Because I never do that. Ok, well not that often. Shut up.
I realized the other day that I am way behind in these stories I have talked about (sometimes with myself) like Girl X's adoption and that whole process and the preceding drama and I think I promised someone a picture of that awful rubber band tie I bought Mr X (stop laughing) and the other bagillion ideas I had that I can't remember right now.
I've thought about actually writing these ideas down but then I start thinking about all those little scraps of paper with things like 'purple cow' and 'shoe meet brick' and 'that funny thing the goose did to my brother' and Mr X finding them and wondering if it's some kind of code and then I have to explain it to him which leads me to the story of my old crazy neighbor (she kept pickled eggs under her kitchen sink to ward off the 'hoogie boogies' and that's a whole 'nother story) and that time she freaked out because someone had dumped a bunch of those Always pads tab thingies in her yard that had a spade on it and said 'remember your symbol' and she thought that it meant some spade gang was out there warning her they were going to kill her with a deck of cards and that's just more than he really wants to know and wow! That is a run on sentence. Are you still with me? Did you pass out trying to read all that in one breath? I'm sorry. See? I told you I was going to get rambly and when I get rambly I tend to run on. And on. And I can't remember now what I was going to finally remember to talk about. I need to go back a minute.
Ok, right. John Wayne. That's what I was going to remember to talk about. I'm about to post these pictures that will appear up at the top. I have yet to figure out how to move them down here where I want them without losing everything I just wrote and we do NOT want to go there again. Oh no. We do not want that.
That second one is the awful felt (FELT!) painting Mr X bought off of some police auction site. I've comforted myself with the thought that the artist (The hell? What made this guy wake up one day and say 'hmmm, I think I'll paint on material normally reserved for puppets!') is sitting behind bars for making bad art. I've had it hidden in a closet with poor John Wayne facing the wall. I couldn't take his pleading any more! "Come on pilgrim, just set me on fire. This ain't art, this is crime, pilgrim" Which tells me I have to stop watching John Wayne movies with Mr X.
So, Girl X got him that first one for Christmas but it's all in charcoal and it looks so much better and it's NOT ON FELT!! So we should be able to get rid of the felt (barf!) one right? No. Mr X wants to pass it on to Baby X someday because he is convinced it will be worth something. Unless felt suddenly becomes scarce and unmake-able and therefore worth more than gold, I predict Baby X will someday bury it in the backyard with that bedazzled bird.
And this all leads me to the reason my grandmother told a bunch of people (after swearing them to secrecy and telling them they were the only ones she was telling) that we were related to John Wayne.
See, my Grandmother was crazy. It's why she was so much fun. I've never felt the need to ride roller coasters because I've been in a car with her. Do you know what it's like to go the wrong way on an exit ramp and then drive 2 miles the wrong way on the freeway before having 2 state patrol officers stop you and turn you around?
I do.
And it was funny because she kept getting mad at everyone else for driving the wrong way and we kept telling her that she was going the wrong way but she didn't believe us.
She used to get lost all the time. She'd be driving down the road and say "I don't think I'm supposed to go down that way. I'll be lost." and then she'd turn that way and we'd be hopelessly lost. But without trips like that, we'd never have found that one Chinese restaurant that gave us steamed rice topped with gumdrops. No, we didn't ask for the gumdrops. That's just how they served it.
Or the time she flashed a bag boy at our local grocery store after asking him if he'd ever seen a woman with one boob. She had two, but they were attached to each other. She was a lot of fun at parties. She never drank more than a teaspoon of champagne. That was her thing. "I'll just have a teaspoon of champagne."
And her house! She had a couch. It disappeared 12 years ago under some boxes that apparently mated and then never moved out. She was a packrat. A packrat that multiplied daily. Her house is a scavenger hunt.
But that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about this thing about us being related to John Wayne and let me just preface this by saying, we are not. As sad as that makes Mr X, we are most definitely not related.
My grandfather's uncle had a child out of wedlock. In fact, I have the court papers that show he paid a grand total of $245 in child support in 1930-something. My grandmother was certain that the mother's maiden name was Wayne (it wasn't) and since John Wayne's real last name was the same as hers, they must be related. She was sure that John Wayne was my grandfather's cousin. My grandfather just shook his head and sighed.
And um, I'm not really sure why I had to go through all that other stuff to tell you this one little thing but I hope that it makes up for taking so darn long! And I will try to remember to post the picture of the rubber band tie and so on.
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