Living in a Tampon Commercial

Let me set the stage for you.

It’s the Saturday before Christmas. My family has come together under one roof, as we always do every Saturday before Christmas. My cousin’s and I are all range from our mid to late 20’s to early 30’s. Some of them have kids which are all under a year old to 3-4 years old in age.

In short, chaos has ensued.

Everyone’s bellies are full. The crumbs of pies and cookies still litter the table(s).

For some reason when people have kids, they like to ask those of us who don’t when we’ll be joining in their misery. I can’t remember how this particular conversation began that I’m about to regale you with, but lets just pretend it began after someone was asked for the 800th time when they will be blessing this world with a snot-nosed creature of their own.

The following is a real conversation between myself, my cousin and my sister. Also, my grandfather is Daddaddy. That’s how it came out of my mouth before I was capable of proper thought, and that is what he remains to this day.

Cousin: My periods have been irregular lately.

Daddaddy walks up behind us and hands us our Christmas cards with money, seemingly out of nowhere. Has he been a ninja all my life and I never knew?!

Cousin: And we’re not going to talk about that now.

I burst into uncontrollable giggles, the “adults” (because obviously at 28 years old I’m NOT an adult!) look at me like “what’s up with this crazy person, oh wait that’s just Laura.”

Daddaddy exists stage left, at which point I turn back to my cousin.

Me: Oh my gosh me too! That’s so weird.

My Sister: You guys should try Mirena. (a type of birth control)

That was it, that did it. I lost it, I laughed until I cried, I couldn’t breathe, my stomach hurt.

I tried several times, but failed, to say “Oh my gosh guys we just did that thing they do on commercials! It really DOES happen!”

You know the type of commerical…ladies sit around moaning about that time of the month and then decide that if they use the latest birth control/maxi pad/tampon/Midol/etc that everything will be fields of daisies on a pleasant spring afternoon.

Not sure of the type of commercial I mean? Here, take a look at this old gem I found on YouTube.

Ah, well, you know what they say. Nothing like Christmas to bring cousins and sisters together to talk about period irregularity and birth control.

TMI? Oops oh well I should have warned about that in the beginning, eh?

Louie Louie

I forgot what my husband’s name was yesterday. My dad asked me how David was doing, and my reply was, “Who’s David?”

Well…ya-see I call him Woo, his last name. “Wait, isn’t that your last name too?” Why yes, yes it is. But for the 5 years we dated before we got married, it wasn’t my last name.

I was introduced to this weird guy named Woo way back in the day and for months I just thought that was his first name. By the time I realized it was his last name, well it was just too late wasn’t it? He was Woo to me.

Then I got to thinking, there are a lot of nicknames in my family. Most of my family call me Louie. The “Louie” nickname comes in many forms – Lou, Lou-Bell, Lou-Jack, Louie… That’s why most of my online names have the word Lou in it somewhere. I know one thing, it’d be awful strange to hear mom or my sisters call me Laura.

I have an aunt I call Rascal (yes, proper noun for her!) Her name is Anne, and according to legend she used to call me a little rascal, so I’d just flip it back on her and call her Rascal right back! I don’t remember this back and forth, that must have been before my brain cooled. And I honestly don’t even know at what point in my life I realized Anne was her name, not Rascal. It doesn’t matter, to me she will always and forever be Rascal.

It’s funny how these nicknames form and stick. It doesn’t matter how old I get, I’ll always be Louie or Lou to many near and dear family members. My husband will always be Woo to me, even though my last name is Woo too… it doesn’t matter. Oh, and you better believe people sure love to call me Lou Woo!

What’s strange though, is I always feel awkward signing my name “Louie” on gifts or cards. If I give a Christmas gift to my sister I feel I should sign it Louie because that’s more my name to her than Laura is. For some reason I don’t feel I have the right to call myself Louie though.

Does anyone else have fun nicknames?

I’m High on Life

Days like today make me wonder why I decided to write a post a day for December. When I do my post I usually write it after work around 3 or 4 a.m. I wasn’t able to do that last night because I was out of town at my family’s Christmas party. Oh well, the day isn’t up yet!

I managed to find an excuse to yell “I’m high on life!” twice yesterday as I was visiting family. I have such a goofy bunch of relatives that it’s hard to pin-point just exactly which one the “crazy”  one is. I think we’re all in the running. At any rate, I think sometimes I get so silly goofy that people probably think I’m on drugs. I’ve never done drugs though, not even pot. I just get really paranoid at the idea.

I have a weird sleep schedule. I don’t get off work until 3 a.m., so the earliest I could be in bed would be around that time. But everyone knows you can’t just go straight to bed after work. Normally I need a bit of a snack, then I start catching up on TV or catching up on things online or any number of things people do post-work. A few months ago I realized I was going to bed regularly around 8 a.m. Not that I really like it, but that’s just how it was. Also, I don’t drive. Yeah yeah I’m pushing 30 and don’t have a license, get off my back.

Anyway, my mom lives about an hour away but always travels through my way on Saturday’s, at 9 a.m. So I hitched a ride with mom back home to the Christmas party.  By 8 a.m. I hadn’t slept, but for some reason felt getting a 20 minute nap would help, so I did. It didn’t really help. At any rate that was the only sleep I had. By the time the Christmas party started at 5 I was feeling loopy, by the time it ended at 10 I had already fallen asleep sitting up twice and God-knows what insanity spewed from my mouth. I remember cackling at my nephew Gabe’s toy that sings “Yankee Doodle” when you press its stomach.

That pretty much had me entertained for a good while. Who comes up with these things? And why haven’t I come up with these things?

This whole thing was a really long and roundabout way of saying – I haven’t had much sleep so I’m a little loopy.

We Are Family

I have two half-sisters. Except, I hate the term “half-sister” (or “half-brother”). It has always made me sort of angry, maybe irrationally. I know technically it is a term to describe what my sisters and I are – but it’s not a term you will ever hear me using to refer to them by. They are both my sisters, full-bodied and everything! I don’t see half a person when I look at them, why should I refer to them as half a sister?

I think it’s the connotation people seem to have when they say it. It always comes out like “Oh that’s just her half-sister”, flippant and dismissive, like being a half-sister doesn’t matter as much as being a full sister does. Granted I don’t have a full blooded sister to compare with… but I like to think I wouldn’t love her anymore, or my other sisters any less should she exist.

Me and my sister Kelly

Me and my sister Becca

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

None of us share a father (which is not a comment on my mother, we are all very far apart in age, she was married to my father, and had extensive relationships with Kelly and Becca’s father’s before having children with them as well – thinking them “the one”.) Kelly was born when I was 6 1/2 years old, and we grew up together. Just the three of us – mom and her two girls. Maybe that’s why I  take such an offense to the “half-sister” term – maybe it was just my upbringing. We didn’t have a whole lot growing up, but we did have each other, and we had a lot of love.

Gotta love those early '90s bangs I had!

As I have mentioned in a previous post, my sister Becca is 20 years younger than I am. We did not grow up together – heck, at the age of 7 she’s very far from being grown up anyway. I’ve been living on my own ever since she was born. But I don’t feel any less about her than I do Kelly. My 7 year old sister and I are very close in fact, even though we live about an hour away from each other. So it just goes to show, even though we are apart from each other a lot, the bond of sister is very much strong!

So, maybe I’m just irrational with my hatred of the “half-sibling” term. I don’t really know. I do know that half-sister, full-sister, adopted-sister, friend-who-became-a-sister… it doesn’t really matter. We may not share dads. We may have different aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents on one side of the family. We may have different heritages and features. We may not look a thing alike. None of those things matter – because we are still family, and we are still sisters.