Exhibit N: Christmas

As I’m sure you can imagine, Christmas at our house was never what one would expect.  I’ll start with Santa.  I always knew Santa was made up.  Not because I’m a super genius who rapidly deduced that the story of Santa defied the laws of biology and physics.  Because my parents straight up told me.  Why?  Because, Santa brings lots of presents to good girls and boys, right?  Well, when you have next to nothing and Santa shows up with a few homemade candies and a dress your mom made for you, this creates some problems.  One, you think you haven’t been very good.  Two, your mom doesn’t get credit for all her hard work.  Three, you're basically putting on an elaborate deception for your kids.  My parent’s solution was to let each of us pretend to be Santa.  The year it was our turn, we got to shop with mom for each of our siblings.  Then, we stayed up all night Christmas Eve, making gooey, poorly wrapped caramels, wrapping presents and stuffing stockings.  At least one stocking per year was just a melted mess of caramel and fudge.  Our candy making skills needed some fine tuning.  Still, being Santa is one of my favorite childhood memories.



Pooker being Santa

                Next, I’ll discuss the weird gifts we give.  Typically we got one gift a year, from our parents, then we would make or buy one for each of the siblings (if purchased, more often than not, these came from quarter vending machines at the grocery store).  Let me start with where they purchased most of these gifts.  The pawn shop.  Gifts I have received from a pawn shop: a set of sterling silverware in a heart-shaped box (age 11), a ring, a VCR, an antique side table (age 8), a puzzle.  Some gifts my siblings received from a pawn shop: Pooker (tent), Nana (porcelain doll), Beadle (butterfly knife (age 12)) Sneet (TV) John (laptop).  Other gifts of note I have received: an atlas, a dictionary, homemade moccasins, homemade candles and a thesaurus.  Funniest gifts I have seen given: wax (to Pooker), crocheted boxer shorts (to Beadle’s boyfriend), shampoo (to my mom) a weed whacker (to Nana), leather working kit (to Nana) and a seed warmer (again, to Nana).  Our gifts are often, homemade, secondhand and more a necessity than luxury.  I would, however, be remiss if I didn’t mention the time I got something new.  When I was six, I desperately wanted a Cabbage Patch doll.  The whole world wanted one. My grammy tried to make me one, but it just wasn’t the same.  I couldn't ask for it because they were expensive.  I don't know how she did it, but my mom figured it out.  That year, she fought through the Christmas crowds and managed to snag one of the very last Cabbage Patch dolls.  She forked over $25 for it, which was more than she spent on all the other kid’s gifts combined.  I loved that doll. 

                How we wrap.  If our gifts were unusual, our wrapping was worse.  We were constantly trying to wrap our present in a manner that left the recipient puzzled as to what the contents were.  The pawn shop ring was stuck inside a fig newton and wrapped up.  I was led on a treasure hunt for the side table.  The thesaurus was placed inside a 3’x3’ box filled with packing peanuts.  Imagine my surprise.  The puzzle was in 23 separate layers of newspaper.  The weed whacker was meticulously wrapped in the exact shape of a weed whacker. 

                Our tree for many years was just a potted plant in the living room.  If we bought a tree, it was usually on the 23rd, because that's when they go on sale.  Sometimes we cut our own tree.  We usually were woefully bad at guessing the size that our living room could accommodate. 

                If you have ever had to do Christmas for 8 kids on less than $100, then you know what I am talking about.  But, let me be clear, I loved Christmas.  Despite all the lumpy packages under the tree, despite peeling caramel off my candy canes, despite the fact that nothing was new, bright or shiny.  What I remember most is sleeping under the Christmas tree, carefully crafting paper doll dresses for my sisters, playing games together, and singing together.  What I remember most is love.  And isn’t that what Christmas is all about? 



Nana with a homemade Christmas hat

Christmas.  I am the baby my mom's shirt is talking about.

Me being Santa

               

Exbihit M: Physical Abilities

A tactful word about our physical oddities.  Certainly if I clarify that it’s tactful, then it will be right?  Some of these are less noticeable than others, but let’s get them all out in the open. 

We’ll start with noses, since that’s always been a hot topic in my family.  As long as I can remember my father has been an avid proponent of the nose.  Claiming that our family’s signature nose is large and beautiful and more sensitive than the average nose.  He eagerly measured them, with his thumb, to see whose was getting biggest.

