Look at the cat.
Look at my daughter, who’ll be sporting those Sharpie whiskers on her face for probably a week.
Longer, if she keeps reapplying them the way it appears she has this morning.
“Meow meow me—can I, Daddy? Please, please, please? I’ll make my bed and brush my teeth!”
“We’re always happy to have her, but if you have other plans, I’m sure she’d love those too,” Ginny calls up to me.
“Thought we’d go to that science museum in Sacramento that you love so much,” I say to my daughter.
She wrinkles her nose. “Is it open this hour of the day?”
“Are you sure she’s only six?” I hear Cricket ask softly.
“She’s six going onher best friends are all over thirty,” Ginny replies.
“You sure you don’t mind?” I ask Ginny.
“We live for fun,” Ginny answers.
I nearly snort, but I keep my reaction to myself.
We live for fun.
I wish.
7
FOUR EGGS AND MY OWN FUNERAL
Cricket
Today is a good day.
I woke up.
Yes, I’m only thirty, so that shouldn’t be some miracle, but today, it feels like it is.
Ginny’s made me feel more welcome than I expected, and she’s shown me how to use the oven—apparently you have to turn the dials in the right order or it won’t start. She says it’s getting old, but we don’t kick things out just because they don’t fit society’s standards anymore.
And I love that.
Lavender’s utterly adorable in ways that only young kids can be, and she’s clearly over the trauma of seeing me naked yesterday.
Not that she seemed traumatized at all.
She’s in lightweight pink footie pajamas patterned with cats, neon green Crocs, and a backward baseball cap that’s two sizes too big for her but keeps her hair out of her face.
She also still has whiskers drawn on her cheeks.
Actually, I think they’re thicker today.
I drew a smiley face on my forehead once when I was about Lavender’s age, and I remember a lot of heavy sighs, lectures, and headbands that covered my forehead after that.
Mostly about how my sisters never did anything that bad.
There was a lot ofyour sisters never did this kind of thing when they were your agewhile I was growing up.
