Musings by the Woobey Queen: Chasing Feathers in the Castle

I’ve been told that I’m in the wrong line of business. That I should go write and “be funny.” Isn't that a lovely idea? I turn on the funny tap and out comes something to amuse everyone. So, why is it that as soon as someone tells you to “be funny” the old brain turns fuzzy.

Personally I find that writing with humor is like fishing in an intermittent lake. One moment you’re having the time of your life listening to the water lapping gently along the shores, people are at the very least chuckling and the next your brain is a dry lake bed. Nothing but sand, a few left over shells and the bare bleached bones of some poor fish that got left behind. One is left desperately hoping for rain.

Then of course I have the added problem of being surrounded by four children of varying ages, smells and sensitivities. How can anyone feel the slightest bit funny when someone is always either crying and screaming because they’ve gotten their feelings hurt, they've been hit by their eldest sister or they stink? In the case of the almost two year old, stinks really bad.

Everyone should own an almost two year old. You can learn a lot from them. For example you quickly learn that very few things are unappealing enough to not put in your mouth. At least for a quick taste. Make up, Vaseline, sticks, ol fuzzy chocolate found in the carpet, strange berries off the trees, strange berries that fall under the rabbit's cage. Anything in fact, except real food.

I'm on my fourth almost two year old. I survived the first three, but being much more older and more fragile in sensibilities, I'm not so sure that this particular little boy is going to leave me intact, my mind went a bit gaga with the first two year old, now I'm down to just brief reality flashes. Those are teetering on the edge of complete and utter oblivion.

As mentioned earlier, the almost two year old eats anything he gets his grubby little paws on. Right now he’s seriously into chalk, crayons, candles and dog food. Quite a digestive nightmare for a mother to have to deal with. I don’t feel I’ve ever done anything bad enough to be forced to deal with the things I find in his diaper.

I can deal with most of it. The dog food gets digested alright and the chalk, well, while it’s strange to find white chalky lumps amongst the raisons and corn, it’s the bits of undigested crayons that really get to me. I mean, it’s just not natural to find bits of gold, blue and neon pink in there.

Fortunately he’s trainable. Sort of. Now when I see him chewing on something, I just yell “Give!” and hold out my hand for him to spit in. I’m getting pretty tired of having orange, brown and green bits of crayons being spat out, but I’ve come to the conclusion, that I’d much rather have him spit out the crayons than the headless bug that came out not too long ago.

One tends to lose their sense of humor after that.

Cheers!
Kathleen Petrides
The Woobey Queen
Loving Touch Therapeutic Toys and Pillows.

"Copyright 2003 by Kathleen Petrides.  Kathleen Petrides is the undisputed Queen of Woobey World, www.woobeyworld.com, where she frequently can be found chasing feathers in her castle or making her famous therapeutic Woobeys and Woobey Critters.