats by the girls. Three passengers I never talked to in all our hours of sitting there tell me that their sorry for how that woman treated me. I’m stunned into silence. I just nod. I’m surprised, because I feel like an asshole. I lost my temper.

The kids get on the plane. I pace the windows, wishing I could make out their little faces through the tiny airplane windows. The pissed off sheriff-cry-wolf woman walks over to me. I turn to her but don’t say a word.

“I heard a rumor that you might think that I was rude to you before,” she says to me.
I raise my eyebrows and say “Might be rude? I had three people I didn’t know apologize to me for how you treated me. That’s rude, lady. I don’t want to talk to you. The kids are on the plane, and you know, I don’t want to upset you or anything. Don’t want you calling the sheriff.”

“I’m trying to make this right, ma’am.” She says. I scowl at her, because I can’t think of how she can make this right, unless she has some magical power of turning back time that I am unaware of.

“I have a two year old,” she tells me.

“Yeah, I’ve had them, too. Twice actually.” I say, but I don’t think that it’s any kind of excuse. Cowboy up, life keeps moving whether you're ready or not.

I just want her to go away. It was a bad night, for everyone, and I just want to be done with her, so I tell her. “Please go away,” and she does, but I have to say it twice. I crumple into a seat by the window cross-legged, look out at the plane getting ready to taxi away and try not to cry. I don’t want to give that Sheriff bitch the satisfaction, more than anything else. I page through pictures on my phone for distraction, and as a reminder that there is life outside this airport.

When the plane taxis off, I head out. I call Rob and tell him the plane is on the way, and hightail it out of that place. I don’t even think about getting a pass for parking until I’m in the parking garage when it’s too late to go back in. I no longer care. I walk to the car to find Somewhere smiling at me through the window, the car intact. She didn’t even eat the oatmeal cream pie that one of the girls left behind. It’s crumpled and smashed, she’s obviously moved it around the car, but it’s the only evidence of her being in the car all evening. She can be a miraculously puppy. I climb into the driver’s seat and she leans her face into my shoulder immediately, as if she can tell what kind of night I’ve had. I cuddle her, giggle when she kisses me, and instantly feel better. We’re going to Auntie Holly’s now, a safe place where I feel almost as comfortable as I do in my own home. All is good.

Now, if this were anyone else’s life, the story would end here. But this is my life, chock full of experiences that make for great story telling.

I am fifteen minutes from Holly’s house when she calls. Apparently, her backyard and dog have been sprayed by a skunk, again. This has been Holly’s nemesis in life for the past two years, skunks. I’ve heard the stories of gagging and an odor so noxious that it takes days to clear out of your nostrils, loads of laundry and bottles of Febreeze to get the smell out of the house. I never thought that she was exaggerating, I’ve just never smelled skunk close up.

I smell it as soon as I turn onto her block. She’s waiting in her front yard for me, because the smell is too strong to handle being in the house. It’s late, so I let Somewhere out of the car without the leash and repeat the phrase “Stay with me,” about four hundred times. She does as she’s told. Holly helps me with my bags, and we head into the house. It’s honestly horrendous in there. The living room is toxic, but the kitchen is deadly. Holly’s dog, Bella, gets into the house somehow, and with her, the most offensive odor ever, with the possible exception of vomit on your person. I grab Kleenex, shove it up my nose, and start spraying Febreeze. My dog is foaming at the mouth from the smell. Bella is still wet from being sprayed. We shove her back outside, put Somewhere in the toxic living room with a bone, and get ready to deal with Bella. It’s well after midnight.

I ask Holly for some clothes to help clean up the dog with. She returns with an old sweatshirt and a pair of Capri pants. I come out of the bathroom with them on, but due to my short legs, the pants that are Capri’s on Holly are just pants on me. They reach my ankles. Just like I knew it would, this cracks Holly up, which isn’t so easy to do, being that she’s been walking around gagging since she called me on my way from the airport. She gets her husband Neal to come see my outfit, who doesn’t find it quite as funny as we do, and mostly just wants to go to bed. Holly explains to him that going to bed isn’t an option, he’s helping us. We open windows, light candles, stick more Kleenex up our noses and head to the backyard with a vat of tomato juice and a gallon on apple cider vinegar.

