How I Spent My Summer, by Girl

9 A.M. Use pillow to cover head and drown out whine from outside my door. Something about "Just what do you think this is, Missy?"

Hmm... let me think... Maybe summer vacation, Mom?

*Snore.... *

9:30 A.M. Am jolted awake by someone re-enacting some wrestling moves he learned on television that he was not supposed to be watching.

"Mom said I should wake you up!" my brother yells, as he jams his elbow into my rib cage.

I could complain to my mom, but then she'd be like "Well, I guess you should have listened to me the first time." No sympathy there, let me tell you. And she'll be happy to provide a list of all the things she's already done this a.m. while I lay in bed like I was some kind of princess or something.

So I'm not going there.

I stumble downstairs but don't even bother asking about breakfast either, lest I get the "What do you think I am, a short order cook?" spiel. "Breakfast was two hours ago," she'll say.

Hel-looo, lady, I want to remind her, she doesn't actually make breakfast then, either. Really "making breakfast" is passing the milk across the table so I can pour it onto these cardboard flakes she insists we eat for breakfast.

In any case, I say nothing and pour my own breakfast. It's important to avoid as many of these lectures as possible, because God knows there are enough of them already, and we've already checked off two, between the "Are you kidding me? Fighting already? It's 9:30 in the morning!" Or, "Are you talking to ME? You better not be talking to me, young lady! If you want to talk to me, you come here. I will not have this shrieking from three floors away nonsense." (Of course, when she wants to talk to ME, she just yells.)

Mom leaves the room. Something about how she can't bear watching me eat, I take so long. Well maybe if she didn't serve up cardboard flakes, I could put them down more than one at a time.

10:40 A.M. I finish. NO, just kidding. It didn't take that long. Yes it did. No it didn't. Yes it did. NO, it didn't! You're such an exaggerator. No you are. I HATE YOU!

Mornings are not good around here.

Well, neither really are the days or the evenings, when you're a pre-teen girl who can't see two feet in front of herself because it is necessary to roll my eyes up into the back of my head in order to emphasize every point around here, but still.

Anyway, that describes pretty much every morning of my summer, except for the two heavenly weeks I went to sleep-away camp, armed with enough sunscreen to coat the entire camping population and assorted hats, too. Just in case.

The days themselves all varied, depending on where we were, and what we were doing, but I developed a handy-dandy 1-10 ranking system based on how much my mom embarrassed me in order to tell them apart.

A 1, for example, would be the mild, generic type of embarrassment, where your mom wears her dorky khaki shorts to drop you off at camp.

And then says hi to people. (Actually, the "hi" part steps it right up to a 2.)

Automatic 3 for the day if she wears that darned hat, too.

Unfortunately, with my mom, most days ranged in the 7-10 category, as you probably know, from reading this blog of hers.

You shoulda seen the day we non-stalked the Yarn Harlot, a raging 12.5-er, as I live and breathe. But I'm not going to tell you about that day, because she already has, and I can't possibly bear to live through it again, so I will tell you about another one - a mere 10.5 on my scale - which also occurred while we were on the Cape, but this time spending a day in Wellfleet with some good friends who were visiting. (Apparently this tendency toward long sentences is inherited.)

We stopped in at a popular restaurant for lunch, and my mom and I go ask the hostess for a table. The lady says there is a long wait.

My mom goes, "Forty-five minutes for lunch? I don't think so - and certainly not with these two," she adds, using her head to point to me and my brother, who is busying himself kicking a stranger's chair. "Especially not that one," my mom says, grabbing him. "We could rent him as birth control."

The lady laughs, but I can tell that inside, she's like "What a dork!"

But that's not even the worst.

We're pulling out of the lot, and my mom suddenly screams, and then yells for my dad to roll down his window and practically climbs on top of him to yell out: "Hey, GATHERED PULLOVER!" at some stranger sitting there, minding her own business and taking in some rays while she waits for her table. (Because she doesn't have kids, apparently.)

The lady looks up in shock.

"Gathered pullover," my mom repeats, gesturing from her rather awkward position at the woman's sweater. "It looks great!"

The lady smiles (but I know inside she's like "What a dork!") and says, "Um... thank you," with that tell-tale pause that means she wanted to add, "you dork."

Then my mom asks her what yarn she used because it looks so nice. And then my mom tries - from her butt-in-the-air position in the car, to discuss her own adventures with the making of the gathered pullover and the bad, bad, bad yarn she used.

The lady does not look like she gives a crap. I mean, a patootie. But my mom perseveres, because, she is flippin' nuts, and she thinks that just because a person knits they are insta-buddies or something.

And that is not even the worst: As we are pulling out, my mom yells to the car of our friends, and POINTS out the lady like she is an exhibit in the zoo, so they can all look at her sweater, too.

Some days I am so grateful the back windows of our car are darkened and no one can see in.

Then, all the way home my mom says things like "Isn't that so cool?" when no one in the car really thinks it is.

My dad pretends it is for a little while, and then says, "Does this mean we are we stopping at the yarn store on the way home?"

Mom actually says "No, no, don't mind me. Besides, I am on a yarn diet, and I have to finish these three six sweaters first before I buy anything else."

But there isn't a soul in that car who doesn't know she is going to obsess about this yarn until she gets her hot sweaty hands on some.

Nuh-uh. Uh-huh. Nuh-uh. Uh-huh. Nuh-uh. You're such an exaggerator. Am not. Are too. Am not. Are too!

OK. Just a little. It's on order, though. So I don't technically HAVE it.

Any-way...

So that's pretty much it. Every day, really, was just about finding ways to hide. You shoulda seen the day I had to bring her to school with me for orientation. The teacher told us to tell everyone something interesting about our parents, and I was like, "What the heck to I have to say about her? She has a blog and yells a lot? I don't need people thinking I am the daughter of a loud-mouth, flat-chested porn star!"

I finally came up with something that made her look smart and you shoulda heard the gasp that came out of that lady's mouth. I was soooooooooo embarrassed.

The very worst day, though, was the last. She got an invitation to try out for that TV show Wife Swap, and she just laughed and laughed, though of course she will talk about it incessantly because it's probably the most interesting thing that happened to her all summer.

"Can you even imagine?!" she says, pooh-pooh-ing the idea like it's just some crazy talk.

Actually, I want to tell her, we really, really can.

Take my mom. Please!

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The folks over at humor-blogs are not embarrassed by their moms.