Quantum Leaping

My May schedule is kicking my butt straight into June.

I know this time of year is busy for everyone, but I'm starting to feel like Scott Bakula, just zip-zip-zipping through time and then - FLASH! - I wake up and I'm not entirely sure of what day it is.

I've actually had some good thoughts for posts, but by the time I make it to the computer in the evening I only have enough steam to type out a few paragraphs in my draft before I'm spent. This blog is a marathon, people, not a sprint. This caliber of mediocrity cannot be created off the cuff.

Well, it can, but not this week.

In an ideal world, I would be able to find a way to pull all the funny, random bits of my life together into one cohesive post, but let's face it: we won't be living in an ideal world until Jesus returns. And when that happens, I'm thinking that I won't have a ton of time to live blog the Second Coming.

You'll just have to take the random as it comes, my friends. Par for the course.

Today, I got to take a road trip with the younger kids when we had lunch with my grandmother, mother, and sister.

If you have ever thought, at one time or another, that this blog or its author, is funny or even slightly amusing, then you should meet my Granny. Granny is what one might call "a trip."

In fact, I never called her Granny until Francie was born. She decided that since she had never been called "Granny," and she had always wanted to be a "Granny," then by gum, her great-grandkids would call her Granny.

Now we all call her Granny because she's always reinventing herself. She's like the Puff Daddy/P.Diddy/Puffy of the family. (And if those names mean nothing to you, just be consoled by the fact that I only know them because I am rotting my brain with "People" magazine. You don't really need to know them at all.)

I can always count on Granny for a good story about her youthful hi-jinks, and today was no different. I told her that I was going to start blogging her stories because that's just a gold mine of material for me.

Today, she told us all about her neighbor who got herself the Ugliest Baby in the World.

My Granny used to babysit for her neighbor, who was a nurse. Granny's neighbor knew a woman in the military who gave birth, and, since in those days you weren't allowed to have babies when you were in the military, the neighbor took the baby home.

Just like that. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. As Granny says, "in those days you didn't bother with a lot of things."

Like paperwork, apparently.

So the nurse neighbor brought the baby home and asked Granny to babysit, but when Granny saw the baby, she said she nearly fainted because it was "the ugliest baby in the world."

Granny has seen a lot of babies in her day, but she still remembers this one as being the ugliest she'd ever seen. She said it was very strange looking, completely covered with hair, and it was not very strong, either (which, as an aside, makes me wonder if the baby was a preemie, since those can be markers of prematurity. hmmm.).

Meanwhile, Granny's mother, my great-grandmother, a woman who gave birth to thirteen children, promptly declared that the baby was dying. She'd seen her fair share of sick babies, so she probably had a good idea of what she was looking at.

But the neighbor, undeterred by both the baby's ugliness and weakness, refused to give up on the baby and successfully nursed it back to health.

With what did she nurse it, you might ask? Milk? Formula? Nope, something a little stronger.

Whiskey. Straight up whiskey, my friends. The neighbor gave this baby whiskey to strengthen its heart. AND IT WORKED.

Granny said that by seven or eight months old, the baby was beautiful and healthy, and the neighbor's little boy called his dad to tell him that they had a new baby at the house.

Of course, the neighbor's husband was away with the Merchant Marine, so she had a little explaining to do, I guess.

"Oh, hi, Honey! Don't worry, I got a baby from a military gal, and it was really weak, and the neighbors thought it was ugly and that it would die, but I nursed it back to health with your finest aged single malt and everything's great now! See you when you get back!"

In the end, the baby's biological mother came and took the baby back, and that was the end of the story as far as my Granny was concerned, but can you even imagine something like that happening today? No way, we have too much government for that to happen these days (which can be both good and bad, I guess).

So now, even though I've been left hanging, wondering whatever happened to the ugly duckling baby who lived on whiskey, I'm thinking that I should just get my blog material from Granny.

I think you would love her "I'm An Octogenarian" song.

My grandparents, out on a date