How to Accurately Gauge the Relative Size of Familial Noses

1.        Make sure subject is agreeable and the nose has been properly wiped.

2.       Measure the width first (standard nose measurements are always width x length) by taking your thumb and lining the tip up with the edge of one nostril (called the nasal ala) so that the rest of the thumb crosses the columella to the other ala.  Slide index finger until it touches the ala furthest from the thumb tip.  Like so:

Note how compliant he is

3.        Mark the ala to ala measurement with a pen, or immediately measure it against your own, sliding the index narrower or wider as appropriate.

4.        Measure length second by placing thumb tip at the nasolabial angle and slide index finger until it touches the apex of the nose.  Like so:

5.       Mark the nasolabial apex measurement, or compare to your own.

  This is how we all knew the moment OR Tire’s nose outgrew my father’s.  Other fun facts about our noses.  The cartilage at the tip of my nose splits when pressed and it is really fun (and by really fun I mean annoying) to push it repeatedly like an elevator button.  Beadle’s nostrils are shaped like triangles.  A fact she is extremely proud of.  My mom’s nose is crooked, but it is also the smallest and most aesthetic of the family.  To my knowledge we have an average sense of smell.  But don’t tell them that.

Tricks with our tongue.  Just what you wanted to hear about I am sure.  But this was my mother’s interest.  Can you roll your tongue?  Roll it upside down? 

Do spoon tongue?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clover tongue?

 Invert it right?

 

 

 

 

 

  Invert it left? 

Touch it to the tip of your nose?  Do pickle tongue?



  Fold it on top of itself?  Touch your uvula?  Yes, these are all questions we were asked.  Regularly, by my mother.

My answers:  Y, N, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y               Pooker: classified

Nana: no comment                                                 Gummy: not available for questioning.

Sneet: Y, N, Y, Y, Y, Y, N, Y, Y, Y                           OR Tire: Y, N, Y, N, N, N, Y, Y, Y, N

Muscle Whip:  classified                                      Beadle: Y, N, Y, N, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, N

Mom: Y, N, Y, Y, Y, Y, N, Y, Y, N                           Dad: Y, N, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, Y

Other oddities of note:  OR can blow air out his eyeballs and has really stretchy neck skin.  My dad can roll his eyes one at a time.  Nana, Beadle, Slugweirta, OR Tire and I all have a cyst on our right wrists.  The record for hairiest chest is held by my father and is 6 total hairs.  Beadle can move her pinky toe independently and with some agility.

 

  Sneet can do a tongue wave.  I can bend my thumb 90 degrees.  My dad claims invincibility to strangulation because of his immense platysma muscles.  OR Tire can hold 8 pencils with his face.

Clearly the contest over physical oddities has been won.

Exhibit D: The Ear Key

The original purpose of the ear key was to unlock bathroom doors.  In our house (with 3 bathrooms and 10 people) being locked out of the bathroom qualified as an emergency.  So my dad made this key and kept it on his key ring to be readily handy should anyone accidentally lock the bathroom door on their way out (this happened often because they are just those push button locks).  HOWEVER, somehow my dad developed a habit of using it to clean his ears. 
Imagine, if you can, having a fairly normal conversation with a fairly normal looking dude when he casually pulls THIS

ear key

 

out of his pocket and sticks it in his ear.  What would go through your head?  You can see what's going through his head.  I remember thinking maybe he was trying to unlock his brain.  Or turn it on to get it working. 



 I asked an ENT what they would say to a patient who did this.  He said he would advise against it.  He also verified there are no magic locks or brain ignitions in your ear.
If you happen to be at my house and you see this key lying around, try to use it only for it's designated purpose, opening bathrooms.  And whatever you do, don't use it to clean your teeth.

Exhibit L: The Garden

Slugweirta Life Lesson Number One:  IF you live in a home with a yard, then AT LEAST half of said yard should be dedicated to a vegetable garden.  Failure to do this (if you are one of the aforementioned children) will result in genetic testing.  Of course at least two of us would fail that test. 

                Slugweirta’s passion for gardening has a long familial history.  Some of my very first memories are of the vegetable garden.  Starting in February, we would all plant little seeds indoors in little biodegradable cups.  Then nurture them, water them, thin them until May when we could safely (usually) plant them. 

 

You can see here some of the little seedlings in our living room.  Luckily they are in focus, unlike Nana.

That first garden, which if I remember correctly (and I’m sure I do) was larger than our home.  So we grew everything.  Broccoli, squash, corn, carrots, sweet peas, potatoes you name it, we grew it.  Each bed had a plant assigned to it and each group of four beds had a child assigned to weeding it.  I hated weeding the garden, so every time I would kick up a gigantic fuss.  My favorite thing to do (because my nickname was Weed, remember) was to complain loudly about being forced to exterminate my own kind.  

