Let me introduce you to my family

A remedial book called Blogging for Dummies advised not to post anything too personal that I wouldn’t want the world to know about. Since my whole life has been basically personal, that would pretty much leave me speechless.

So to protect the guilty, I’m going to share my family codenames with you. First let me introduce my children in order of their birth. First there’s the GAP, the one who thinks of herself as the Gentile American Princess. She gravitates to Nordstrom’s whenever possible. Now that she has children of her own, with fewer opportunites to gravitate, we now call her the Gifted American Princess, the only one of my four to land on her feet.

Then came The Enforcer. Hot Wheelz, they called him, sometimes black-eyed, but otherwise unscathed, who did daredevilish things that caused a parent to consider death by firing squad. My green peace advocate, shall we call her Coco the Reluctant Trendsetter, was always slightly ahead (or behind) the times and extremely independent. She hated when the unique garb she paraded in became trendy. Lastly, once nicknamed Colby Jack for cheese colored hair now bygone, is shortened to Kojac, the well-fed gentle giant. Think of Baby Huey — big body, big heart and gullible and you’ve got Cheezy down.

Then there’s the evil stepdad. He couldn’t understand how six apples disappeared so quickly, when before marriage they had lasted him a whole week or longer. Granted it was difficult moving into a home with four teens, or near teens. Some would actually call him a superhero — CouponMan. He scattered coupons everywhere. I griped about them one day when he got overly excited about a packet addressed to Resident. “Some people appreciate me,” he commented, trying to elicit sympathy.

“Name three.” I chirped back.

“Living or dead?” he asked.

Actually, my husband’s and my roles are pretty much a constant. He’s the reporter and I’m the finisher. He’d tell me the cat puked up a hairball in the living room; I’d clean it up. He’d yell, “Someone’s left shoes in the entryway” (earthquake preparedness run amuck), and I’d gather the pair and carry them upstairs. He’d say he was done eating, and I’d scrape one more spoonful off his plate and gulp it down.

There’s been a couple of new additions over the years, a son-in-law, we call Mr. Green Jeans. You guessed it,    forever in green jeans . Kind of lyrical, don’t you think. We all thank the heavens that the long term relationship before Mr. Green Jeans didn’t last. He was just kind of there. His name was Matt so we called him DoorMatt. When he plopped the sachel of dirty clothes in front of the washer, we changed it to LaundraMatt.

And three grandkids.  No. 1 grandson is Bug, short for bugaboo, just because I liked the sound of it. It’s good I didn’t nickname him alluvial because I like that word too.  No. 1 granddaughter, the Worm is always squirming, never still.  And now No. 2 of 2 grandsons, the Mouse because he squeaks. With his given name, my friend prefers to call him, Dr. Seuss’s newest character — Maddoc in the Attic.

Please come back again for more antics from your soon-to-be-favorite dysfunctional family.

Related posts:

1. Hi, My name is Penny and I’m insane