Crayons

This post all started when I was following a link my friend Jim had posted on Twitter. I'm never one to just read what's put in front of me--I go off following other links in the post. Which led me here. And that got me to thinking about our family and restaurant crayons.

Calli is 13, almost 14--that's in years, not months. Soon we will no longer be offered crayons at the restaurants. Which is sad. Because our family is demented and always writes or draws bizarre things with our crayons.

One time we tried to remember the seven deadly sins--I can't even remember why. We don't go to church. The girls attend public schools. Hmmm, my Becky's class might have been discussing the bible in her English class. But with our trusty crayons we came up with an acronym to remember them all: SPAGGLE. (Sloth, pride, anger, gluttony, greed, lust, and envy.) Now isn't that a cool word, SPAGGLE? Becky wrote all this out on her placemat. By the end of our discussion I was crying because I was laughing so hard. I almost peed my pants. (There's a little TMI for ya!) For quite some time after that we would leave our poor waitperson placemats with SPAGGLE emblazoned on it. Beware the deadly sins! And I would go into gales of laughter every time. In a restaurant. I'm sure those at surrounding tables just loved us.

Or what about the period of time when Rick decided to recycle our crayons? This really was a neat idea. Why should all those barely-used crayons go to waste. So he would gather them up and bring them home and toss them in a box. We gathered hundreds of crayons--usually in just 4 colors. I can't even remember what we did with them. I think they went to a school or the church. (Yeah, just last paragraph I claimed we didn't go to church. We weren't at the time of SPAGGLE and we don't now. But for a few years we did go to one church...) This saving-of-the-crayons lasted for a while, but eventually fell by the wayside.

Then there was the time that we took a roadtrip somewhere. We were eating at a lot of restaurants. And often at the same chain. (Ironically at the same chain where we would later give birth to SPAGGLE!) And every time we ate at one of those restaurants, they would be out of crayons. It was like a conspiracy. My husband decides to complain about the lack of crayons--while complaining about something really worth it, like lousy service or bad food. I forget now how he complained. Might have been through their website. Or he might have written a column on it for the newspaper. It's been too long. But the really funny part is that the restaurant sent him a letter apologizing for the lack of crayons. And then gave him a big old honking box of Crayolas--like the 64 or 96 count box. Suck ups.

Calli likes to draw things for us. But she often can't think of what to draw. I will inevitably suggest "pigs" to her. So we have left a trail of pigs at many restaurants.

And we play endless games of tic-tac-toe.

Sigh. I'm going to miss getting those crayons when Calli just looks too old to qualify for those kid's menus. We will just have to rely on Rick's trusty pen that he always carries in his pocket to write out things like SPAGGLE on our placemats. But it just won't be the same!

Rebeccas

Okay, I just want to go on the record here. Because Rick gets snarky about this.

When we were picking names for our first child, Rick was very adamant that if the baby was a girl, he wanted to name her Becky--well Rebecca. He has always liked that name. Well, my experience with people named Becky were slim. And what we name our kids is always based on who we know with that same name.

I knew a Becky in high school. She was a year or two ahead of me. She wasn't anyone who I would have picked to hang with. I wasn't crazy about her personality. But she was okay.

And while I was pregnant with my Becky-to-be, I was working at Northern Lights Library. And so was Rebecca Thomas. I really liked Becki (I think that's how she spelled it then...) Becki was (well, is really for all this stuff) sweet and kind and patient. She really knew the library. She was a good teacher. She was funny and a good listener. And I really liked her. So I now had all these great things to associate with the name Rebecca.

And at one point, way back before I ever even knew Rick, Rick and Becki went on a date or two. No hard feelings between them, it just didn't gel.

Okay, so who isn't going to tease the both of them when Rick tells me that he wants to name our baby girl Rebecca? That's like putting out a porterhouse steak on a plate and telling a dog--"don't touch!" I don't think so!

So being the Snarky Queen that I am, I tease them both to this day that my Rebecca is named after Becki Thomas. Okay, maybe she isn't named that because Rick and Becki dated one or two times. But for me, when I think of my Rebecca and who I would like her to be like, I think of the wonderful woman I worked with at Northern Lights. I certainly didn't date her. But if my Becky turns out half as kind and wonderful as Becki Thomas, then I really like thinking that my Becky is kind of named for Becki.

So it's on the record now. No, maybe Becky isn't named after Becki Thomas because of Rick's dating history. But I agreed to name our first girl Rebecca because I knew a Becki that gave a lot of class to that name. And that's what makes Becky, Becki's namesake.

So :-P~~~~ to Rick and Becki for whining when I say Becky is named for Becki!

Thing 24: 10 Random Things About Me

So here's my bonus post. I'm going with Helene Blowers's suggestion and posting 10 random things about me. But I'm doing it Dave Letterman style...

10. I first started dating my husband back when I was 17. We have been together 27 years. I love saying "I told you so!" to all those people who thought it would never last because I was so young.

9. My daughter Calli is named after a character in the book "Remembrance" by Jude Deveraux. Rick and I debated for a long time about names for the baby when I was pregnant with Calli. (We were still trying to come up with a boy's name the day I went into the hospital. Good thing we had a girl.) I happened to read this book when I was in the last few months of my pregnancy and really like the name Callasandra. I was very surprised that Rick gave it a thumbs up when I told him about it. The rest is history.

8. I like to tease Rick that our other daughter, Rebecca, is named after Rebecca Thomas. Rick and Rebecca dated way before I ever met either one. I worked with Rebecca at Northern Lights Library and Popular Libary. Rebecca is one classy lady and it's an honor to think of Becky as her namesake.

7. I say all kinds of goofy things like "cool beans" (got that from Rebecca Thomas), "party on", "gnarly", and about a billion other strange things. I try to refrain from saying "no problem", but I don't always succeed.

6. I can't seem to call people by just their name. Oh no. I feel compelled to come up with nicknames for people. Or I somehow butcher their real name. Witness the following: Wiley Woman, Twit, John Man, Danman, (hmmm--seems I must accentuate one's gender), Jean Girl, Slappy, Sparky, Scrunchie, Butti, and of course, Sucky Butt. That last one has to do with horse racing and Kim Griffith gets it.

5. I read vampire and fairy porn. This would be authors like Laurell K. Hamilton and J.R. Ward. I read to escape. You don't get much farther from my current life than that!

4. I was on the drill team when I was a sophomore in high school. Those were in my thinner days. We kicked butt though and won state while I was on it.

3. I have an affinity for all things Stitchy. Becky made me phrase it just that way. I love Stitch from Lilo & Stitch. He wants to be good--but his badness level just keeps rising! And that is so me. Calli gave me a giant stuffed Stitch for Christmas. He is the size of a small labrador. He's so soft and cuddly--I love him!



2. I love to weave. I learned when I volunteered at COSI. Although I have 2 table looms, they are not in working order. Some day I would love to own a huge floor loom and a spinning wheel. I would weave things. It would be cool. I don't know what I would do with all these things, but there's nothing like sitting at a loom and beating the hell out of the weaving as you go. Very therapeutic.

1. I was going to be a drug and alcoholism counselor (as in I would help recovering alcoholics--not help them get the drugs/alcohol!) Then I discovered in my senior year of college that I was uncomfortable around people who abused substances and I just wanted to smack them. So I stayed with the library. No regrets. But I wonder where I would be now if someone had told me that I could have gone into the prevention side of substance abuse rather than the rehabilitation side....

So there you have it. 10 random things about me. Some of you knew some of these. Probably very few knew them all. And I'm sure I could come up with more. Like I used to collect cows--not real cows--figurines and pictures and stuff! And then there's....