                “Oh, you poor little weed.  I don’t want to murder you, but my mother’s making me.”

                I believe Slugweirta was prouder of that garden than she was of her Master’s degree.  If I picture my mother at that time in her life (really at any time in her life) she would be out in the garden, tilling.  My mom is not afraid to get her hands dirty.  Part of her passion, I am sure, is that this is a super cheap way to feed eight children fresh produce, and also teach them the value of child labor laws.  In that yard we also had an apricot tree, two cherry trees, a pear and an apple tree. 

                Every spring we would go to the local dairy and fill our pickup truck full of cow manure.  IF you do the shoveling yourself, they let you take as much cow poop as you want.  FOR FREE.  I well remember standing knee deep in manure and shoveling it into piles in our garden.  I’m pretty sure I smelled fabulous for days afterward.  

                Our other source of fertilizer was the compost pit.  The most despised chore at my house has always been taking out the compost.  At the very back of our yard was a giant hole we dug every spring.  Throughout the year we would fill it with kitchen scraps.  Trekking out to the back of the yard with a bucket of smelly scraps meant for the pit was a daily chore.  My biggest fear was falling in.  And becoming compost myself.  I still have nightmares about it.

                BUT who’s going to turn down free fertilizer?  Not my mother.

                In our next home, the garden was significantly smaller than the house.  Mostly because the house was slightly larger and the lot much smaller.  Slugweirta fixed this by turning random bits of yard into garden.  And compost pits.

                After that we moved to a house with a huge yard.  And went back to a more suitable home to garden ratio.  My mother still grows a giant vegetable garden.  She also grows several citrus trees indoors.  Although I've never seen one produce a single fruit.  Every time she purchases an avocado, she tries to grow an avocado tree from its pit.  To do this she pierces it with three toothpicks and suspends it in a jar of water in the window sill.  I'll bet there's one in her kitchen window sill at this very moment.  She's been doing this for thirty years and I've never seen one do more than sprout.  Most of them mold and have to be thrown out.

                Because of her dedication to gardening, I (and most of my siblings) have a passion for home grown veggies.  I love tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden.  Although I could do without the long keeper tomatoes, which Slugweirta keeps way past their prime, simply because they are supposedly “long-keepers”.  That doesn’t mean they are still edible when they start to turn black, Mom.

                In order to avoid genetic testing, all of the kids who have homes with a yard (currently 5 of us) also have vegetable gardens.  Although, I go to Lowe’s to buy my manure.  Don’t tell my mother.

Exhibit K: Summer School

The summers of your youth were filled with unfettered freedom, right?  You did a few chores, sure, but mostly you were playing baseball or at the pool or at some summer camp or water skiing.  I dreamed of water skiing.  Until I actually tried it when I was 24.  I couldn’t stand up, so I basically got a lake water enema.  Dreamy.  But most people dream of the idyllic liberty of their childhood summers.  Not me.                                   

Me, thrilled about summer.

                As soon as school let out for summer was when our lessons began.  Yep, school all summer long.  We were all taught an instrument.  A useful skill to be sure.  Slugweirta had a big black leather box of different random instruments.  Like maracas and tambourines.  She had several hand held drums and a few magnificent sets of xylophones.  And a random animal horn that we hit with a mallet.  I’m sure the noise we made could be heard for miles. 

                Next we practiced calligraphy.  That’s right, calligraphy.  Ink, quill, fancy flowers on letters, calligraphy.  In a world that largely communicates via text, this has become a lost art.

Standard Wedding Invite 2015

 

                We were required to memorize all our math facts up to twelve, we were tested with flash cards.  If we couldn’t do the whole deck in 3 minutes, we had to do extra worksheets.  Slugweirta also gave us math workbooks for the next grade, so we would be one grade level ahead at the start of the school year.  I’m not complaining, this has truly come in handy and is the one thing I wish I could pass on to my kids.   Well that and my astonishing cow bell skills.   However, they are very resistant.

                Lastly we had to give book reports.  One book a week.  When was the last time you read 12 books in a summer?  I love to read.  But required reading is something else.  Every Saturday we would go to the library and check out the books we were going to read.  The next Friday afternoon, we would get up and tell everyone about what we learned from our books.  If you couldn’t find an acceptable book, my mom or dad would assign you one.  Because of this, by the time I was thirteen, I had read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Series, Watership Down, Ender’s Game, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, The Bell Jar, To Kill a Mockingbird, Dune, Wuthering Heights, A Tale of Two Cities, Asimov’s Foundation and A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  I’ll let you guess which parent assigned which books.  As a side note, last week I took a Facebook quiz that claimed the BBC figures most Americans had read 6 books on their list of 100.  I have read 42 of them.  So at least I’m not an average American as defined by the BBC.  I guess my parents would be thrilled, not by the number of books, but by the fact that I can’t call myself normal.  One week, in an act of defiance (I was attempting to bore them into banning book reports (my fear of breaking the rules really thwarts my acts of rebellion)) I selected the A Encyclopedia.  Yes, I read the entire thing.  It took me two weeks.  No, they did not ban book reports.  It was worth a shot.

