Wicked! Grindahs and Cowfee? No suh!

All I wanted to eat for dinner tonight was comfort food. It’s cold, it’s dark out, it’s the perfect night for a childhood favorite: a Peanut Butter and Mayonnaise sandwich. Please try and control your gag reflexes. It’s delicious, people. I suggest you try it. Unfortunately, I opted for a healthier option without so much, uh how do I say this? Oh, FAT. But the dinner debacle left me wanting the comfort of a home-cooked peanut butter sandwich. Lamely enough, even if I WERE to go home to my parents and sit waiting for my sandwich and pint glass of milk, I’d be waiting for days. My mom is out of town. How could she LEAVE me like that?! Geez! Rude, I know. Well, she went back out East to visit some of her sisters. They grew up in Rhode Island, and so they are probably just sitting around, talking about pahking cahs and ahrange scissahs and pockabooks.

Hearing my mom tell stories about growing up in Rhode Island is both hilarious and a little sad sometimes. One of the gems my whole family loves is that my mom didn’t have a pillow until she married my dad. Zing! We think it’s funny, my mom thinks it’s totally normal. My mom has six sisters and one brother. Catholics…. They all talk the same, laugh the same, and are like 8 mini clones of each other. They’re all still pretty tight, which is impressive. Every year, they have a Christmas Ornament Exchange where they slap some seashells and glitter on stuff and hand them out to each other to hang on their respective trees. Usually, the East Coasters have to mail a box of ornaments to my mom, but this year my mom brought HER party to THE party. So that’s where my mom is. THAT’S why I shall have no PB&M tonight.

Like I was saying, though, my mom has some awesome childhood stories. She always prefaces stories with, “Now, you have to remember it was a different time.” And then we’ll be watching a random movie, and she’ll sigh and say something like “I had a dresser like that growing up. My sisters and I all shared it. We each had our very own drawer.” Then my siblings and I will laugh and laugh. And she has her very own version of “Walking to school in 3-foot snow, uphill both ways.” When I complain about only having 3 pairs of red strappy sandals, she’ll say “I only had one pair of shoes growing up. Then I’d hand them down to Caroline when they got too small.” I know it’s supposed to make me be less materialistic, but instead it reminds me that I need a good pair of walkin’ shoes.

So her East coast side of the family comes to visit us here every once in awhile. And growing up, my whole family used to drive cross-country to their beach house in Rhode Island. All day every day, one aunt or another would come buzzing into the beach house with huge ideas of fashion shows and carnivals to entertain us kids. They’d dress up like Big Bird and Cookie Monster. They’d sing songs and tell us stories while we dug through boxes of costume jewels having a mosaic-making contest. They created these alternate universes for us to get lost in. They’re all fabulous and fun and awesome. And my grandmaman had this wicked old-school convertible that she’d drive us around in it to get Awful Awfuls. (They’re delicious delicious.)

Lest you forget, though, my mom is totally awesome. And now that everyone is aware that my mom and her siblings are high-functioning, well-adjusted, and responsible members of society, I won’t feel so bad about telling you for a treat, my mom would eat bread with butter that was slapped into a sugar bowl, or that in the Catholic school my mom attended, they tried to force my mom to be right-handed - apparently the devil himself is left handed. Or the fact that all around the neighborhood, kids would graffiti “FOT” in huge letters. It meant Fart. Who tags a wall with “FART?!” And misspells it?! Rhode Islanders, that’s who.

And despite all that, or maybe BECAUSE of all that, my mom still went back to Rhode Island to see her family. I’m sure my kids are going to think I was living in destitution as a child because I didn’t have a cell phone until high school. Or that I prefer eating PB&Ms instead of sushi or macaroni in a pill or whatever. Crappy kids…

Well, enjoy the weekend everyone! Hope all yoh cayahs disappeah…