Neal digs around for gloves to use, but we aren’t sure if they contain latex and I’m allergic. I don’t want to take a trip to the emergency room or chance an armful of blisters, so I dip my bare hand into the tomato juice and start smearing it on their dog. Bella looks at me with sad eyes, as if to say that I am always nice to her and this doesn’t fit her idea of me. I apologize aloud to her, and continue mopping her with tomato juice. Holly and Neal join in, and soon the driveway looks more like we’ve been hacking up a deer than washing a dog. Their driveway, and all of us, are covered in thick red goop. This sucks, just like the airport did, only in a different way.

At least we have each other. If there is anyone in the world I could pick to go through this with, it would be my friend Holly. As her mother always says, the two of us could have fun together stuck in a cardboard box. And though I wouldn’t call the process fun, we are doing a surprising amount of smiling for such a nasty task. We spend a lot of the time listening to Holly wonder aloud what purpose skunks have, wishing them banned from the planet, and telling Neal that he’s the hunter and the man, and he needs to get his gun and take care of the skunks. The image is great, mostly because Holly and Neal live in the heart of Kenosha, where you could accidently hit someone throwing a ball too hard for your dog. A loaded gun in the city is probably not the best idea, but Holly’s been through this particular game three other times. She’s over it.

By the time we get to the part of this process where we take the hose to Bella, the girls call to say they’ve arrived in DC. The ride was bumpy, they could see lightning and they were afraid. I tell them that I’m standing in Auntie Holly’s’ back yard, up to my elbows in tomato juice and skunk odor, and suggest that we all start over tomorrow. That we need to have extra fun the following days to wipe this god awful day off the planet for good. They whole heartedly agree, as does Auntie Holly, whose nodding at me from behind the stream of the hose.

We get the dog tolerable enough to put in her kennel for the night, change into different clothes, and head to bed. It’s after 3am, and I’m beyond exhausted. The house smells, and so do I. All I smell is skunk. I roll over my day in my head, thinking of what I could’ve done different, and how so many things in this life aren’t in our control, they just carry us along for the ride. And how some days, life just stinks.

Frankie

So I have my cousin Frankie here. Which is, well, weird. He’s been dead nearly five years, and now he’s here with me, in my kitchen. In a glass jar, because my cousin Chrissy, Frank’s sister, is moving around for a bit and asked me to take care of him.

All of Frank’s siblings have some of his ashes. Chrissy said that since I don’t, I can take half of hers while I take care of him. Truth be told, I’ve never had anyone’s ashes before and this seems kind of odd.

When I get in the car to take Frankie to my house, I make sure the jar is safe. I go over a speed bump in the parking lot and instinctively reach over to make sure he’s secure. This makes me start to cry, but I settle myself. If I were my friend Julie, I would sob hysterically the whole way home in the name of some cleansing ritual and be done with it. If I were my friend Holly, I would call me and frantically tell the story with the possibility of some crying and inevitable calming down. But I am me, so I will myself not to cry and turn up the radio. This new song that I love is just starting, that says “Each days a gift, not a given right...” Frankie would love this song, for sure. I sing out loud the whole way home. When I come into the house, I tell Somewhere “This is my cousin Frankie” when she sniffs the jar. I set him by the stove, on the little white spice table.

I’m not particularly surprised this occurred. A couple months ago, Frankie starting popping up, as songs on the radio we both liked, and things that he would’ve laughed at. Then, at my cousin Chrissy’s house, I learned that Frankie was up on the grandfather clock. I never knew he was there, through all the years and times that I visited Chrissy’s house. It occurred to me how many long talks he was there for, while I sat with Chrissy and talked and listened, that he heard and knew about all my struggles. It seemed to make sense that he was right there all along.

