Mary + Her Mental Health

Here is what usually happens. I’m up a good three to four hours before everyone else since I’m still on east coast time. This is great because I can read, shower, walk the dog, whatever I want. After a while, though, I’m ready to pounce on the creatures upstairs sleeping because I’m bored. I didn’t come home to watch them sleep. Somewhere between 10 and noon, Leanne will emerge, followed by Laura. Princess Jennie Sue should be gracing us around 1, and Amanda will eventually show up at the house around 3 because the girl is a freakin’ narcolept. Once arisen, we usually find ourselves in Dad’s recliner. All of us. We do things like make gross sounds with our mouths directly in the ear of another. We pop zits, sing loudly, pinch, hit, and laugh. We laugh a lot. We talk about what we want to do that day, and who is showering first. We’ll argue about who started what and how bad someone’s breath is. Someone starts to tell a story, and then someone else jumps in to tell it more accurately. Inevitably, someone will scream out in pain when an elbow digs into someone’s rib. Later on, we may actually make it out of the house to do fun stuff. But it doesn’t really matter that much to me. All I really want is to have them near me. And after our day of shopping or movie-going, or nothing whatever, we’ll stay up too late hanging out, watching a DVD on the Bose Home Theater System, eating pan popcorn, and doing the same exact thing we did that morning. Lounging altogether in the recliner and pulling one another’s hair.