Sweet N Sour

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Every morning I wake up now and Franny is lying next to me, staring at me. This is something you have to accept about being a parent. Your children, when they actually let you sleep, will stare at you. They will watch you go stink-stink. They will tell you your butt looks big and that you have prepared the worst enchiladas known to childkind.

But she cuddles and she holds my hand, and I think it is making her happy to have morning cuddlebears. When she was Strudel’s age and younger I would say, “Hey, let’s cuddlebear!” and she was outtie five. Strudel is the same now. A frantic little gobeast that has to run and jump at every moment. But I think she will never grow up to be calm and sweet like Franny. Franny used to be spazzy but sweet. Not so much with The Other One, as I call her when I can’t recall her name.

Last night Strudel flipped through the Territorial Seed Company catalog. The pages whipped by and I hear little tearing sounds as I finished dinner. She paused occasionally at some odd vegetable or fruit she didn’t recognize. Finally she stopped on one page for quite a while.

“What fuck is this?” she exclaimed, sounding a lot like someone else I know when she is flipping through US Weekly or Harper’s.

Franny and I looked at each other. “That’s celriac. Celery root. You know, we have it pureed sometimes?”

“Yeah,” Strudel said.

“Did you say ‘What fuck is this?” I asked.

“Uh huh.”

“It’s ‘What THE fuck is this,” I said.

“Oh.”

She was quiet until she got to the weird looking melons.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?”

“Dinner!” I said.

37 thoughts on “Sweet N Sour”

  6. LMAO. Stepladder got all upset because she accidentally said a bad word on video and she didn’t want me to hear. The word? “Crap”,

  10. I remember the first time I swore in front of my mom. The realization that I just did it nearly put me into shock. I’m not sure when exactly it became “okay” to do it, but it still makes me feel uncomfortable.

  12. Oh, man, I am GLAD I made your place one of my few stops today. Sadly, it means bad news for my poor old dad, asleep in the next room, but hey. *I* laughed, loud and sudden, and really it’s all about me. I dearly love Strudel.
    Hi! T minus one month for me being around to harass the Internet on a regular basis!

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