Soon after finding him at Chrissy’s, I see a jar of him at my cousin Vicky’s house. I quietly ask the jar if he’s following me, to which the jar had nothing to say. Then a few days later, while fishing with my cousins, we ended up at Frankie’s Point, Frank’s favorite fishing spot. I’ve never been to Frankie’s point before. I stand on the point at sunset, and I tell Frankie him that I like his fishing spot. I miss him.

So I wasn’t surprised when Chrissy asked me for a favor, and the favor turned out to be Frankie.

Georgia and I were just talking about cremation on the way down to our softball tournament the previous weekend. She asked me if I wanted to be cremated or buried, and I told her that I wanted to be cremated. She asked where I wanted my ashes and I had to think about it. In my pause, she suggested either “someplace pretty” or that I get divvied up among my cousins where I can ride around in their cars with them. As it turns out, this is what a lot of my cousins do with their deceased siblings. I told Georgia that riding around with my favorite people would be fine, too.

Having Frankie here makes me wish I could ask him things. Like what to do with the girls as they grow up, and what to do about love. It makes me want to sit on his porch swing and talk and listen and laugh. I can’t believe it’s been five years since I’ve heard him laugh.

The other side of me, the logical side, tells me that this is just a jar of dust, physical remains but nothing else. That there is nothing there of the Frankie I knew, it’s just his DNA. I realize, feeling sort of foolish, that this is something Frankie and I share already. Tiny molecules that make us who we are, the ones we share as members of the same family. This means that Frankie’s always here with me, which actually makes the most sense of all.

The Love of the Game

My daughter Georgia is like Brett Favre when it comes to sports. That is, Georgia will continue to play the game until you physically strip the ball from her dead lifeless hand. She played seven softball games in a tournament this past weekend in Watertown. Then, in the sweltering 90 degrees sunshine this afternoon, she agreed to fill in for two of the other teams who were short of players for tonight. That will make at least 17 games of ball in ten days. She doesn’t quit.

Georgia came into softball relatively late. She didn’t start playing until she was ten. She played tackle football with the boys for three years, and then came to the sad realization that she was never going to be big enough to continue in the sport. It is a boys sport by design, unless she wanted to be a place kicker, which she did not.

The transition into softball has been interesting. She loves the team quality and she has no fear on the field. Her first summer playing 10 and under, a lot of girls got struck with the ball. The pitchers were all young and inexperienced. A lot of the kids developed a fear of the ball, and had to overcome the instinct to jump out of the batters box. After a game, another parent asked Georgia why she was never afraid of the ball .

“It’s smaller than a linebacker,” she answered with a sly smile. My kid is cool.

Because Georgia came into the sport later, she’s had to struggle to catch up. She plays both recreation league ball and competitive travel ball. In rec ball, she shines. The amount of time and practicing and coaching involved in travel ball assures that she’s going to continue to get better, because she spends so much more time playing.

In travel ball, Georgia pines for time in the infield. I am astounded at times at her resolve. She’s remarkably stubborn, she always has been. There are downsides to the self assured, strong willed child, though. Like toddler hood. That was a daily battle. But now, those same qualities that made me pull my hair out are the ones that have made her the kid who sings solo in front of a room of 300 people at her school talent show. The kid who tries for Secretary of the student council as a new sixth grader and beats out the eighth grade cheerleader, becoming the first sixth grade officer at the school. And the kid who spent nearly nine months trying to learn a cartwheel, when her kid sister got it on the second try. The first six months, the cartwheels were so ugly that even I wanted her to stop trying, but she didn’t give up. She spent years working and finally learned the back flip her sister Holly had learned at age six. Georgia wasn’t going to let that go, she was going to learn to do a backhand spring if it killed her. It took her over three years before she did one on her own. Even at age twelve, I think Georgia is one of the best examples I know of someone truly cultivating their own life.

