Thanks to that mid-day sleep fest, at 12 a.m. I was  wide awake so I sat next to Yes,Dear who was cowering in a corner of the sofa watching TV while casting frightened glances my way.

He was watching RV, a 2006 stinker starring Robin Williams. There’s a scene in this movie where Williams, who doesn’t want his wife or kids to know he’s working during their family vacation,  has been up all night trying to find a cell phone signal in order to send an important presentation to his boss.  Just as the sun comes up the message transmits and he heads into the camper to get some sleep.  His wife awakens as he tries to slip into bed and says, “Oh, good, you’re up. Can you put the coffee on?”

“I’d love to,” he replies.

I’D LOVE TO. Isn’t that wonderful? So much better than the usually reluctant, occasionally hesitant, and frequently sarcastic Yes, Dear that earned my husband his pseudonym on this blog.

I suggested to Yes,Dear that, in the future, I would be ever so grateful if he would respond to all of my requests by saying, I’d love to.

He’s trying it on for size today.

I’m not sure how he feels about it, but I’m liking it. A lot.

I am glad to hear you LOOOOOVE our home.  I admit to being a little freaked out when your agent told ours that you’ve been “stalking” our house, but whatever.  (We have dogs.  BIG ones.  Just sayin’.)

I have some questions:

1.  Do you really think an offer that’s 20% lower than our already reduced asking price and that includes a sale-of-home contingency would have us jumping up and down clapping our hands with glee?

2.  What are you smoking?

3.  Can I have some?

Nanny Goats in Panties wrote a terrific post about running away from home as a little girl. Her post brought back memories.

I ran away once. I was eight.

I don’t remember what I was pissed about. My kid sister probably touched something on my side of our bedroom and no doubt Mom refused to beat the crap out of her, banish her, or shave her head and lock her in the basement. She always was Mom’s favorite.

Whatever, it was The Final Straw. I huffed and I puffed. I stomped outside and found myself a hobo stick. I stomped back in slamming doors and mumbling all sorts of nastiness. Mom was sewing at the dining room table. Right under her nose, I tied up a bandanna filled with peanut butter crackers, M&M’s, a book, and a deck of Old Maid cards. Mom said nothing. I hung it from my stick. Still she said nothing. I slung it over my shoulder. The bandanna came untied and it all fell out. She smiled.

I tied up my provisions again and stomped to the front door yelling, I’m leaving and I’m never coming back.

I just knew the threat of losing me forever would be more than Mom could bear. She would come running, apologize profusely and, sobbing, she would beg me to stay.

Any second now.

Right………now.

Okay. NOW.

Crap. She couldn’t let me just leave, could she?

Please don’t shout, she said. You’ll wake your baby brother. Oh, and you might want to take a sweater. It’ll get chilly when the sun sets.

If I had known the word, at that point I would have thought Oh, shit, now what? But in 1968 polite little girls didn’t know that word. And prideful little girls followed through on their threats. So I left, slamming the door again on the way out. That, at least, was satisfying.

Our street dead ended at a small ravine with a creek running through the bottom of it. We were forbidden to play there, so naturally that’s where I headed. I sat and ate my crackers, read my book, imagined how worried Mom must be, played with my cards, dropped rocks into the creek, fantasized about the police finding me and then lecturing Mom about how she’d better be nicer to me. I ate the M&M’s, got my feet wet, looked for tadpoles…

All of this took about twenty minutes.

Nobody came looking for me.

I was bored and the shadows were getting kind of creepy. I swallowed my pride and went home.

I never ran away again because my early experience of life on the street taught me an important lesson – a lesson I made excellent use of throughout my teen years. This is what I learned: I could make my mom’s life a lot more unpleasant without missing any meals or risking exposure to the elements by simply staying home and being a miserable bitch.

What about you? Have you ever run away from home? Write a post about it and send me the link. I’ll post all the links next Saturday. Please share this with anyone else you think might want to participate. The more the merrier…

1. The word “lethologica” describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

This is good to know because that happens to me all the …..

Oh, damn.

2. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

Hey, cool. I guess I do exercise!

My day was not wasted.

I gazed at our precious first born snoozing in my arms and thought, little one, you are so soft and beautiful and so wonderful smelling (most of the time). I nuzzled my cheek against her downy little head. I wonder what you’ll be like when your 10 and 15 and 20 years old? When her brothers came along, I did the same with them, trying to picture their infant faces growing into little boy faces and then young man faces. It was so hard to imagine their voices deepening and their silky cheeks and chins sprouting beards.

And I’m here to tell you, seriously, DON’T DO THAT! It goes way too fast as it is without you rushing things and before you know it, they’re grown and begging to ready to leave the nest.

Or maybe things won’t work out quite as you envisioned and it’s more like before you know it they’re grown and you’re turning the nest upside down, shaking it out and scattering the family to the four winds just so you can realize your lifelong dream of living at the beach which, apparently, your children don’t share and, besides, they want to get started on their own lives? Really? All three at once? How dare they?

I spent the last almost 24 years devoting nearly all of my time and energy and brain power – and let me tell you, I have precious little of any of those things, particularly brain power, left – towards raising them all to be self-sufficient and when they finally are, this is the thanks I get? They all leave? Or rather we sell the house out from under them and they make their own plans? Like jobs and grad school? Hummph!

My grandmother was right. Just when you finally get them civilized they leave home.

Only in our case, home is kind of leaving them.

Each has a plan. Daughter will be living in Chicago pursuing her Ph.D. Son One will be working and boarding with a friend of ours not far from where we live now (and apparently will continue to live until the Real Estate Gods deign to find us a buyer). Son Two will live with my sister, again near our current home.

So really, I guess Yes,Dear and I are growing up and leaving home too.

I know the kids are ready.

I’m just not sure about me.

The following is a lesson I learned the hard way in 2004:

NEVER let a cashier put a candy bar in the bag with a box of scented dryer sheets.  The dryer sheets will make the candy bar taste like soap and you will gag.  Ptuie.