Exhibit J: Our Pets

The weirdest thing about our pets is the alarming number of them.  My parents probably spend more money on animal food than human food.  Mostly because they grow their human food.  Both my parents seem to have an uncontrollable urge to feed and house any living thing that needs it.  Luckily that includes humans.  If you need a roof over your head, they'll find space for you be you Homo Sapien or feline.  You may not care for your three roommates of various species, but you'll be warm and dry.  And dewormed.   
As long as I can recall we've had cats, a dog and a fish tank.  I think this started as an effort to teach the kids responsibility, but it soon became clear who was boss.  Grootie.  She belonged to my grandmother who lived with us.  Grandma K. had two cats, Faust and Grootie, both as black as midnight.  At that same time we also had a dog named Willie (a girl) and we acquired a cat which was named Arafel.  Yeah, I don't know where that name came from either.  I'm just glad they decided to name me after my grandmother.  And a tank full of goldfish.  4 kids + 3 adults + 3 cats + 1 dog + 5 fish.  16.  Easily the fewest number of creatures that have ever lived in my parents home at one time.  This is what I remember about those pets.  Grootie liked you if you pet her, otherwise she wanted nothing to do with you.  Willie had some puppies that she deserted somewhere and we never found (at least not that I know of).  One of the goldfish hopped out of the tank and dried to the wall while we were on a trip.  Arafel was the mother of many of our subsequent cats.  She had one litter under our shed where a skunk lived.  Bad choice.  She lost that fight and we had to wash baby kittens in tomato juice.  More than once I had to bottle feed baby kittens, it is not as cute as it sounds.

Ok, maybe it is.

From her first batch of kittens we all picked a kitten of our own.  Mine was a yellow tabby named Mustard.  The last cat I voluntarily owned.  Nana picked a black one with white paws named Mittens, who would claw your feet through the crack under her bedroom door if you got too close.  Beadle got two gray tabbies, Melanie and Stripes.  And Pooker got the calico, I can't remember its name.  After Willie we had a dog named Katrina.  She was part wolf.  We got the educational hamsters that I was meant to learn about the birds and the bees (and cannibalism) from.  Incidentally, we once left one in an exercise ball overnight, my mom woke up to weird sounds and assumed it was an intruder, she attacked it with a handy fencing foil she had nearby.
I decided I loved parakeets, I went through several.  Including one, a bright yellow bird named Goldenrod (in retrospect that's a bad name for anything, even a flower) that I took the phrase "if you love something let it go..etc"  to heart and freed him.  He never came back.  And it is unlikely he survived the Utah snows.  My favorite parakeet, Marbles, was eaten by an unnamed cat while we were in Payson one summer.  One parakeet got shut in the door, my mom tried to resuscitate him with CPR.  It didn't work.  Around this time Pooker had a turtle.  That Katrina tried to eat.  Unsuccessfully.  Still, he was never himself again after the attack.  The hamsters multiplied, the cats multiplied, the fish multiplied, and I remained blissfully oblivious to their methods. 
When Katrina died, after my dad took her off in the woods to return the earth (he always felt and still does that that is where they feel the most at home, and where they belong when they die (I'm not entirely sure about the legality of this, but he's never let that stop him.))  He has also, more than once, expressed a desire to be handled the same way when his time comes (I AM pretty sure about the legality of that.) We got two dogs, Jessie and Kaio.  I foolishly named Jessie after a girl at school who I really wanted to be friends with.  Somehow naming a dog after her did not have the flattering impact on her that I had imagined.  Weird.
Mika was my dad's first service dog, followed by Songka, who is still pretty new. 
About the time we got Mika we had many cats (probably more than 20) which my parents actively vaccinated and medicated and fed and fixed.  By this time I knew that meant they shouldn't still be multiplying.  We had a rescued iguana who was the meanest lizard I've ever met.  He was also five feet long.  And countless fish. 
Now there are fewer cats.  Like fifteen.  Most of them are half wild and will hiss if you come near.   Many are missing tails or are otherwise too mangy to be loveable.  Two dogs.  And an unnumbered amount of fish.  And six humans. 

