hoarding | Good Times with Jess

One of the people I live with has a flexible relationship with the truth. RB will say whatever she wants to get what she wants. Add her darling smile, munchable cheeks, long lashes and I must continue to remind myself that she’s the most untrustworthy person in my life.

If I call her out, she’ll double down and get VERY angry. She can be an absolute lunatic. All she needs is a spray tan and she could run for president. Which is very triggering.

RB does not have stacks of confidential documents in her bathroom, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did.

I often pick her up from school and one of her hands will be closed in a sweaty, clenched fist. I now know to ask,

“What’s in there?”

“Something I found.”

“You need to go put it back.”

“I found it.”

“Yes, and it belongs to your school.”

The first time this happened one of her teachers was so kind and said,

“Oh a rock, she can keep that!”

I knew she couldn’t. If that’s the route we took back in September she’d have brought home an entire play structure by now.

At one point, she started filling her backpack with toys from inside the classroom.

She seems to have a hoarding personality. She wants more food on her plate even though she’s not going to eat it. She wants all the animals from Noah’s Ark even though her friends want to play too. She wants our entire collection of popsicle sticks, even though she doesn’t know what she’s going to do with them and now I have no idea where they are.

BB got a magnetic marble run for Christmas. It came with 12 large marbles. There are now several missing. RB offered,

“They might be in my room.”

As if they magically rolled upstairs and she had nothing to do with it.

I was in her classroom the other day and I noticed I didn’t see the book we brought in for her birthday. RB tells me,

“I think someone put it behind the book shelf.”

Uh huh.

The other morning I took BB to the bus stop, when I came back in one of BB’s drawings had been ruined. I confronted RB about it. She said,

“You didn’t see me do it!”

The idea of a teenage RB terrifies me.

Another presidential quality of hers is that she is very happy to hold everyone else accountable for things she has no intention of applying to herself. She inspects the trash on a regular basis.

The other day she spotted a Reese’s peanut butter cup wrapper. She picked it out and waved it at me. For someone who’s so OCD about a drop of milk while she’s eating her cereal, it’s unfathomable that she continues to grab things out of the trash.

I have nothing to hide, except my favorite candies, I tell her,

“I ate a Reese’s.” And you didn’t see me do it.

RB looks forward to a bag of fruit snacks AFTER swim lessons. I haven’t eaten fruit snacks in 30 years, but somehow, now that they’re in my handbag, they’re hard to resist. I munch on them on the way TO swim. RB yells,

“How come I smell gummies?! ARE YOU EATING MY GUMMIES?!?!?!”

You are eating my gummies and not until after swim.

The first sign that she may be running for President was when she was two. Her grandmother took her to brush her teeth and asked her which toothbrush was hers. She pointed to it. Her teeth were brushed and off to bed she went.

Grandma then took BB in to brush her teeth. BB picked up the SAME toothbrush and brushed her own teeth. At which point Grandma realized she had been bamboozled and it was too late.

Don’t try to tell me RB didn’t know which toothbrush was hers. She KNOWS. She saw an opportunity to use her sister’s and she took it.

Also at two, RB’s grandma was helping her get her shoes on. She was asked to go get socks. She came back with a pair of her sister’s socks and had a whole spiel about how these are HER socks and she got them for HER birthday.

When we arrive at school, there’s a table with everyone’s name tag. The tags have a photo and their name. RB grabs hers easily. One day all the tags were turned upside down. It had their name only, no photo. RB was perplexed. She stared and stared.

Proof that what I thought was true: she doesn’t know her letters. Another presidential qualification?

She picked up a tag with a name the equivalent of Theodore. I said,

“Good try, but that’s not your name. Try again.”

Instead of going back to the table, she thrust the Theodore tag at me and hollered,

“IT IS MY NAME! It has two “Es”!”

So President Theodore she is.

Reality and the truth have never felt more subjective or imperiled. May there be mercy for our country and my home.

The self-declared fastest skier on the slopes. You don’t need me to fact check that for you

I’m hoarding coffee, chocolate covered popcorn and potassium iodide. Only one of those may be useful during a nuclear winter.

So while I understand more COVID variants are on the way, my news consumption has veered toward the war.

Captain on the other hand, has been able to remain on high alert for multiple disaster scenarios.

He’s by far the most cautious member of our family. And I continue to underestimate that. I booked zip lining in Denali without even thinking he might not be up for it. After a decent campaign on my part, he’s a cautious yes.

Of the four of us, Captain has managed to stay home the most. His occasional trip to Home Depot is enough to make him swear it off for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile RB has been back in the YMCA playroom for a year now, with a runny nose every other week to prove it.

Captain went from staying home to hanging out with 100,000 of his closest friends at Disney World.

We waited in our fair share of lines and if you’re going to wait in line, Disney World is the place to do it. There’s plenty to see and if you ask BB, TOUCH! As we meandered through line after line, BB touched, caressed, tapped, rubbed, patted EVERY possible surface.

Captain looked like one of those cartoon characters whose face is getting redder and redder until smoke comes out of his ears.

He asked BB, he implored BB, he explained, he scolded, he stared, he shook his head, he brooded. To no avail. It seemed her goal was to leave no surface untouched.

Meanwhile this is the same kid who will not touch ANYTHING that has been on her sister’s plate. BB could be desperate for more chocolate. If the only chocolate left is on RB’s plate, BB will abstain. Even if RB never put a finger on it, once it’s on her plate BB deems it too foul to even contemplate.

As Captain tries to grapple with his world of limited-germ exposure imploding, I glance at BB. She’s running her slightly open mouth along a hand rail.

If we leave Disney World without COVID, it won’t be for a lack of trying to get it.

Or maybe we’d already had it? We hadn’t been testing every runny nose we got. So I thought, who knows? A month later I confirmed that we did NOT have it before.

First Captain was congested. He asked,

“Should I take a test?”

“Sure!”

He decided not to. I didn’t push for it. See aforementioned most cautious family member.

Then I was congested and RB was congested. Still no test taking. I was leading my normal life: exercising, corralling children. Then boom, I couldn’t smell my coffee. COVID test was positive.

I lost my taste and smell for a week. That sucked a lot more than I thought it would.

Moral of the story is, if you’re tempted to lick the high-touch surfaces of Disney World. Go for it.

Now we’re “boosted” again and I’m free to direct all thoughts of impending doom into building a nuclear fall-out shelter. Hence all the chocolate covered popcorn.