I’ve never claimed to be normal. Anyone who says I have is just a liar. And I’ve never claimed to have a normal household.

My daughter and I have quite a few interesting conversations…even fascinating ones…often at quite a loud decibel level since we’re a loud house regardless of what we’re doing.

Sometimes, I wonder just what the neighbors must think when my windows are wide open and our voices carry over to their houses on the clear, still air.

For example, we have a dog, and we have quite a few adventures with this dog, Petra. If our one neighbor’s windows were open, they surely heard this conversation one evening because it was really sort of loud and fraught with hilarious exasperation on Sarah’s part—and I’m sure it threw them for a loop:

“Stop putting the dog on my face, I’m trying to sleep!  You’re supposed to be the adult here, you know!”

You see, in reality, it’s not always just children who try to be annoying. There. I admit it. But it did eventually make Sarah laugh, and that was the main point of it all.

“What have I told you about letting the dog sleep in my pillow? “
“But she likes to sleep in pillowcases, you know that.”
“Then let her sleep in yours.”
“Ewww, no, I don’t want her in my pillow.”

That’s what daughters are for, don’t you think, to let a burrowing dog sleep in her pillowcase so said dog won’t sleep in yours? But apparently not my daughter. Oh no, not mine. She cares enough about the dog to want her to have a pillowcase to burrow in, just not her pillowcase. Go figure.

My daughter is very analytical, yet strangely compassionate, even when it comes to finding ways to fall asleep.

“I can’t count sheep to go sleep – cause then I wonder where the sheep are.  Are they just living with some farmer, in which case he’s going to need money eventually and then he’s going to have to sell those sheep to slaughter, which is messed up.

Or do those sheep live in some existential plane and just in emptiness in which case that’s just depressing. Too depressing to go to sleep.  I mean really, where are the poor sheep!?  They’re jumping over a fence, is the fence the bridge between life and death? Are the sheep dying!?  If I count them, do they die?? That’s a lot of power for one person to have.

Or is counting sheep just symbolic of the wasted years of our lives, the years we waste going to sleep? Are they really just counting the seconds passing to our inevitable death, our inevitable demise? Talk about depressing, that’s even more depressing than thinking about sheep being slaughtered. Although maybe not. Sheep getting slaughtered is pretty darn depressing.”

My well thought out and heartfelt response to these types of existential questions:

 “Sarah, just shut the hell up and go to sleep.”

We had this following conversation a couple of days before school ended last week. Admittedly I was frustrated with the topic, so I was a bit loud when this nonsensical sentence came flying out my mouth.  Even at the time a part of me was wondering what the neighbors would think if they heard this:

“If you don’t want to throw eggs, then don’t throw eggs.  I don’t care what the teacher says.”

I’ll explain further – Sarah’s Honors Chemistry teacher, at a time when eggs are at their most expensive in our area, decided that the students should each bring in a dozen eggs to simply fling at each other during class.

Sometimes my daughter brings up things or asks questions that I simply don’t understand. These encounters always leave me shaking my head and questioning my sanity.

Me: “I know you don’t like onions. No, there are no onions in the tuna fish salad. You just watched me make it. Did you see me put onions in the tuna fish salad? I rest my case then.”

Or:

Me: “No, I don’t usually go around spitting into random bottles of water that I find lying about the house.”  (in response to: “is there anything wrong with this water?”)

And then there’s the case of….the socks. Some people have sock monsters who make off with their socks, or dryers that eat them – I, on the other hand, have Sarah:

“In the name of everything that is holy, why is there just one sock strewn about in every single room of the house?”
“My feet get hot so I take my socks off.”
“But…but…where are the other socks?”
“I don’t know.”

It’s a myth that only guys argue about the powers of superheroes and what they can and cannot do.

Sarah and I recently had this debate in a game of “would you rather:”

 ‘If you had to pick, would you rather freeze people or blow them up a la Piper Halliwell?’
“If you can freeze people, you can walk into banks undetected.  But if you can blow people up, it wouldn’t matter, you could do what you wanted.”
“She could do both, why can’t I do both, why do I have to choose!? Why do you always have to make everything so difficult!? I don’t see why I can’t just do both. Jeez.”

I’ll leave it up to ya’ll as to which one was the adult and which one was the child in that conversation.

And then there’s my daughter’s refreshing attitude toward the afterlife.  I think we’re going to be haunting people…because I mean hey, haunting people would be fun, right? My sweet daughter is of a different opinion.

“I can’t wait until we’re dead and we’re haunting places together and I have all of eternity to tell you ‘I told you so,’ because we’re not just dirt in the ground somewhere and I’m gonna be like ‘Hey look, we’re scaring the bejeebies out of these people because I was right and you were wrong, we’re not just dirt’ and ‘Oooo look, we’re floating through walls cause I was right and you were wrong…told you so, nah nah …’ You’ll have to hang out with me for like eons. See what you have to look forward to?”

 “Nope. Cause I’m gonna be dirt.”

When you have cats in the house, you can’t help but think of the important questions. I can only imagine what someone, someone sane that is, would think of this issue recently discussed round our dinner table:

“Do you think cats know what Capitalism is?”
“I bet they’re Socialists.”

There you have it. A brief look into our mindset and the little snippets of accompanying dialogue. Now don’t you wish you were a fly on our wall to catch some of the really good stuff? Although you’re likely to buzz off shaking your little fly head.