Ah, Them Kids, Them Kids

Okay, so it's Monday night and Chepa went with the boyfriend to wherever it is they go for a month yesterday and so today I picked Madeleina up from school and told her we had to go to the store before we came home. Well, I was going to tell her that, actually, but she beat me to the punch and came into the car with: "If you tell me we have to go to the store I'm going to kill you." And I had to say, "well, it's worse than that. After the store we have to drive into Fort Worth to pick up my paycheck."
She looked at me blankly: "Dad, let's be honest. That check is so small we might as well just save the gas money and earn a couple of bucks..."
Touche, girl.
Stll, she was stuck with going and I treated her parakeets to a 5-pound box of deluxe parakeet food, which took the edge of her humor a bit. And I gave in and said we'd go for the check tomorrow.
So we get back home and in short order I toss on a chicken--fresh garlic, salt, pep on a bed of celery and onion with some beer for juice--nice rice with roasted garlic in olive oil as a base, broccoli and cauliflower to steam--later to be tossed with garlic, diced tomatoes and asparagus then dressed in balsamic vinager, and some kidney beans with black-eyed peas.
"So dad, I sort of recognize most of this but what's up with those beans? Are you being serious or is this an early April Fool's joke?"
"Just kidney beans with black eyed peas darling. Couple of strips of bacon to start, a little garlic and tomatoes for flavor, then let them simmer an hour while I do my email."
"Well, aren't you a little freaky-deaky?"
She actually used that term.
"Yes, you are," she continued, as if talking to her baby sister Alexa. "You're a little freaky-deaky, aren't you? Just a little freaky-deaky, deaky..."
I guess things have gotten unbelieveable out here because I could not believe she was using that term. I've never used it and she sounded so familiar with it that it was spooky. Does she walk around using it when I'm not listening? I wondered?
And I'll still wonder, because she's now swearing she doesn't even know the term. But then she's drinking 16 ounces of cold coffee with milk and seltzer and beginning to bounce off the walls so I don't know that I'll be able to speak to the real Madeleina for several hours.
And she's not the only one infected with insanity here. Marco found two mice in a drawer in his bureau the other day--we got em--and wondered why they were there. The only logical explanation was that the bureau was the only clean place in his room. Everything else is covered in clothes or fast food wrappers. And this morning I took a glass of something from his desk and found three separate types of mold growing in it: One green, one a spectacular sunburst yellow and red, and one just brown stuff. Still, enough primordial goop to start an earth, if not a universe.
When questioned about it his answer was that he was trying to duplicate a science experiment he'd seen on tv.
I'm not buying that.
I'm not using that glass again either.
And Madeleina just came in while I'm typing this and asked me if I could introduce her to some effeminate men. "They sound so cool. You know...like if I could meet them I'd know how to try to sound if I was a grown woman or something..."
Oy, vey. Another day at the Gormans.
I'm very glad I'm allowed to be part of it all.