The Big Princess

I’ve decided that being the only girl in the family isn’t so bad most of the time—like when I told Clay the other night while tucking him into bed that he’s my star. “Mom, you’re my angel,” he replies with a grin magical enough to instantly transform me into the celestial being. I guess it was redemption for the insulting comment he made earlier that day when he boldly stated, “Girls brains are made from toothpicks and their heads are made out of rocks!” Drew quickly agreed then added his thoughts, “Yeah, they’re just so dumb.” I rolled my eyes and said, “Oh, yeah? Well boys are just smelly, and they make gross noises.” They looked at me blankly with their heads cocked to one side. Then one of them belched.

Once in awhile we insult the grandparents, like when we were in Malad a few weeks ago and he asked Mom and Dad “So what do you do when we're not here? Do you just sit around doing nothing?” He redeems himself once again as we’re driving off and he longingly looks out the window at Grandma and Grandpa waiving on the front porch. With his nose pressed to the window, he sighs and in a low whisper says, “I wish we didn’t have to go. I’m really going to miss them.”

I have to admit, there was one day in March I had toothpicks for brains, and most likely a large boulder for a head. It all started one snowy morning after a long night with Judd throwing up every two hours. I forced myself to get up and make breakfast for the boys before school. As I flipped the pancake, I felt something ping me in the back of the head. I turned to see Judd hurling his apple slices at me, one by one until none were left on his plate. I glanced at the calendar on the fridge to see what other damage might come that day, and noticed Sean had written that he was going to be out-of-town the entire next week. This was fine until I noticed he would be gone the day I was in charge of a big meeting that required significant time and preparation. I looked at the apple Judd had thrown at me on the floor next to the counter. Anger burned up my neck and into my toothpick brains, catching them on fire. I cocked my leg back and swung as hard as I could, imagining I was aiming for the corner of the goal in a soccer penalty kick. Apparently it has been over a decade since I’ve played organized soccer as I completely missed and kicked the leg of the island. I immediately heard a pop followed by searing pain through my foot. (I’m sure it was nothing compared to the lightning that exited Blake’s butt). I mumbled something and hopped to my room on one leg.

According to the x-ray, I chipped off a piece of the bone that was still partially connected to the tendon next to the first joint in my right big toe, so I had to have surgery. The podiatrist took out the bone fragment and sewed up the damaged tendon. During the two weeks I had to wear the nursing home resident boot with three wide Velcro straps, my healing toe was only stepped on twice and stubbed three times.

In an effort to sharpen my toothpicks, I enrolled in a couple of courses at the university to hopefully finish up my Bachelor Degree within the next few years.