Nineranch Mom Unplugged

It is by popular demand that I dish the dirt on Mom, also known as NineranchMom. I was resistant to the idea, but after numerous requests, I realized that I can only avoid it for so long. I realize that I must tread lightly though...I'd rather not be disowned or written out of the will.

Where to begin? I really don't have the slightest idea. There is so much to say, and too short of an attention span (mine). So let's get started.

She was actually engaged to someone else when she met Dad. Scandalous! Not only was she engaged, she was in the process of making her wedding dress when Dad and one of his friends pulled up in her driveway. Apparently it was love at first sight for him...it took her a while to figure it out.

Mom finished nursing school and went to work in an Emergency Room; which, truth be told, was just training for her career as a mom. She and Dad had been married two years and four days when I came along. And that was it - the plan was for no more kids. Ha! We all know how that turned out.

When I was a kid, Dad would tell us these far-fetched stories about Mom, our grounded, type-A parent, that would baffle us. I will never forget hearing about the time she woke Dad in the middle of the night...she was standing at the foot of the bed, in the dark, pushing the ceiling fan around. She was kicking him and fussing about him not fixing the ceiling fan...that wasn't broken. Of course, she remembered nothing and denied the whole thing. But what was even better is the green men story. Apparently, at some point she also woke Dad in the middle of the night wanting him to shoot the little green men coming up out of the closet floor. Dad tried to get her to describe them, and even though he tried to convince her they weren't actually there, she vehemently insisted they were. Now, as a child, I wasn't quite sure what kind of little green men she would've been talking about. I had to have a picture in my head to realize just how whacked-out this whole thing was. So I pictured these little green Marvin-like guys from Looney Tunes. Hey, it worked for me. Mom continued to have these waking-dreams or sleepwalking instances, whatever you want to call them. We had fun with it whenever we could, too. Who were we to pass up such great opportunities?

As we became an enormous family with lots of little kids, it ended up that Mom was always having to get on to somebody for something. Instead of trying to catch them, then take them to her room or a designated spanking place, Mom carried a wooden spoon (with a hole in the middle; ouch!) in the waistband of her pants. She could whip that thing out faster than you could blink. Pop! You'd get a swat on the backside faster than you could realize that you were in for it for doing whatever it was you did. It was, truth be told, quite embarrassing to be known in many places as the kid whose Mom carried a wooden spoon in her pants.

Mom is, shall we say...I'm trying to be delicate here...oh heck, I might as well say it. She's bossy. Everybody knows that when she's given a task to do, she'll not only get it done, but it'll be done right and on time. You don't get that kind of reputation without hard work and bossing a few folks around. Of course, she had lots of practice. On us. She calls it "delegating." Fancy word for "I don't want to do it, so I'm going to tell you to do it, and you have to since I'm the one with the spoon." Or at least that's the way we all felt. She often would tell us that she had so many children so she didn't have to do all the chores anymore, i.e. folding laundry, washing dishes, sweeping the floors, etc. And she still has quite a little army at home to accomplish those tasks, although they are at home less and less and her ranks are slowly being downsized.

Mom is not what one would call a merciful person. Her medical training allowed her know when we really needed to see a doctor and when we didn't. I remember when HLB had a thing about walking behind the swingset and busted his head open about three times. Mom's response each time was to bandage him up and tell him he'd better learn not to walk so close to the swings while someone was swinging. Took him a while, I guess. And with each kid she became less and less merciful. Usually when someone was hurt the first questions wasn't "Are you bleeding?" it was, "How MUCH are you bleeding, and are there any bones sticking out?" If the answer was "Not much, and no." We'd hear the patented Mom answer: "Ah, you'll be fine." We were raised on that. Got a skinned knee? "Ah, you'll be fine." Fall out of a tree? "Ah, you'll be fine." Get whacked in the head by your sib? "Ah, you'll be fine. And what did you do to them?"


Well, I think that's enough on The Mom. I've tread on enough thin ice for one day. Let's leave it at that.