Dawn Is Me

Enough of that whiney stuff.

I can see that the school year will proceed according to schedule, with no real surprises and no startling new behaviors on the part of my children.

Three days into the school and Ricky wins this year’s award for most airheaded child of the Baker clan, hands down. Clearly, he hasn’t changed much over the years.

This child of mine, who once left his shoes in a tree (he’s never going to live that down), called me from school on Thursday morning (before homeroom had started) to tell me that he’d left home, headed for school, without his school bag.

As I have said repeatedly, my children are lucky that their mother has a sense of humor. Dutiful me climbed into the car and ferried the backpack to the middle school.

Kimmie seems to have undergone a major transition of some sort. Her birthday was almost ten days ago and it seems that she didn’t just turn 15. Seems she really turned fifteen! if you see what I mean (which you probably don’t).

I smell a breakthrough of some sort coming. Stay tuned.

Headline-grabbing Gina, not content with simply heading off to embark on her junior year at Ithaca (which is fairly exciting all by itself), is currently preoccupied with trying to not catch the H1N1 virus, aka swine flu.

See? I told you she’s smart.

Evidently, it’s all over the place on Cornell’s campus (you know those Ivies, they don’t do anything halfway) but there are only around 20 cases across town at Ithaca. We’ll hope it stays that way.

Who needs television? If I really want excitement, all I have to do is watch my kids.

We took Gina back to Ithaca today. I don’t know why I should have found that trip so exhausting but I’m ready to crash.

I sometimes think I would be much happier if I lived by myself. I haven’t done that very many times in my life and, when I have, it has usually been associated with being in a school dormitory with a single.

I feel like I’m going to keel over, dead asleep, any second now but I still have to go do the dishes. It’s actually Kimmie’s turn to do them but she has refused (as usual), so somebody has to do them (also as usual).

See, if I lived by myself, I wouldn’t have to argue with anybody about doing the dishes.

I wouldn’t have to listen to people being gratuitously mean to each other.

I wouldn’t have to deal with people who are so plastic and fake that I can hardly stand to talk to them.

I wouldn’t have to be surrounded by a whole mess of people, not one of whom gives a rat’s ass about whether I’m happy or not, regardless of all the lip service about how important Mom is in the household.

They lie. I’m not important to them. They don’t even care that I’m here. Not one of them.

Which means I probably shouldn’t be here.

(Three months smoke free! Yay, me!)

So, I was thinking about Ricky recently and I was thinking that I should get a tee shirt made for him with that famous and appropriate quotation from Linus van Pelt:

So far, he does not appear to have been seriously traumatized, no matter what they do to him.

I’m reminded of a recent incident when Ricky was coming into the house only to be intercepted by Kimmie and Gina.

Kimmie eyed him closely. “You’re taller,” she said severely.

Gina: “He is?”

Kimmie: “Here, see, look.” [turns him to face her and plants his face between her boobs] “See, he’s getting too tall to lift and separate.”

Gina: “Let me see.” [turns him to face her and plants his face between her boobs] “Oh, hey, you’re right.”

Parenthetically, it has always been interesting to me how siblings have such a freewheeling tactile intimacy; they can touch each other in ways that nobody else on the planet can.

That said, if the boy doesn’t grow up to be a serial killer, it won’t be his sisters that society has to thank for it.

Occasionally, though, they decide to be nice to him.

Last weekend, Ricky had a baseball game. It was a good game for him; he actually hit the ball. In fact, he batted in two runs with that hit and, by the time he got home, he was beside himself with pride in his accomplishment.

Kimmie told me a couple of days later that she had been tempted to take the wind out of his sails with a vengeance. “I was gonna say something like, ‘yeah, enjoy it, you’ll never be able to do it again’ but I decided I didn’t feel like ruining his life that day,” is what she told me.

So she’s … what … saving ruining his life for some other time when she’s more in the mood for it?

Poor Ricky.

He may yet have a future as a serial killer ahead of him …