Mother Goose: Innocent Nursery Rhyme Author, or Bankrupt Philanthropist?

My family is weird.  Ya know how Santa comes on Christmas?  Well, in my family, Mother Goose comes on New Year's Eve and gives presents to children.  I'm not sure if they have to be good or not.  I'm also not sure about a bunch of other things.  Like, Why doesn't Mother Goose come to everyone?  Why New Year's Eve?  How does she get in the house?  Is she actually a goose, or does she just call herself that?  And where do the famous nursery rhymes come in?

In order to find out, I asked a bunch of my family members about Mother Goose.  Turns out, they all had different theories.

One theory is that Mother Goose is just that--a goose.  10 feet tall, in fact.  She carries the gifts in her ginormous tail feathers.  And as she flies off into the night, she cries, "HONK!  Happy New Year!  HONK!"

Theory Number Two:  Mother Goose is not actually a goose. She's an old Grandma.  Very similar to Mrs. Clause.  She owns a goose.  She rides it, in fact.  Now, I've seen geese, and they're not big enough to ride.  So, either this goose is inherently magic, or it eats those little pills like on Alice in Wonderland, that make it grow or shrink depending on which one it eats.

Who knows.

And, apparently, she only comes to some houses.  Like, not even all our state, or our county, or even all of our city.  In fact, I'm pretty sure we're the only house she comes to.  Weird...

So, if you ever want to find out more about Santa Clause, read a book or watch a Christmas movie.  There are none of those about Mother Goose, so good luck.  Oh, and happy new year.  Or something at the end of February.  Honk.

Hot feet. The opposite of cold feet.

Marina's family is full of good people.  They think of her often.  Many times, they randomly send her money.  Other times, they randomly send her other things.  Like entire sets of dishes--plates, saucers, more different large plates, and bowls.  Oh, and teacups.  What dish set would be complete without 10 teacups?  None, I tell you!  Although Marina was graciously accepting of the two ton gift, a small problem arose.  And by small, I mean, you know.  Not so small.  We have a little less than 0 space in our kitchen cupboards (plus, come on Marina's family.  If we didn't already have dishes by now, we would have been eating like cavemen for months.  Cut us some slack.  We only did that for a few weeks).  Where were we going to put the mass amounts of dishes that had fallen into our possession?  Who knows?

But if you know us, you know that we are innovative human beings.  We found a small space on the shelf above our cupboards where we could stack all the dishes.  So we began.  The shelf, as I mentioned, is above the cupboards.  Aka, it's high.  And we are not at all high.  In height or drugs.  Which is unfortunate.  So in order to get the dishes up there, I climbed barefoot onto the counter and stood on the stove while Marina handed me the many dishes that were soon to call that shelf home.

All was going well, and we were very proud of ourselves for being so brilliant.  *Enter Tim, our FHE dad.*  We obviously don't go to FHE enough, or he would know to expect sights like this from us.  Let's be honest, standing on the stove is not the weirdest thing any of us has done.  Or the most dangerous.  One time Katie set a piece of paper on fire and then proceeded to carry it directly to the trashcan, which happened to be full of flammable materials.  Good thing the rest of us were able to put that fire out before it started, or we might have had an amazing blog post plus a less amazing law suit.  But I digress.

Tim began to stare up at us, with a mix of sheer amazement and concern.  He offered us a step stool in an effort to get me off the stove, but we were content and politely declined.  We continued using our amazing assembly line skills, until I heard Tim say, "Is the stove on?"

Without turning to face him, I looked at Marina and said, "Yeah, could you turn that off now?  It's getting kind of uncomfortable."  Tim's face was priceless.

I think I'm only good at thinking of one-liners when I'm being judgmental.  Keep that in mind.  If I'm ever able to think of a funny one-liner right when it's needed, you're being judged.  Or I'm just extraordinarily witty that day.  You decide.  Do what your heart tells you.

I Love My Mom.

Really, I do.  My momma is pretty great.  When she's not teaching high schoolers, baking pies, or feeding the homeless, she's giving me dating advice.

Through Facebook.

Mmm Digestives.

I have the largest room in my house.  Bigger than my parents.  This makes it a sort of dumping grounds.  No room in the store room?  Put it in Katie's room.  No room in the other store room?  Put it under Katie's bed.  No room in the under stairs storage closet thing?  Put it in Katie's closet.  I try to be a good sport about it (minus one very angry incident that I would not like to rehash.  Jessie and Sara can tell you all about how mad and bratty I was though.), because I have a room big enough to house a small African village.

For nearly two years now, I've had a package of caramel "Digestives" sitting on my chest of drawers.  My sister, Anna, left them there one Christmas, and I always assumed they were some weird baking ingredient or something, and presumed she would eventually reclaim them.  I should know better, I've had a ten pound block of melting chocolate in my closet for two and a half years now.  So these "digestives" have just been sitting.  Untouched.  For years.

Flash back to my self discoveries post in which I went on a reading binge.  One of those books was a British book in which she ate "digestives".  Context led me to realize "digestives" are also known in the US as... cookies!!  I still didn't put it together until this morning, when I was lying in bed really hungry and too tired to go all the way upstairs for food.  Those strange "digestives" on my dresser are potentially delicious, albeit very old, cookies!

They're all gone now.  I ripped the strange packaging open in seconds and smerfed those bad boys in like ten minutes because I was so hungry and they were so weird- but the kind of weird that has you eating more to see if they're still weird.  I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I clearly have not changed at all since last school year.  No patience, no sense of restraint.  It's cool, it generally gets me into some wonderfully strange predicaments.  Now I'm off to clean all the "digestive" crumbs off my bed.  And by clean, I mean I'll eat the big ones and brush the rest off to the carpet.

P.S.  I'm not sure why I keep quoting "digestives," except that I'm so baffled that anyone would call a cookie a "digestive."

P.P.S. To Anna- I'm not sorry.  I would do it again.

true story.

sara starts laughing. i creep on her, and immediately know i have to post this. if you don't know why, quit smerfing around and get to reading.

-katie

Why I Love My Family

This morning, as all mornings, I was not in my brightest mood. My family has learned that you DO NOT ever talk to me in the morning if you value your life. However, for some reason I was in a particularly bad mood this morning. Because Marina had lost her phone and needed me to call it for her, the first thing I did was cross to my phone. I had three texts on my phone from my sister, Ashley. This was rather puzzling to me. I sometimes will have a random text from her at one in the morning (she works graveyard shifts, we are not vampires), but never three. The first one is of no particular interest to you, but the other ones were rather hilarious.

Text #2:

If I died any time in the near future, I want my hair crimped at my funeral.

Not curled or straightened. Not that I am planning on kicking the bucket any time soon. lol

Text #3:

And you get all my books lol

As this was the very first thing I had seen that morning, it was a bit of a shock at first, but then I started cracking up (since I had just woke up, my voice was rather hoarse so my laugh was rather creepy sounding. Almost like a dying hag). I then proceed to show marina, sara, and katie. They laughed as well, but it was questioned why she would be thinking about things like that. I would've liked to answer that yes, she is weird, but I could see that as a totally normal conversation that we would be having...we've actually discussed similar topics before. We've even started calling dibs on items for when our parents kick the bucket. Smerfing may not be normal for most families but it is for mine. But if that's normal, I'm thrilled to be weird.