This is what happens when your heart is too big to say no.  You end up deworming wild cats when you meet your son-in-law to be for the first time.   Also, some people may begin to suspect that you may be too mangy to be loveable. 

Exhibit I: My Dad

I meant to do this for Father's Day, but here I am writing this two weeks too late when I should be doing the dishes.  My Dad is a bizarre human being.  He says he's sort of a redneck hippie.  Which is such an incongruent phrase I can't quite wrap my brain around it.  I thought I'd list his top five eccentricities, so I can save the rest for later.  We'll see how I do.
Number One:  Ha, ha, I'm sitting here blankly trying to decide which is the most unusual.  These are in no particular order then, to make it easier for me. The way he greets and responds to greetings.  Often he will just say "greetings"  I always think "earthling" in my head afterwards.  Occasionally "salutations".  He has various amusing responses to "how are you?" like "fair to middlin'"  or "sixes" or the more literal "you'd have to ask my parents" (Um. No.) or "13.8 billion years ago there was a singularity".  If you ask how he feels it's often "slightly squashy".  I can't remember even once saying, "how are you?" and him saying "fine".   He almost never responds to a question in the way you'd expect.  I guess I can respect that level of non-conformity to social norms.  I just wish that it only went as far as how he says hello.  Instead of permeating every layer of his social, emotional and cultural behavior.
Number Two: Conspiracies.  I don't really have a place to begin with this and he will probably read this and go "what conspiracies?" that's because they are all fact to him.  But he once told me that the government puts trans-fats in everything to keep us unhealthy.  Or he'll get irked if I wear a shirt with a logo on it because that's free advertising, I suppose that's not really a conspiracy.  Don't get him started on George W. Bush, or organic food or oil conspiracies.  It's always a lively conversation. 
Number Three:  And this one is totally involuntary, but still unusual.  My dad has sensitivities to anything with synthetic fragrances.  He coughs like crazy around perfume, deodorant, cleaners you name it.  Before he comes to visit I launder all my towels and sheets in fragrance free detergent.  But I always miss something.  As a result of these sensitivities, he often wears a mask in public.  When he has to remove it, he stores it conveniently on his elbow.  Fortunately, the man-made fragrance of human body odor doesn't make him cough, so if I go for days deodorant free he's the only person I won't be offending.   If you're coming for a visit, please check your lotions, soaps, perfumes and household cleaners at the door. 
Number Four:  This is less of an eccentricity, but still an unusual part of who he is.  I can't honestly talk about who my dad without mentioning that he has a service animal.  She is his constant companion.  What she does and why he needs her is a little harder to explain.  About twenty years ago he had a TIA (transient ischemic attack) on his way to work.  It's like a mini-stroke.  He never fully recovered.  Later he was involved in a car accident which caused further damage.  He hasn't been fully functional since then.  He likes to say he lost his marble.  He forgets a lot.  He wanders aimlessly around grocery stores.  He falls asleep unless otherwise occupied.  The dog is there to remind him to go home.  To wake him up.  To keep him active and alert.  Basically like a wife only hairier and less busy.  So Songka goes everywhere with him.  Once my parents brought her to my house for the weekend.  They vehemently assured me she didn't shed. 


Baloney

She is a purebred malamute.  In the New Mexican desert.  Of course she sheds.  It is my opinion that her services would be better rendered if she were...


Hairless?

Smaller?



Both?
 

Ok.  I guess we'll keep her.  It could definitely be weirder.
Number Five:  This goes along pretty well with my last one.  My dad LOVES canines.  Not just dogs.  When asked to go anywhere formal he wears a tie with a wolf howling at the moon.  Like to my wedding.  (I'd like to add here that he also wore his favorite footwear, Teva sandals with black socks, it went well with his suit. Luckily he left his booney hat at home.)  One of his favorite pastimes is tracking coyotes, so he can observe them in their natural habitat.  I'm fairly certain he spends more times with canines than humans (even if we excluded Songka from the canine category).  If he was told that he could take either my mom or the dog on a luxury vacation for two.....I'm not 100% positive he would pick my mom. 


Okay, It's not howling





SO that's just the top five.  I'm sure my siblings will throw some in there that I've forgotten that they think are weirder.  Although my dad is undoubtedly odd, he has some redeeming qualities too.  He gave me a deep and enduring love for nature.  He is someone I can call on no matter what the trouble is.  He has more patience than anyone I know.  He never swears.  Probably the best lesson is that he taught me that how you look isn't important.   It's how you think and what you do that matters.
Oh, and he taught us to love Tolkien.

"The lizard wept onto his horse." 

