When I pictured my "Golden Years" I imagined that I’d be traveling, reading, lunching with friends, attending plays and concerts, and taking care of my cats. Maybe I’d even garden or sew a quilt.
Well none of those things have happened. I’ve spent the last nine years raising my now 10-year old granddaughter. Instead of traveling I’m driving her to softball, and basketball practice. Instead of lunching with friends, I’m ordering at the McDonalds drive through. The only concerts I’ve seen involve last year’s 4th grade recorder band. I don’t even own a cat. Instead I have a hyper active dog, a bird, and a hamster.
Things are a lot different than I imagined. I love my granddaughter dearly and she’s the light of my life, and I wouldn’t change a thing, but raising her has presented some challenges. The biggest challenge is the fact that she’s a Drama Queen.
She’s afraid of needles. Last year when they gave flu shots at her school. I signed the permission slip and returned it. On the day of the flu shots she made up a big story about how she already got her shot at Walgreen’s. If that were the case, wouldn’t I know that? Why would I go to all the trouble of filling out the permission slip? Duh! And of course she got the flu and was sick for a week. Guess who had to wait on her hand and foot because she was so weak she could barely lift her head up off the pillow? The last time she actually got a flu shot, she spent the whole day with her arm in a sling complaining bitterly about how much her arm hurt. I told her I get a flu shot every year and it doesn’t bother me at all.
"That’s because my arm is so much more skinnier than yours. Skinny people feel more pain," she explained. Wow, if that’s the case, Kelly Ripa must be aching all over.
There’s also the time I told her to clean up the mess she made in the living room or no iCarly. I was in the kitchen when I heard a scream and found her lying on the floor. Apparently she tripped on a stuffed animal and her leg was now broken! She spent the day with an ace bandage wrapped from her ankle to her hip, hobbling around with a makeshift crutch (her old hobbyhorse). Of course she was in "so much pain" that she couldn’t pick up any of her stuff.
After spending so much time together, I’ve learned to decipher her screams. There’s the Justin Bieber is on TV scream, the you shrunk my favorite T-shirt scream, the I have a paper cut scream, and the most horrifying of all, the there’s a mouse or spider scream. I really hate the last scream because I’m afraid of mice and spiders so I usually start screaming too which doesn’t solve the problem.
Before you get judgmental, we have giant spiders at our house. They look like hairless tarantulas. They come in every fall. Once I was dozing off to sleep when I felt something tickling my arm, It was a giant spider. I screamed and knocked it on the floor. Then I spent the rest of the night terrified that it was going to come back. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in two years.
The other night, I was in my room and my granddaughter was in the bathroom when I heard a scream followed by, "Grandma get a shoe it’s a spider!" I rushed to find a good spider-killing shoe (it has to be flat with a hard sole) and rushed into the bathroom panting, only to discover a Daddy-Longlegs.
"Are you kidding me? I thought you were screaming about one of those giant spiders!" I picked up the spider with a wad of toilet paper and flushed it down the toilet.
I have to say, all the drama keeps life interesting but there’s something that troubling me, if my granddaughter is this much of a Drama Queen now, what’s she going to be like when she turns into a teenager?
"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh" that’s the sound of me screaming.
Well none of those things have happened. I’ve spent the last nine years raising my now 10-year old granddaughter. Instead of traveling I’m driving her to softball, and basketball practice. Instead of lunching with friends, I’m ordering at the McDonalds drive through. The only concerts I’ve seen involve last year’s 4th grade recorder band. I don’t even own a cat. Instead I have a hyper active dog, a bird, and a hamster.
Things are a lot different than I imagined. I love my granddaughter dearly and she’s the light of my life, and I wouldn’t change a thing, but raising her has presented some challenges. The biggest challenge is the fact that she’s a Drama Queen.
She’s afraid of needles. Last year when they gave flu shots at her school. I signed the permission slip and returned it. On the day of the flu shots she made up a big story about how she already got her shot at Walgreen’s. If that were the case, wouldn’t I know that? Why would I go to all the trouble of filling out the permission slip? Duh! And of course she got the flu and was sick for a week. Guess who had to wait on her hand and foot because she was so weak she could barely lift her head up off the pillow? The last time she actually got a flu shot, she spent the whole day with her arm in a sling complaining bitterly about how much her arm hurt. I told her I get a flu shot every year and it doesn’t bother me at all.
"That’s because my arm is so much more skinnier than yours. Skinny people feel more pain," she explained. Wow, if that’s the case, Kelly Ripa must be aching all over.
There’s also the time I told her to clean up the mess she made in the living room or no iCarly. I was in the kitchen when I heard a scream and found her lying on the floor. Apparently she tripped on a stuffed animal and her leg was now broken! She spent the day with an ace bandage wrapped from her ankle to her hip, hobbling around with a makeshift crutch (her old hobbyhorse). Of course she was in "so much pain" that she couldn’t pick up any of her stuff.
After spending so much time together, I’ve learned to decipher her screams. There’s the Justin Bieber is on TV scream, the you shrunk my favorite T-shirt scream, the I have a paper cut scream, and the most horrifying of all, the there’s a mouse or spider scream. I really hate the last scream because I’m afraid of mice and spiders so I usually start screaming too which doesn’t solve the problem.
Before you get judgmental, we have giant spiders at our house. They look like hairless tarantulas. They come in every fall. Once I was dozing off to sleep when I felt something tickling my arm, It was a giant spider. I screamed and knocked it on the floor. Then I spent the rest of the night terrified that it was going to come back. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in two years.
The other night, I was in my room and my granddaughter was in the bathroom when I heard a scream followed by, "Grandma get a shoe it’s a spider!" I rushed to find a good spider-killing shoe (it has to be flat with a hard sole) and rushed into the bathroom panting, only to discover a Daddy-Longlegs.
"Are you kidding me? I thought you were screaming about one of those giant spiders!" I picked up the spider with a wad of toilet paper and flushed it down the toilet.
I have to say, all the drama keeps life interesting but there’s something that troubling me, if my granddaughter is this much of a Drama Queen now, what’s she going to be like when she turns into a teenager?
"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh" that’s the sound of me screaming.
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