No Wishes For Normalcy In 2014

   Once again Christmas has come, and now Christmas is gone, and even though the tree is still up, and will be for a good while, I find myself having to adjust to some normalcy. No hidden gifts in the closet, no more teasing the kiddo about One Direction presents all wrapped under the tree, the ballet The Nutcracker has come and gone, and everything is over. Normalcy invades this apartment like a thick mist....
   Wait, who's apartment am I talking about here? Normalcy: no. I walked in the door from work this evening and my daughter starts shrieking at me that I have to save her because she's offended the penguins and they are gonna get her, and here I am standing in the doorway -- shell-shocked -- wondering what the hell has been going on in my house while I have been gone. Fair warning, don't offend the penguins.
   And so far as I am concerned, this is imagination at it's finest. My daughter doesn't mope around bored. She finds something to do, and keeps entertained, even if that entertainment involves vengeful penguins. This is me being glad that I get to come home to full scale penguin wars going on in my living room. Because otherwise, life would just be boring.
    I hope all of you that celebrate Christmas had a wonderful one. For those of you who celebrate other things, I hope, whatever those other celebrations were, that they were equally wonderful. I hope you don't come home to a calm and quiet apartment, but to your own version of penguin wars, whether they involve eleven (almost twelve) year old little girls or not. I hope your life is anything BUT normal, and I hope that you understand what you have been blessed with.
   As I go through this end of the old year, I hope that whatever comes new in 2014, I never wish for normalcy. Maybe you have a humdrum job, maybe your finances are a tangled mess and the money stress is giving you stomach issues, or maybe you are just plain sad, but if you come home to a little bit of off-the-wall, harmless silliness, and you are smart enough to laugh and find your sense of humor, I think you are going to be okay. At least, that is how I have decided to view things in this home. And we have made it alright so far. So this is me wishing that in the new year to come, you find your own vengeful penguins, and that whatever comes your way, you laugh and get through it as painlessly as possible.
     

No Normal People Here

   You never think that your kid is really listening to a word that you say. At least, I don't. Asking a kid to pick up can sometimes take five requests before they stomp off in anger exclaiming, "You make me do everything!" Yeah right. Get a job, pay the bills, and then come talk to me about who does everything. But I digress. Those moments with my daughter don't happen often, because she's a good kid, and also, she knows better. But still, you wonder how much they actually listen.
   Well, I found out, they listen, but what they listen to is the weirdest, most random shit that comes out of your mouth when you think nobody is listening, and they take that randomness, and they turn it into their motto, their goal, the ultimate truth.
   I discovered this one day in what I thought was going to be a normal (haha, normal) conversation with my daughter. "Momma, am I weird?" she asks.
   And my momma radar starts flashing and here I am wondering if she's getting picked on at school or something, so I reply, "No. You're not weird; you're normal."
   And you would have thought that I said she was ugly, smelled funny, and had a pizza face and crappy hair. I halfway expected her to breath fire at me, that's how mad she was.
   Stomping her feet at me, "I AM NOT NORMAL!! HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT! I'M WEIRD; I AM NOT NORMAL!"
   Calming her down took me forever, because while at one time she wasn't very good at throwing fits, a certain person (Grandma!!! Traitor!) took one look at her attempted fit and told her she needed to practice. So my daughter did, because she is a perfectionist (she didn't get that from me) and she wanted to throw excellent fits, so now she does. And while I was trying to calm the raging beast that was my daughter, I flashed back to certain conversations, ones where people were telling me that I needed to do this, or I needed to that, or that my way wasn't normal. And what was my response? "Normal people suck." And who is always right there with me, because I have helicopter mom tendencies? Yup, the munchkin; and she took the fact that her momma said that normal people suck as gospel. Normal? Don't you dare call her that.
   Don't worry, daughter. No one who puts their earphones up their nose, plugs their ears up and then opens up their mouth to see if the music will come out of their mouth is normal.
   Normal people? Not in this apartment.