Mini Me

I got the chance to spend some quality time with Frick this weekend before she headed back to the Big Apple and you know what I discovered?

She is a total Mini Me.

I guess I always knew this to be true, but the older she gets the more I begin to see the similarities in our personalities. She is totally me.

She's been going through some stuff recently, and that stuff is stuff we all go through. Growing pains, heartache and the kind of stuff that challenges the foundation of who we are. And she's handled it much like I do-or would have. She even made some statements that I have made when faced with a similar situation. I was kind of surprised.

She's a mini me.

We talked...a lot. And we discussed things and I gave her advice as best I could. I think she gets it, but because we are so similar I feel her pain, quite literally.

We both work hard and are focused on the end result.
We both play hard and enjoy play as a satisfying reward.
We both love hard-sometimes to our detriment.
And we both feel really hard, which in turn makes us vulnerable and obvious. We wear our hearts on our sleeves.

She too, has integrity and a great capacity to "over think" things, which gives me the unique opportunity to provide her with some perspective. Something I sometimes seek in my own mother. I can hardly believe this amazing young woman came from me and is like me in so many ways. I'm left to question whether this is a good thing or a bad thing?  Of course, I hope she has a different outcome with her life. One that is better than the life I have lived and I wish for her not to duplicate the mistakes I have made. Let's hope history does not repeat itself here.

Like they saying goes, "Mirror, mirror on the the wall. I am my mother after all...."

Sunday Morning

So I walked into a local grocery store this morning, to grab a couple of things before work. The moment I entered the aroma awakened my senses with the most amazing smell...

I looked at the cashier at the door and said, "I smell sausage."

She smiled and said, "Yes! The deli guys are making sausage for the lunch crowd."

The smell was heaven. It smelled, I told her, like Sunday morning. When I was a kid, being the last in a line of 5 children, I grew up to the smell of sweet Italian sausage cooking every Sunday morning. On Sunday, my mom would have a big breakfast waiting for her family. There was regularly an array of breakfast foods at my house on Sunday morning. My dad, 100% of Italian descent, would play tennis with his buddies early every Sunday morning and when he arrived home, breakfast was always ready.

Back in the innocence of those days, food was love. We never thought about fat content, calories and gluten. We ate because we were growing kids and my mother made sure we ate well. Sunday mornings were my favorite because it was the best of everything. We always had fresh fruit; cantaloupe, strawberries, blueberries and orange juice as well as toast, assorted danish and pastries, eggs, bacon, pancakes and of course, sweet Italian sausage. Sometimes she even made a breakfast quiche and if you wanted an omelette, my mom would be ready with the frying pan to accommodate.

I was usually the first to rise, my brothers and sisters all teens at the time, would wake later because the yummy smell could wake anyone from a deep slumber no matter how lazy they were. My dad, at the head of the table, ate slowly, with the Boston Globe in front of him and I would happily read the comic page and enjoy the breakfast with my family. Those were some of the happiest memories I have of growing up. It was our very own Brady Bunch moment, and it was part of our routine.

My children love sweet Italian sausage too. Our busy lives today, unfortunately never lent to the innocence of Sunday morning breakfast. When my kids were little there were early Sunday hockey games, lacrosse games or rehearsals to attend, so I tried my best to make Sunday mornings as special as I could. And yes, I cooked the sausage.

It's amazing how that smell this morning brought me such happiness and joyous memories all in a flash.

Frick and Frack are home from college now and you can bet that this Sunday will be special. In fact, I'm making the grocery list now. Be dammed fat, sugar, gluten and calories! I want to make a memory and I think that's far more important, if only for a Sunday morning.

Toilet Paper Tales

So I'm watching those crazy Kardashians, and the episode is all about how Khloe and Kris go out, get drunk, and proceed to toilet paper Kim's house. Right? I know what you are thinking, but his post is not about those crazy bitches. The episode make me laugh so hard because I've got some Toilet Paper Tales of my own to tell.

Back in high school, I was kinda wild. Are you shocked? Me wild?? But it's true, we were a pack of wild kids. We used to stay out late, drink and get this...steal our parent's cars and cruise around after hours without our drivers licences!! How the HELL we got away with it I will never know, but I would KILL Frick or Frack if they even attempted some of the crap we pulled.

Having said that...

We were "the coolies" as my dad dubbed us, and one night "the coolies" decided that we were going to toilet paper the football team's houses. We were probably sophomores, none of us old enough to drive, yet we hatched a plan to stay out all night and create mischief. The first thing was to secure the all nighter..we each lied about a sleepover at so and so's house, then we were free! My BFF's parents owned a gym for gymnastics and they had lots of vans that were unattended at night. We took a cab down to the gym, My BFF had the keys to a van and we took off to pick up the others! There were about 7 or 8 of us and like a team of Navy Seals, we set out on our stealth mission dressed all in black.

We needed lots of toilet paper, and being young and wild, we soon realized that the four pack that we had each stolen from our houses just wasn't going to do the job we needed to do. Steal being the operative word here...
It was then that we decided that every late night fast food joint would outfit us with all the toilet paper we would need. It took about 4 or 5 trips to different Burger King and McDonalds within a 5 -10 mile radius, but each bathroom had an ample supply of overflow toilet tissue which we heartily helped ourselves to. Rotten kids, we were, but we thought it was the greatest thing. When we were supplied to the brim with extra toilet paper, our mission began.

Oh what fun it was to throw the rolls over the trees, creating the effect seen above at each house. Trying to stifle the giggles and voices of 8 sophomore girls in the wee hours of the morning was a feat in itself, but we somehow managed to pull it off. I can still remember the rush of excitement when one or more of the houses were decorated in our special way. And it continued all through the night. One after the other, each home properly vandalized, the team we had assembled joyously worked, creating laughs and memories. It seemed like such good clean fun until....

The next day.

At the football game, it spread like wildfire that we were the ones responsible for the mess at each residence. And would you believe that no one thought it was as funny as we did?

The things a bunch of crazy kid will do for the hell of it.

I'm sure today if we had completed such a mission, all 8 of us would have at least received a visit at our homes from the local authorities with either the threat of criminal action or forced to clean up what we thought to be a hilarious mess. Thank God for the good old days. Beside a few snarky remarks from the guys on the football team about how they themselves had to clean it up, we escaped the consequences of our actions.

Again, it's a good thing I didn't know Frick and Frack back then. And I'm sure I never relayed to them the exact details of the story.

I don't think the world would find it as funny..

We Are, At Times, A Very Sick and Twisted Society.

So I remember when Frick was little, we were planning a big birthday party for her and she was pumped!!! I'm not sure why, but I thought it would be funny to tell her that I wasn't going to her party. I think the gag lasted a whole 10 minutes, but I remember she wasn't too happy about it. The moral to this story?

She has never let me forget or live it down, still to this day. It's become a cautionary tale in our household.

So why is this so funny to me? The answer lies in the title of today's post.

Watch it through to the end, as there are some redeeming moments and a hilarious twist at the end. And I have to tell you....I guess I'm just sick and twisted enough to laugh out loud through this whole thing.

Enjoy!