Randomly Thinking: The Scarewoman, mouthy first-graders, and creepy Christmas music

Welcome to my Randomly Thinking post where I share random thoughts from my week or the past two weeks. Read at your own risk.

****

I’m still posting consecutive days on the blog, for now, mainly using posts I already had almost fully written or ideas I’d had for posts for a while. As of yesterday, I had posted 13 days in a row. I have no why idea I’ve decided this is my summer challenge but I want to see how many days in a row I can post, simply for the fun of it. I am guessing I will hit a certain number and do one of three things: decide to stop posting because it’s weird (and possibly annoying to people who follow me to keep receiving notifications of my posts), forget to post, or simply run out of ideas. We will see which comes first.

***

My email host has apparently stopped filtering messages into my spam because at least once a week for the past month or so I receive emails from colleges and other places directed to someone named Ismael. Like, Call me Ismael, which is actually Ishmael and I hear was a horrible movie.

Anyhow, I hope Ismael gets a good college education, better virus protection for his computer, and a free trip to Europe, but his emails need to stop coming to me.

***

Sunday my dad sent Dorothy the Scarewoman home with us. He’d been storing her in a shed on his property. That sounds creepier than it’s supposed to.

This is Dorothy:

  Dorothy was something my husband was given after a community fundraiser about 17 years ago. She was dressed to look like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. I don’t know why she was part of this fundraiser or why she was given to him or why she was shoved in our garage and not thrown out.

I’m also trying to figure out why she was loaded up when we moved last year. She’s creepy and weird and we don’t have a purpose for her, or well, we didn’t until Dad suggested we put her in our garden to frighten the deer away, even though we do have a fence installed around it.

I shoved her in our van and brought our home, grateful the neighbors were outside doing yard work so I could warn them that there was a “scarewoman” vs a scarecrow in our garden. I hated the idea they might walk out their back door and have a near heart attack, thinking some woman was standing in our garden.

For the first day, it was me who was frightened, though, jumping every time I looked out the kitchen window and saw her there.

My son hates her with a passion and has asked if he might ax her to pieces soon. He’s really not as violent as he sounds.

I haven’t decided officially yet, but I may let him do it.

***

My neighbors have built a small enclosure for their new Shih Tzu puppies and invited my daughter and our dog Zooma over to play with them the same night we warned them about Scary Dorothy. Their puppies haven’t been fixed yet so the one was trying to get to know Zooma a little too well, to put it nicely. I didn’t say anything about it to Little Miss, even when the neighbors scolded her puppies. Later that night, though, Little Miss said to me, “They really need to get their dog spayed.”

She’s watched too many shows about animals, especially that goat show where they openly talk about breeding goats. I did let her know the term is “fixed” for male dogs so I’m hoping she doesn’t march up to our neighbors soon and ask, “Has Louie been fixed yet?”

***

Little Miss and I had a couple of tough days this week. She’s a very stubborn child and she knows it but swears it’s not her fault. I had to inform her a few times this week that she needed to watch her attitude.

That attitude especially comes out when I ask for her to give me my phone back while she’s playing Minecraft on it. So, one day this week I took the phone away and told her she needed to start watching herself and stop answering me with such an attitude. She has been responding with, “Just go make me a sandwich” when I ask her for my phone, which isn’t something we say, so I’m not sure where she’s getting it.

She cried a while, telling me I had hurt her heart by yelling at her, refusing to admit she had been very snotty with me.

Finally, she cracked and pulled a line out of my arsenal, “I don’t even know what tone I’m using sometimes. It comes out sharp, but I don’t mean it too.” (I say this sometimes when the kids think I’m mad but I’m not). “I mean I just say something and something in my brain flips this switch and attitude comes out.”

I suggested she work harder to flip the switch back before she opened her mouth. We hugged it out, had some lunch, (she was on a hunger strike for three hours until I apologized to her for scolding her for giving me attitude, which I was not about to do because I am also stubborn.), moved on, and so far she’s doing much better with her “attitude issues.” I feel lucky these little battle of the wills with her are a rare thing.

***

Little Miss is in a lot of my stories this week, but, well, she’s a character. We had to go to a doctor’s appointment yesterday for my son (nothing major) and she noticed a spider crawling in a clear holder for papers. She pointed it out, concerned for its safety. She’s been on a love affair with bugs again, randomly picking them up outside and saying, “Well, this is a neat-looking bug. I wonder what it is.”

As for the spider at the doctor’s office, she let the doctor know that she never touches spiders. “I’m never sure which one could be a venomous species.”

She’s 6, going on 16, I swear.

***

I have dry skin issues. My back can itch the worst sometimes. Our bathroom has a stucco wall and I find myself scratching my back on the corner of the wall that sticks out next to the tub. It feels amazing, but, yes, it is weird. I feel like a bear in the woods scratching its back on a tree.

***

In closing, I’d like to leave you with this creepy Christmas song, because who doesn’t need a creepy Christmas song to perk up your day?

Those are my random thoughts for the week. What are yours?