Camping

I would truly be remiss in my duty of chronicling my family's weirdness if I left out camping.  This was basically our entire summer vacation.  That and driving two hours to visit the only other family that could stand us for more than a day at a time.  Every weekend, while my friends were off at space camp, we would pack up the pickup and go camping.  This is because camping (with my family) is inexpensive and because if he could figure out how to do it, my dad would camp on a permanent basis.  Usually we would go to the mountains, but a fair number of times we camped in the desert.  My mom almost never went.  I assumed this was because she hated camping  but I now suspect that she enjoyed having the house to herself for the weekend.  When she did go, what I remember most is the drive up.  Mountain roads = certain death in my mom's mind.  Whenever we'd go around a corner, she brace herself, slam her foot against an imaginary brake and go, "jim, jim, jim, jim, JIM!" in a frantic crescendo. 

Here are a few necessities for camping in my family:
1.  Desert juice: my dad's own recipe for optimal outdoors hydration.  It's basically super dilute frozen oj with some mashed up bananas, if you're lucky.  I hate bananas.
2.  Shovel:  For digging the toilet.  Yeah, it was that kind of camping.  I'm a real expert at not peeing on my legs whilst squatting.  Also the shovel handle doubles as a toilet paper holder.  If Dad happened to remember to pack some. 
3.  Tent:  This was an old canvas army tent that took an engineering degree (or the patience of a giant tortoise) to erect successfully.
4.  Pocket knife:  For whittling our cooking sticks.  We all made our own.  No fancy premade marshmallow sticks for us.
5.  Kerosene lantern:  Any extra fire hazard is a fantastic idea.
Some memorable experiences include: fashioning caveman style clothes out of some curtains we found in an abandoned camper trailer.  Collecting cans on our hikes to turn in for cash later.  Skinny dipping in what was basically a giant mud puddle.  Applying my sister's sunscreen in polka dots because I was mad at her.  And Learning the hard way what poison ivy and stinging nettle look like.
A camping trip was not complete unless we caught a small animal.  Usually a snake.  We subsisted on a diet of hot dogs and marshmallows.  My dad would tell us bear stories from when he was a kid (I'm not sure if this is related, but I have sincere arcotophobia.  I have nightmares about bears, and when I'm out riding my bike in Durango I'm always worried one will come out of the woods and chase me down)

 We always had to check for ticks.  We never found any.


 



But there is a lot of good stuff I learned while camping too. 
1. Leave it as clean as you found it, or cleaner.  This was our cardinal camping rule.
2. I know by sight lots of edible plants.  Thanks dad, that has come in handy so often.  I'm going to be the girl version of Darryl when the zombie apocalypse hits.
3.  I can start a fire with batteries, flint and steel and a magnifying glass.  Another skill I have never used once. 
4.  You can get $155/ton of aluminum cans.
5.  An actual ton is A LOT of aluminum cans.
6.  The Wooly Lamb's Ear plant is supposedly a cure for poison ivy, also it is edible, so if you're starving and just got tangled up in poison ivy and you happen upon some wooly lamb's ear, it's your lucky day.
7.  Always apply sunscreen to your behind.
8.  Wild animals are NOT as afraid of me as I am of them.
9.  Always check your sleeping bag.  There's a good bet your brother put that garter snake he caught in yours.
My family still enjoys camping.  We met up a few weeks ago to camp.  It was great to watch my dad try to teach my kids the Rule of the Mountain and get them to eat lamb's ear.  My sister brought her cat. 

Why not?

Exhibit G: Our Cars

The vehicles my family owns are accessories to their weirdness.

The first car I can remember is our old red Chevy Nova.  It had plaid upholstery.  Like this:


Me in my carpet coat.

Yes, that is a sibling's behind in the photo.  They are climbing onto "the shelf".  The most coveted spot in the car for travel. Perhaps not the safest.  Luckily we appear to have travelled with a foam mattress for extra padding.

What I remember most clearly about this car was that if you lifted up the mat behind the drivers seat, the floor had rusted through, leaving a baseball sized hole.  It scared me a little, but I loved lifting the edge and watching the road zipping by inches away.

Around this time we also had a truck.  Seen in the back ground here (along with what looks like a random axle elegantly decorating our front yard).  I don't remember wearing those awesome overalls.

What I do remember is the hours spent sitting in the curve of it's enormous steering wheel and rocking back and forth.  Often when I get in a car now, I eye it's steering wheel and think "I wonder.."

I am almost tempted until I imagine explaining to the firemen why they need to use their jaws of life to extricate a thirty something year old from her steering column.   My other memory of this truck is the tons (literally) of cow manure we shoveled from the back of it onto my mother's vegetable garden over the years. 

