Literally Speaking?

One of the traits that most of the bloggers I follow know about me is that frequently, when I comment, I get more than a bit oh, long-winded, shall we say? Yeah, go ahead and say it cause it's true, it really is.

But there's sort of a reason behind that.

Sometimes, I could kick myself when I do that because I might be dealing with being brain dead here trying to think of a topic to write about or a story to tell and then, I read someone else's post, which changes my train o thought and opens up a mini-gusher of a well and I can't seem to stop myself.

I have no job to write about in my posts -haven't had one of those for oh, the past almost nine years now -so sometimes that limits (in my mind anyway) what I could kind of, sort of, write about I guess. I can write about jobs I've had at times in the past but unfortunately, trying to remember word-for-word the really good stories I used to remember, that I thought I would never ever forget too, can be like pulling hen's teeth!

Sometimes I think well, if I'd had a career consisting of something like Physicians & Surgeons Jobs, I'd really have a plethora of things to write about, wouldn't I? Well, maybe, maybe not there too cause I'd probably slip up and break that HIPPA Privacy ruling or something by tossing in information that would thus identify the patient and we wouldn't want that to happen, now would we?

Well, we don't need to worry about that though because I don't know diddly-squat about that stuff and we're all much better off from that too.

But one thing I can and often do try to write about are some of the things my two little grandkids -who live here with me, remember -do and today was one of those days when there were some good comments coming from both of them.

For openers, today was Picture Day at school for them so they were each supposed to take the form sent home about a week or two ago which Mandy was to fill out and return showing how many lovely photos she was going to want to purchase (sight unseen too) of the little darlings all decked out, shining brightly those two little stars that they are, ya know.

And of course, last night, wouldn't you just know it but Mandy could not locate those doggone forms no where, no way, no how! Seems they had apparently moved to a different state of disarray within the house -something that here, is quite easy for things like that to do -develop legs of their own and get up and move to who knows where!

So, after she pretty much had torn the dining room and parts of the living room and kitchen too apart, doing a search and destroy mission, Mandy gave up and remembered she could go online and order the pics, plus pay for them then too and not have to worry then after all about sending the form in to school this morning with the kids.

Of course, this was fine with Kurtis because he had no clue about what picture day means to start with, much less that you had to have a form signed, sealed, paid for and delivered to the powers that be to have his picture taken. Fact of the matter is that he could care less about getting is picture taken at any time and tends as a result to act the total goofball, not trying to pose nicely but rather -well, to waste Mom's money by making some sort of weird face as soon as the shutter snaps.

Maya on the other hand -well, she is generally quite the ham, very much the diva too and she wanted to be dressed as nicely as possible, hair all done up just so (gee, so many memories come to me of sooooo very many days over three decades ago when I went through very similar episodes like that with her aunt, whose every hair had to be just perfectly in place, whose outfit had to be completely coordinated and heaven forbid that she even thought she might be getting a zit that would surely break out into a mountain by the end of the next weekend to come!) Yeah, she was very much like that and Miss Maya very much is like that lovely aunt of hers!

So to Maya, that paper was a necessity so she could have her picture taken today looking her very best! And when she realized that paper wasn't present and accounted for in her backpack this morning, for a brief while, it did look like all Hell was going to break loose!  Eventually though, Mandy did get things explained to her that all had been already taken care of and that Mom had done all of it online -and Maya -who understands a good bit about how people can do lots and lots of things using the internet then finally settled down and trundled off to school, ready to be photographed in all her stunning glory!

Mandy then, trying to be on the safe side with Kurtis, then sent a text message to Kurt's TSS (the aide who works with him all day in school to try to keep him focused and on the straight and narrow) asking Miss Dawn to please try to get him to smile nicely, not one of his normal sillliness poses, ya know. (EGAD! But here again, history, for me is repeating itself because that was always one of the things I worried a whole lot about on picture days a few decades back with my son, Kurt's lovely Uncle, and of whom Kurtis is virtually a clone! In more ways that just this one!)

So Miss Dawn had written back that she would try but to remember that she is merely a TSS not a miracle worker!

And so, a bit later after the picture-taking was all done, Mandy received a text from Miss Dawn saying how she and Kurtis had practiced over and over, the art of presenting a good smile,making for a nice picture of him. And things were going pretty smoothly she thought as they stood in line, waiting for his time in the spotlight of the camera to come, when he turned to her and asked "Can you sit up there with me and we get picture taken together?"

Thankfully, he accepted her explanation that no, he'd be there, sitting by himself but that he would do fine and near as she could tell from her visual vantage point, she thought the smile on his face was one that wouldn't shock the living daylights out of Mandy when she gets the kids picture packets delivered a couple of weeks from now.

Now, fast forward from the picture episode to the supper table tonight. I fixed some baked Tilapia fish fillets -just lightly "kissed" them with a brush of a teensy bit of olive oil mixed with a bit of paprika and baked till they flaked. With that, we had some long grain and wild rice mixed along with baked acorn squash, home grown in my lovely little garden. Can you believe that -fish without mac'n'cheese? In this house? What's this world coming to anyway? And I admit having a lot of trepidation too about fixing those things for supper because fish was the only item on the menu that usually those two kids will eat. Key word here being "usually."

Well, at first they both balked, big time, when they saw what Mandy had put on their plates! Kurtis decided immediately that he doesn't like fish because "it makes my mouth and tongue all hot!" Actually, the reason he made a comment like that was because he's pretty much only accustome to fish that has some kind of coating on it and this, tonight -no coating, no breading involved, ya see! He threw a bit of a hissy fit too about the rice but that I pretty much expected he would do. Maya on the other hand, at the rice with no complaints, no comments but hadn't touched her fish for quite a while until when we asked her why, she said she didn't know it was fish. I'm not sure what she mistook it to be but once she realized it was fish, she just wanted some tartar sauce and in a flash, her fish was gone! We didn't even entertain trying to get either of them to take a taste of the squash cause sometimes, Mandy and I know how to pick our battles, especially with foods, with those two.

But it was quite a struggle to get Kurtis to eat anything tonight as he diddled and dawdled away, pushing the fish and rice around a bit but not putting any of it near his mouth. Then Mandy announced to him that if he didn't eat his supper, he'd not be getting any dessert which of course, resulted in a whole lot of whining and wailing from him.

By this time, I was getting really peeved with him and his refusals so re-ran the bribery thing past him several times about how he would be very hungry later tonight from not eating anything and there would be no peanut-butter bread in its place and most certainly, there would absolutely not be even a teensy bite of ice cream either.

Finally, somehow or other, something in my threats to him must have registered and he thought things over saying well, maybe he could eat as long as he only had to have a couple of bites. I said well, by the looks of what's on your plate, I think you could do it in probably about six or seven bites maybe. So he began then to get one little grain of rice on his spoon and into his mouth it went, counting -silently though -as he did that. I then told him he needed to make those bites count and proceeded to show him that a little bit more on the spoon constituted a spoonful, which then in turn made it what I considered to be "a bite." And that was what I told him "counted" in the eating process.

To which Maya then piped up and said that he couldn't count though because only second graders could do that!

Hmmm. Seems Gram sort of forgot that there are different meanings to the word "count" or "counting" aren't there?