A couple of things I forgot to mention

[cleolinda]

You wanna know something hilarious? I had this Anne Taintor calendar last year (see icon for more of her work), and every month the text seemed to have some weird bearing on my life at the time. So I got another one this year, and it's been just the same... only more so. Here's April's text: "Of course it buys happiness!" It being money, of course. What did I spend most of April doing? Freaking out about our tax bill and our household debt. And then May rolled around: "Was she in love... or was it just allergies?" CREEPY. (I haven't mentioned the allergies since April, I don't think, but I've been sneezing constantly--so loudly yesterday that I scared the dogs.) So--okay, I have this superstition about not changing a calendar over until the first day of the month, or at least very late on the night of the last day of the previous month, but... I went ahead and looked at June:

A bride: "Love, honor, and... what?"

Now I'm just puzzled. And maybe a little concerned.

Oh, I almost forgot, my mother wanted me to tell y'all a story. Every summer, we have some kids on the street who decide it would be fun to play ding-dong-ditch. You know, ringing the doorbell and then running like hell before the door opens. Late at night, if you're these kids. This makes my stepfather very, very angry. One time he tried to hide in the bushes with a baseball bat to catch them, but they could totally see him so it didn't work. It's a very DAMN KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN!! kind of thing.

So school let out for the summer last week, and what do you know, the doorbell rings one night last week. My mother goes to answer it and sees a gaggle of young girls--that's a fresh twist--booking it down the hill. But they go straight to the same house as always. (When asked, this neighbor always swears up and down that her kids and/or their friends didn't do it, or if they did, it was the friends who did it, not her kids. Her kids just tagged along. And then they all ran back to her house. Right.) But Mom's a little more slick than George. The front porch light's broken, so it wasn't on anyway, but the lights along the front walk were--so the kids had approached a dark and shadowy door, and the walk lights hadn't illuminated it any. They wouldn't notice anything, that is to say, if my mother stood in one of the recesses on either side of the door. (We have a tiny little roofed brick porch, you see--just big enough to stand in comfortably and not get wet if it's raining.)

So she waits. And she waits some more. Just chillaxes in the dark, in a nook beside the door, with the patience of the predator, for about, oh, forty-five minutes. And then she hears the girls coming back. She can hear them coming up from the driveway on the side of the house, up the walk and across the yard, and just as they round the little bend in the walk she steps out into the light like AN AVENGING ANGEL OF THE LORD and intones, "You'd better not ring our doorbell again tonight." The girls explode in this piercing choral shriek--I hear it all the way upstairs inside the house--and flee with a warning cry of, "IT'S THE LADYYYYYYYY!"

"Oh my God," my mother says when she comes back in, and she does a real live facepalm. "I'm That Crazy Old Lady Up the Hill."

"Maybe someday, if I'm really good," I say, with stars in my eyes, "someday I will be, too!"

Comments

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

Your mother rocks.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

HA! That's totally something my mother would do. And not only is my mother is That Crazy Old Lady Up The Hill, she also has seven cats to complete the ensemble. :)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heh, we just have three dogs and the one cat. They're lucky she didn't Release the Hounds, honestly.

[megmatthews20.livejournal.com]

LMAO!! Oh that story is all kinds of awesome!!

cheers

[jenni-talula.livejournal.com]

Your mother is my new hero.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have a dozen stories like that. ; )

[septimus.livejournal.com]

HAHA your mother is amazing!

[jcipa.livejournal.com]

That is hilarious!

[all-ephemera.livejournal.com]

I can barely breathe from trying to not wake my husband up with hysterical, braying laughter. That's bloody brilliant.

[lafemmezilla.livejournal.com]

OH my gosh. *dies* Your mom is hysterical! :D

[amberdulen.livejournal.com]

HAH.

[bewarethespork.livejournal.com]

Your mother? Is awesome.

[anavidfan.livejournal.com]

That.... was amazing.

It reminds me of what my dad would do when he'd catch kids sneaking around down by our barn. It was an old barn and dad obviously didn't want to deal with the liability if, say, some kid impaled himself on a plow or fell through the hayloft floor or something. Our family's house is a big, granite farmhouse atop a bit of a hill which looks a lot farther away than it is. My parents' bedroom window faced the barn (coincidence? I think not), so he had a perfect vantage point. My dad had a very deep, booming voice and was more than keen on how kids are, so when he'd hear/see/get the feeling that there were trespassers about, he'd hunker down by the window, wait until they thought the coast was clear and were just about to go into the barn, and bellow, "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING. YOU GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW!!" and it would echo in the most awesome way. This technique was also quite successful the one and only time I tried to sneak out at night.

Yay, parents.

[glass-radical.livejournal.com]

Your mother is awesome.

[golden-d.livejournal.com]

Your mom should have her own TV show.

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Oh, I would totally watch that. It should be her talking, with this animated sections of the action. *nods*

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

By Bene Gesserit standards your mother is a perfect Human.

[kilted.livejournal.com]

I love that you said that, haha.

[crimsnfirestorm.livejournal.com]

Wow. Your mother wins.

[phantomess05.livejournal.com]

Your mom is so awesome, she reminds me of one of those quirky characters you read about in books and think: "I want to grow up to be this woman!!!"

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Your mom wins the porch.

(I think there are too many claims on the Internet already.)

[sarahjanet.livejournal.com]

Your mom stories rule. And I can't believe you guys are out of school already! We still have a month to go. Stupid Canada.

[sarahjanet.livejournal.com]

(Uh, not that I'm, you know, a high school kid - my husband is a teacher so I'm more aware of the school calendar than I would be otherwise, and he promised he'd clean the whole house when school is done.)

[demonqueen666.livejournal.com]

So really, it hardly needs to said at this point, but your mom is AWESOME.

[greenwitch.livejournal.com]

I approve of these shenanigans.

[trash-addict.livejournal.com]

Well, honestly, if your Mum doesn't want to be known as That Crazy Old Lady Up the Hill, maybe standing around in the dark for 45 minutes in order to surprise young girls is not the best way to go about it.
That said, good story!

[kilted.livejournal.com]

Awwwwesome. Your mom for the WIN.

I would so be the type to do that, haha.

[cygnus.livejournal.com]

There are PLENTY of neighborhoods who'd like to hire your mom for-- informal security, let's say. Like mine. Seriously. Sometimes I think I'm still too young to be all GET OFF MY LAWN, but really, living next to a high school sucks. Never mind that I was a student there 15 years ago.

Cheers for Cleo's Mom!

[tifaria.livejournal.com]

Hee! I swear, every time you mention that you're about to tell a story about your mom, I seriously get the stupidest grin on my face, because your mom stories are great.

That reminds me, school is about to be out here too. Except instead of ding-dong-ditch, we get kids spray painting cars in the middle of the night. D:

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Ouch--that's almost as bad as the time they actually broke our car's front window. While it was raining. ON CHRISTMAS EVE.

[edda.livejournal.com]

I want to veil my face and come sit at your mother's feet like a novice before a statue of the Buddha. I will bring yea much incense and many sweet snacks.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heh. She likes brownies a lot.