When I lived in this house, my grandmother lived with us.  She drove a Chrysler Caprice Classic.  I remember this because of the way it was beautifully written across the maroon dashboard.  I wanted to write like that some day.  Here she is getting into it behind our pyramid.

The notable thing about this car is it was the one that sat unused and unusable in our yard for many years, earning us full redneck status.

My dad's motorcycle.  This was the best thing ever.  Sometimes when my dad got home from work he would put one of us on the front.  Place his enormous helmet, which functioned more like a paperweight than a safety feature for us, on our head and zip off around the vacant lot across the street.  I don't remember my mother ever riding, but apparently she dared to sit on it once.

The Datsun.  Ah, the Datsun. 



 How to travel in comfort and style:

1. Throw a mattress in the back of your Datsun pickup.

2.  Use old cardboard boxes for suitcases.

3.  Drive 1500 miles with your five children in back. 

Guaranteed to be a vacation they will never forget. 

Other vehicles of note:

-Pooker's first car.  I don't have a picture of this.  I wish I did, because it was unbelievable.  It was some kind of hatchback.  It had been primed, but not painted, so most of it was a matte gray.  Except one door, that had been purchased to replace the former one, it was bright red.  And someone had spray painted 10 life-sized stencils of President Lincoln's profile from the penny in random spots all over it.  This was the car he drove me to and from junior high in.  The embarrassment lives with me to this day.

-Our club wagon van.  I don't remember driving in this even one time.  It sat in our driveway and functioned as a playhouse.  I don't think it ever worked.  Despite Sneet's mechanic skills.  My mom assures me that it functioned for one trip to Yellowstone.  It also had a rusted out hole in the floor, which we covered with cardboard so no one would get hurt on the way.  The cardboard caught on fire because it was too close to the manifold.  After some brief panic, we just ended up throwing the cardboard out the window. 

 



-The Ford Crown Victoria Wagon.

This car served us well for many years.  Usually transporting more people than it was designed for.  My notable memories of it are driving with my best friend's family and my dad put a sign on the window that said "11 kids...not all mine" because so many people were trying to count.  And the time Beadle fell out the not fully fastened back door and almost got run over.   

-Nana's current vehicle.  A smart car.

 





-My parent's overwhelming devotion to their current Saturn.  Which they claim, through some tinkering, gets 40 mpg. 

But truly, what can you expect when you started married life with this?

A sweet Scout 80.

And some killer sunglasses. 

You can only go downhill from there.



Character Witness: Regarding My Mother: The World's Most Excessive Worrier

Now, please don't imagine that this will be my only post about Slugweirta.  This is simply one of the many facets of her weirdness.  My mother is a worst-case-scenario expert.  She can outfret anyone.  On the planet.  Here are a few examples of what I mean.
When I was eight, shortly after the gum incident, I began to notice that I had two weird raisin-sized bumps on my chest.  I mentioned these to my mom.  She gave me a cursory visual exam and deduced that it was likely a very rare case of bilateral juvenile breast cancer.  She made me an appointment with the pediatrician post haste.  I was understandably terrified.  He got us in as soon as possible.  On the day of the appointment, I remember sitting on the bed in the doctor's office while my mom explained the problem to the nurse.  I have to applaud her professionalism because she didn't laugh even one time.  Although she was a little at a loss for what to do.  The pediatrician doesn't typically do breast exams.  So, after having me remove my shirt, they wrapped my chest in paper towels to maintain my decency.  The doctor, who also happened to be my neighbor, determined that I was starting what appeared to be perfectly normal, if a little premature puberty.  Thanks, Mom.  First breast exam at eight years old.  My adolescence was off to a fantastic start.
Once, can it be this only happened once?  Probably not.  Multiple times when Pooker was late coming home from work, Slugweirta called the police to see if he had been in a fatal car accident.  When no accidents were reported she had them issue an APB.  Usually they don't do this when the person is eighteen and has only been missing for an hour.  BUT, she convinced them that he was disabled (he had a mild speech delay) and might never be found if they didn't look for him now.  He might never make an unplanned grocery stop again.  This assumption that anyone who's late is probably dead continues to this day.  Which is a huge problem with my perpetually late family.  If Nana doesn't call her on her way home from work, she will drive the route from her work to her house looking for car wrecks.  I would think that much anxiety could kill a person.
Beadle once asked Slugweirta what first attracted her to my dad.  Her response was she figured if anyone was likely to survive the next ice age, it was him.  Always planning ahead.  For global climactic change.

