This weekend Jessie and I were organizing our garage and purging a lot of stuff.  When we moved out here, we got rid of a lot of stuff, but we also kept a lot of stuff…..stuff that is now superfluous now that we have Lukas.  As I was going through boxes and throwing things away, I came across two very sweet things.  One of these things was a letter that Helen sent me when she was at basic training in Ft. Leonardwood and another was a poem that Aschlie wrote for me when we were in high school.  This poem is basically an outsider’s look in to what our friendship is and always has been. 

                                                    You and I

                                                 By Aschlie Lake

We went to the beach

Just you and I,

We sat by the ocean

And watched the seagulls go by.

We talked about nothing

Just you and I,

Until one of those d*** birds

Took a s*** in my eye.

We started throwing rocks at it

Just you and I,

We finally hit the bird

And it fell from the sky.

We went over to kick it

Just you and I,

Then we started stepping on it

Saying, “Die, bird, die!”

We started to walk away

Just you and I,

We heard a noise behind us

and saw the bird fly.

We ran for cover

Just you and I,

for that bird called other birds

and bird s*** fell from the sky.

We were almost to shelter

Just you and I,

But the birds finally s*** on us

and we started to cry.

As we got in the house

Just you and I,

I yelled from the inside

“Why, bird, oh Why?”

As we got cleaned up

Just you and I,

We vowed never to kick a bird

if one s***s in my eye.

I copied this exactly, in case you were confused by the censoring of the cursing.  Aschlie used to be adverse to cursing, but alas, she was tainted by outside forces and has since told me to fuck off pretty much every time we talk….but in a loving way.  I want to cry every time I read that poem.  It’s hilarious, yes, but oh it reminds me of some really great times Aschlie and I had our Junior and Senior years of high school.  Driving around in her car after school listening to the Bloodhound Gang and ICP, scaring children getting out from school, playing with plastic food…just having innocent fun.  I know that I have been blessed with really good friends and my anal retentive tendencies to not throw things away has rewarded me with these two sweet things.

I was sad (but not shocked) when I heard about the passing of Ed MacMahon.  I was very sad when I heard of the passing of Farrah Fawcett.  I cried when I heard of the passing of Michael Jackson.  Allow me to divulge.

As someone who is too young to remember Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show (and the whole HEEEEEEEEERE’S JOHNNY! call) I will remember Ed MacMahon holding a gigantic cardboard check from Publisher’s Clearing House.  And him dicking with famous people with Dick Clark.  Bye-bye, Ed.  Rest easy.

When I was growing up, it became apparent to me at an early age that my mom kinda idolized Farrah Fawcett.  In my mother’s teenage years, she considered Farrah Fawcett to be the epitome of female beauty and health and strove to be like her.  I’ve heard my mom say the words “The Farrah Fawcett hairdo is making a comeback!” so many times.  And who hasn’t seen that famous poster of her in that red one piece smiling her gigantic white smile and twiddling with her famous hair?  So, yeah, it affected me a little bit to see the passing of my mom’s one-time role model…especially since she died a painful and horrible death.  Bye-bye, Farrah.  Rest easy and take a break from the pain. 

When I was a little girl, I had a HUGE crush on Michael Jackson.  This was before he went a little happy on the plastic surgery and got all scary looking.  I actually had a book that had a lot of pictures of him and I used to sit and look at that book and think that I loved him.  I remember when he was a Pepsi spokesperson.  I remember when he really was the biggest pop star in the world and people weren’t making fun of him.  I remember when he was just great.  I think that these past decade or so we were given a lot of reasons to make fun of or ridicule Jacko, but now that his life is over I am going to choose to remember him as the King of Pop.  His record Thriller is still a relevant album to this day.  It will go down in history as an album that changed the way artists worked.  His dancing was out of control and he was just so talented.  When he was little and was in the Jackson 5, even then he stood out from his towering older brothers.  It really is a shame that his personal life and his weirdness came to overshadow his talent.  I’m going to remember Jacko as a hit making entertainer who once spent a million dollars on a music video back in a time when a million dollars was an insane amount of money even for wealthy people.  I’ll remember him as the moonwalking guy who wore one sequined glove and wore a crazy red leather jacket and who gave Weird Al some of his best parodies.  Bye-bye, Michael.  Thanks for Thriller.

This is sort of a conituation of the last post.  Lukas is talking so much now.  It seems that since I last posted it’s like a switch was turned on and he has turned into a complete jabber jaw.  What’s really funny is when he says things in context and it’s exactly what Jessie or I would say.  This happened on Thursday morning and was so funny that I thought it would be a crime to not share it.

As you know, Lukas is now sleeping in a toddler bed instead of a crib.  I haven’t had a single bit of trouble with him getting out of his bed when he is supposed to be sleeping.  He has fallen out of it twice and it scared the crap out of him, but usually he stays in his bed and chews the wood (so the plan to switch the bed to keep him from eating it didn’t work).  On Thursday morning, I woke up and I heard through the baby monitor this really strange noise coming from Lukas’ room.  I got up and made the trek down the hallway to the nursery.  I had a little trouble opening the door, but when I finally got it open, I was greeted with a disaster area.  Books were everywhere, diapers were everywhere, stuffed animals were everywhere, a small jar of Vaseline had been opened and was smeared all over everything, and it was basically mayhem.  I had about 1 second to gather this all in before my eyes focused in on my baby boy sitting atop a pile of books chewing on one of his shoes.  He slowly looked back at me, got a guilty look on his face and said, “OH GOH!”

If I were going to get upset over this mess, that stopped as soon as he spoke and I immediately fell to the floor in laughter.  I think that he may have fallen out of bed again, only this time it didn’t scare him and he decided to entertain himself and let Momma sleep in a bit.  He hasn’t gotten out of his bed on his own since.  Oh, my friends, having kids is so much fun, and the fun is much more prevalent in life than the sacrifices made for them or the work put into them or the frustration caused by them.  I don’t know how I had anything to laugh at before Lukas.