I’m not here. Dallas and I are on our long-awaited honeymoon. I promise I’m not thinking of this blog for even one second. Lucky for you guys I did think about you before I left and planned an all-star guest line up with some of my bloggy friends. I hope you enjoy their posts and show them some love. I’ll check up on you when I get back.

Poppy is easily one of my favorite bloggers. Her blog is called Funny Or Snot. How could you not love a blog with that title? She is seriously funny which is why she also writes for Aiming Low. She’s almost too fancy for my little blog, but she was willing to slum it over here anway. I knew I loved Poppy (yes, that’s her real name) when she told me, “wasted sarcasm makes me sad.” I think you’ll love her too.

Uterus Built For One

Like Bridget, except he was a dude, my great grandfather on my father’s side was responsible for two sets of twins. My paternal grandmother was one half of a fraternal set born in 1921. I say was because they’re both dead. Interestingly, they died the same year. My grandmother had really hoped that one of her descendants would have the twin gene and we constantly disappointed her by popping out singletons.

After my grandfather died, she was really lonely. What an outsider would assume was a caustic relationship was really masked affection. I guess.  Either that or my good natured grandfather just turned the volume way down on his miracle ear as a coping mechanism.

My grandfather died when I was 23 and newly married. My husband at the time, Rat Bastard, worked out of town. My house was only 5 minutes away so during a time of transition for both of us, I spent a lot of time just hanging out with her. My grandmother’s crankiness was legendary, but usually it just made me laugh and think of all the shit I could get away with when I’m old.

If we went to a buffet, she would complain about the restaurant being stingy with the meat that she put on her own plate. If we went to a Mexican restaurant and she covered her food in salsa, she’d complain it was too spicy. If I spent 4 evenings a week with her, she would complain nobody came to visit the other 3. She never got used to being alone.

I did try to spend time with her because I knew she was lonely. We took a road trip to Seattle to see a Mariner’s game.  Our seats were so bad that I thought I was going to have to give her chest compressions before we reached them. When I got pregnant with my oldest, I shared the news with her first.  Sewing bibs and baby blankets gave her a project.  She sewed them in duplicate even though I assured her through ultrasound technology there was only one baby occupying my uterus.

My oldest got to spend a lot of time with my grandmother, but many years and a husband passed between my first and second pregnancies. By the time I was pregnant with my second child, my grandmother was no longer ambulatory due to a stroke and lived in a care center. I brought my second daughter in often because my grandmother has always loved babies. She couldn’t do much but smile and complain with her eyes, but I know she was glad to see us.

She died before my youngest child was born which makes me sad. Not because I wanted to continue parading my kids around the adult foster home, but because my son has always been really big and my daughter very small. I think I could have slapped a bonnet on my son and convinced my grandma they were twins.