"Mom, I can't talk right now. I'm in a meeting." What? I thought she said she was eating, so I continued, "You need to stop blaming your sister for using the last of the shampoo. She has a right to use it, too, and I just need to know before it's gone so I can buy more." Cathy whispered, "Okay, Mom. I really do have to go. I. Am. In. A. Meeting." There was lots of teenaged giggling in the background, so I gave up. "Fine, enjoy your meeting."
On our walk last night, Cathy told me, she really had been in a meeting, of cheerleaders having a cheer-mergency over their upcoming cheer car wash. They were giggling, because they could hear me scolding her. Oops. And then, Cathy went into a long spiel about what did I think she was doing, having a meeting with her stuffed animals, asking Big Bunny to please take minutes, and Walking Talking Elmo to hold all calls?
So, that was yesterday's funny. Sunday's funny happened after I forced the kids to try a bunch of unfamiliar foods. We bought prawn crackers, spinach buns, fish balls, egg drop soup, biblinka, shredded squid, and more, from the Oriental Market where the non English fluent cashier whistles Scorpion tunes. That was an unmitigated disaster. But, the after-supper party was fun. A few of Sarah's unsuspecting friends came to join us after they returned home from boating. As they walked down the sidewalk, Cathy, Sarah, Spencer and Kaitlyn were ready, having tied a twinkie to a ball of yarn and left it on the sidewalk. As Ashton and Leighton approached, the twinkie slowly moved out of reach. Then, Ashton sprinted toward it, Spencer took off running down the highway, the twinkie bounced along ("like a gazelle," Ashton later said) and the kids erupted laughing.
Leighton loved the idea of tricking more kids in that manner, so we set to work trying to string up twinkies in our mulberry tree with low hanging branches, with yarn that could retract into the branches when the kids reached up to grab one. We then played Pictionary and the story game, and called it a night.
My kids keep me young. And maybe, I keep them young, too, because I don't want to see them rushing into adulthood, with all its challenges. Their childhoods will be over soon enough, and then the house will seem very big and very quiet, with no twinkies in our trees, and no stuffed animal meetings. Cathy can laugh about it now that she has "real" meetings, but those conferences with her toys were not that long ago.