Ice Age Survivability: 87%

My mother, who was not alive during the Great Depression, is always assuming another one is around the corner.  She is very careful to have no debt.  An admirable trait.  She plants a vegetable garden big enough to feed an army.  She keeps everything.  In fact, she is constantly living as if it is already the 2nd Great Depression.   Her dream is to be entirely self sufficient.  Which is why they bought the home they did.  It has it's own well.  A strong selling point for everyone.  Right?
Slugweirta is a psychologist.  So she is constantly looking for any sign that we might be developing a mental illness.  I think that much stress might give me one.
When I told my mom I was expecting my first child she said, "oh no!"  I'd like to think this was because she had really difficult pregnancies and was worried about the next uncomfortable nine months for me.  But the truth is she was really thinking, "oh no! one more person who might spontaneously combust if I don't worry about them constantly."
I appreciate the concern.  Really I do.  My wish for Mother's Day is that she will spend the entire day worry-free.  Happy Mother's Day, Slugweirta.

My Brothers

I have one older brother and three younger ones.  For some reason we always called the younger ones the little boys, maybe because they were close together, maybe because they got in trouble together a lot, maybe because sometimes there were four of them.  I had a foster brother around their age for a while too.  He is Gummy's oldest son and Muscle Whip's half brother, Slim.  He lived with us when he was four to about six and again as a teenager.  The little boy's favorite activity that I remember is dumping over the fish tanks.  Requiring my mother to have to rescue about thirty little fweebs before they suffocated and to steam clean the fish water out of our carpet.  They did this multiple times.  When Slim lived with us, two of my brothers slept in closets.  One was a big playroom closet off the family room, lined with shelves.  It had enough room for a mattress on the floor and a turtle cage.  The other was a little cubby under the stairs.  I'm pretty sure that's where J.K. Rowling got the idea for Harry's living quarters at the Dursley's.  The other three shared the blue room.  It might entertain you to know that while this was the boys' living arrangement, Beadle and I shared the brown room and Nana had her own.  Seems fair.  But they didn't complain.  One of my brothers once got up in the middle of the night and sleep peed into the closet under the stairs.  Much to the chagrin of it's resident.
Ok. 
I have a brother with quite possibly the largest nose I have ever seen.

I have a brother who has no sense of sarcasm (a grievous fault in our family)
I have a brother who likes puns.  (He thinks they're punny, he would say)
I have a brother who is dyslexic.  This is where numbers and letters appear reversed to you.   Imagine learning to read that way.
I have two ginger brothers.
I have a brother who makes candles. 
I have a brother who can only be contacted through his girlfriend.
I have a brother who is a starving artist.  Really, he will make you a cheesecake for $. 
I have a brother who is in the Navy. 
I have a brother who is very easily embarrassed.  He turns as red as his hair.
I have a brother who frequents the gym.
I have a brother who is extremely shy.  Weirdly enough this is not the one who is easily embarrassed. 
I have a brother who goes skiing.
I have a brother who likes kim chee.
I have a brother who role plays more than he lives in real life.
I have a brother who likes medieval things. 
I have a brotha from anotha motha.
I have a brother who has watched every episode of Star Trek. 
I have a brother who is into Anime.
I have a brother who sleeps in a coffin-sized cubby that was just vacated by another dude 10 minutes before.  Yes, he's one of the ones who used to sleep in a closet.
I have a brother who can't name a single professional basketball player.
I have a brother who still reads Archie comics.
I have a brother who was called a lot of racial slurs in middle school.  Usually the wrong ones. 
I have a brother who is a Marine. 
I have a brother with ADD.
I have brother who could possibly bench press my car.
I have a brother who had to wear head gear.
I have a brother who got sent home from school for wearing a wizard cloak with a hood.
I have a brother who went bald at 22.  Instead of shaving it clean he carefully cultivates his remaining fringe to a voluminous halo.  As if extra volume here makes up for the complete lack of it anywhere else. 

Sorry, anonymous brother.  Don't murder me.
I have a brother who has never watched football.
I have a brother who will drop whatever he's doing to help out a little old lady (my grandma).
I have a brother who speaks Japanese, fluently.  Not the one who likes Anime.
I have a brother who can't tell you who Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning, David Beckham, Serena Williams, or LeBron James are.
But he can tell you who Samwise Gamgee, Ron Weasley, Padme Amidala, Geordi LaForge, Lee Adama, and Col. Samantha Carter are.
I have a brother who when he sees you says "Greetings" instead of "Hello".
I have a brony.
My brothers are some of the most selfless, kindest guys I know.  They would bend over backwards to help me out even after I've made fun of them so terribly.

Only picture with all the "little boys" and the older one too.