Quotes and Banter

These are the years of coming and going.

I thought surely I'd remember, in years to come, which winter it was when Amy first went to EBI and when Matt moved to Corvallis and when Emily went to SMBI and when Ben went to Toronto.  But I'm afraid when I remember these years it'll be like those fast-forwarded YouTube videos of train stations with blurred people randomly rushing in and out.

I think Matt moved out when he was 21, which is six years ago.  This past winter, we were down to three children at home, the least since before Ben was born.

Now, we're back to five.

And they are almost all grownups, which makes for a whole different dynamic than when they're all adolescents, fighting over the last cookie and the front seat.

It still makes for an awful lot of dishes, though.

It also makes for conversation.  Discussions, opinions, and witty repartee.  I think I have the most clever and interesting offspring in the universe.  If this sentiment nauseates you, which wouldn't surprise me, you can go read the Nasdaq reports now instead of this post.

Here.

If you're still with us, a few quotes:

Emily: Wait. Hershey's a Mennonite name?
Ben: Yeah! The Hershey chocolate guy's mom was a Mennonite. And I think the Kraft guy was a Mennonite too.
Emily: Wow! And Smuckers! So all the big food companies are Mennonite?!?
Ben: Well, I doubt the people that started ramen noodles were Mennonite.

My children didn't think that was very funny, but I thought it was hilarious.  I posted it on Facebook and 77 people liked it, so I felt vindicated. 

Emily: Did you know Steven and Jenny left Aunt Rosie's one time after choir and went north instead of south on the freeway and didn't figure it out for TEN MINUTES??
Steven: She's a bad guide.
Jenny: HEY!  YOU listened to me!

Ben: That's the problem with having a mom like ours. Sometimes I want to use this word and I'm like, Ok, is this just an obscure English word or is it Dutch? Like vish. Or miskeen.
Emily: Actually, miskeen is Arabic.
Ben: It is??
Me: I learned it from Aunt Rebecca.

Ben: Oh.

Just f.y.i.: "Vish" means a big batch, like I'm going to make a vish of cookies or he got in a vish of trouble.
Miskeen means poor, pathetic, pitiful. Like the miskeen little man in the checkout line counting out his change, or the miskeen high school team getting crushed by the Scio Loggers.

Me: I do enjoy the repartee when you guys are together.
Amy: I do enjoy having a mother who uses words like "repartee."

Awwww. 

Emily: People with British accents are taken much more seriously than people with Southern accents.
Jenny: Yes. Unless they're people with Southern accents and a gun.

Steven: [sings cheerfully]

Ben: You should sing on the radio.
Steven: Why?
Ben: So we could change stations.

It seems like some kids are over-represented in these quotes and some are under-quoted.  Hmmm.

Such as Amy, who is away a lot more than any of the others, putting in long days at Grocery Depot and then, when she is home, not talking as much as some others.

Jenny says, "Amy says things that are very relevant but you can't talk about them on your blog."

That is very true.  Too bad for you.

 Amy also writes cool stuff like this:

After working all day at a grocery store, surrounded with plastic-packaged food, I had this lovely moment this evening, picking wild blackberries at the edge of a grass seed field at sunset: I just started thinking about these incredibly delicious morsels of juicy energy, and they just grow, without money or time or effort put into them, and I might pick them and enjoy them, or a passing robin might have one for a snack, but they might just be there, in their shiny purple-black glory...and I may just decide to be a hermit and eat nuts and berries and just BE with the rest of Creation and ponder deep and beautiful things for the rest of my life.

I talked with Matt this evening on Skype.  Thankfully he's survived all the recent craziness in DC--shootings, furloughs, shutdowns--and is back at work for the Navy since he's a civilian.  Recently he bought another car, upgrading from his very old previous car that didn't have an air conditioner until he got to DC and needed one a lot worse than in Oregon, so like a good engineer he rigged up a house-window AC unit and had it sitting in the front seat.

He said he could have gotten into that old car and buckled in and started it and put it in gear blindfolded.  Now, he says, when he gets in his new car it's nice but "I always feel like I'm committing automobile adultery."

I always felt very removed from national politics.  Not any more.  Matt also said, "Whether or not your son comes home for Christmas is directly affected by whether or not Congress passes an appropriation."

Please, Congress??  Would you mind???

We close with a statement from the children's Aunt Lois, on how she gets things done:

 "I'm not organized.  I'm just bossy."

I am surrounded by interesting people.  Lucky me.