When Georgia filled in at rec ball tonight, she only had her orange Storm t-shirt from her own team, and the other teams didn’t have any extra shirts, so she stood out on third base like a sore thumb among all the blue shirts of her temporary teammates. She didn’t seem to notice, and eventually, I don’t think anyone else did either. She caught a line drive down the third base line to end an inning with bases loaded and the crowd cheered. She got two tag outs, and was dead on with all her throws to first base.

I watched her from the stands, this strange mixing of team colors each game, and I realized that she reminded me of Brett Favre again. Not for the changing of teams, but for the way she played the game, no matter where she was playing. Because she was playing first for the love of the game. Anything else was extra.

Obsessive Wilson Disorder

I’m about to give Somewhere a rawhide bone. Not because she’s a good dog and deserves one, but because she’s driving me crazy and I want her still.

She’s a crazy puppy right now because I didn’t take her to her beloved new dog park today. I didn’t take her anywhere, in fact. Not even Kwik Trip.

Instead, I took her out of the kennel for a while in the morning while we got ready for our day. Then I put her back in the box and went on Holly’s field trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum, where parking costs are outrageous. Paying for it is my own fault, as I refuse to ride on a school bus. It breaks too many of my rules regarding space and noise. I gladly paid the eleven dollars for parking to not have to ride on that bus.

I let Somewhere out as soon as we got home at three, but I didn’t take her anywhere because we had to leave right away for gymnastics. I left her with Georgia, who was unhappily but dutifully cleaning out whatever died in her room.

Somewhere is not always a spaz. She has days, weeks even where she is so ridiculously well behaved that I can’t believe how lucky I am. Then a day or two goes by where I don’t take her to exercise and she eats a whole bag of bathroom garbage. She spends the night throwing it up all over my bed, my hallway, my stairs and my house. She even has the decency to look up at me with extra wide brown eyes, as if she’s sorry for the inconvenience.

As long as I chuck a tennis ball for her for a half an hour nearly every day, she’s a reasonable puppy. She still tears up Kleenex and occasionally harasses Football the cat, but she’s more than tolerable. The Kleenex doesn’t bother me as much as her chasing Football, as I am completely convinced that he is one of the nicest guys on the planet, cat or not.

I’ve heard of the term “ball obsessed” before, but I guess I never understood it or gave it much thought until now. At first, I thought that she was just especially attached to her ball. She treated it more like a friend than an inanimate object. If we lost one in the ditch or the lake, she’d whimper as we drove away. Obviously Somewhere is of the leave-no-man-behind philosophy, and so we started calling the ball “Wilson.” The name stuck, and now, at the dog park, we yell “Where’s Wilson?” every time she loses the ball. It’s a good conversation starter. And since we’re in the business of naming things around here, we’ve named Somewhere’s ball issues: Obsessive Wilson Disorder

I thought that once we started going to a park with other dogs, she’d want to play with them and not just Wilson. But so far the only interest she has in the other dogs is to give them the ball a time or two, and then give up and bring it back to me. I think she assumes that they can throw it for her, but won’t.

Somewhere loves to swim, but will only swim with Wilson. If he doesn’t go in, she sits in the water up to her neck just off shore with only her head sticking out of the water. She resembles a little Loch Ness monster with a long pink tongue hanging out the side of its mouth.

I’m lying in bed with Holly, rubbing her back like I’d promised, and Somewhere repeatedly takes Wilson and places him on my back, where he rolls down my body leaving a long damp trail, and then falls to the floor with a dull wet thud. She isn’t going to give up.

I suppose that I could go around the house and collect all the Wilsons, but then she’ll just sit and pant at the spot where I’ve hidden them, or the empty spot where they used to be. She’s stubborn with a one track mind.

So now, in the name of sanity, Somewhere is eating a rawhide bone on my bed. It reminds me of my position on television for the girls when they were small. There were moments when it was necessary to just turn it on as an electronic babysitter in the interest of peace and quiet, and the possibility for me to get something done.

Basically, I caved.