They Made Us This Way

We used to be a normal, functioning, fun and even cool people, Mr. Weasel and I. Not any more. At least not by my kids standards.

I will admit, I talk to myself regularly. Sometimes it's even full blown conversations, asking and answering my own questions. I often make seemingly random statements out loud. The Weasels will say "Mom, you already told us that." I inform them that I was just reminding myself. There is just not enough room in my head to store all of the information I need to neatly. It's much more like a junk drawer and if I don't pull out the information that I need and put it on top it will get lost in the jumble.

The Mr. and I are not overly self conscious in public. We are usually self entertaining where ever we go and can often be seen visibly laughing at a thought or a joke that popped into our head that no one else heard. These things humiliate our children (especially the Eldest) to the umpteenth degree. No wonder they would rather not be seen in public with us.

Every morning when driving Eldest to school, I remind her to try not to miss me too much during the day and ask is she needs a few tissues in case she breaks into tears about it during the school day. She rolls her eyes at me and sometimes I'm lucky enough that she will play along and be my straight man and reply something like, "It will be tough, but I'll do my best". Usually though she just gets annoyed and asks "Why do you have to be so weird?".

Just the other night Eldest and I were in the grocery store picking up a few things. I was talking to myself, as per usual, going over the list in my head and giving myself directions around the store. Once again the question of "Why can't you just be normal?" came up. One item on my mental list was cookies. Eldest was allowed to bring them into one her classes for her birthday. As we were going past she spotted fortune cookies. Very excited and animated she ran to her glorious find and started selecting a box. I asked how many kids in the class to figure out how many boxes we would need. The response was "Ewww, no. I can't take these to school, that's dorky. I want these are for home. I want cookies from the bakery for school".

I took this opportunity to answer her question of why I can't just be normal. I explained once again that Mom and Dad used to be very normal and that after way to many conversations like this, she had made us this way. "Why are you telling me this?" complete with eye roll left her lips. "In hopes that you might have a little sympathy and cut us a little slack knowing that you did this to us".

Her response "Meh".