I LOVE DUCKY

Yesterday when Zeb was in his room with the door closed playing his electric guitar and my mom was downstairs talking to Mrs. K. and DO was walking around the neighborhood taking photographs, OSFO "borrowed" her mother's laptop to start this blog.

OSFO doesn't get a lot of time alone in the apartment. And that's mostly a good thing because she hate to be alone at home -- it's creepy.

But OSFO was glad to have the time to figure out how to start a blog. It turned out to be pretty easy, actually. You don't need a credit card or anything.

OSFO decided to start this blog because she's really angry at her mom for having a blog, She spends way too much time writing on her computer and no time listening to OSFO. Oh she'll tell you that she really listens. But she hears what she thinks OSFO is saying and not what OSFO is really saying.

Like when OSFO tells her how much she hates Taylor who sits at her table at school. She wants her mom to talk to her teacher about moving him or me somewhere else. He is such an idiot and he never shuts up.

OSFO hates annoying people.

Also, some days, OSFO doesn't feel like going to school and wishes her mom would let her have a mental health day like she does with Zeb. What is a mental health day, anyway?

But the real thing OSFO is upset about: She doesn't want to go to the sleep-away camp she signed me up for. It's for two weeks starting on July 8th. She'll tell you that OSFO told her she wanted to go to camp. But OSFO didn't really mean it.

That's why OSFO doens't like to say too much around her mom. If OSFO says that she likes someone's shoes SM will say, 'Do you want a pair of those?' If OSFO says, I like the Read-Aloud book my teacher Gaby is reading, she'll say 'Should I get more books like that?' So maybe OSFO said something about sleepaway camp and BOOM: 'I signed you up for sleepaway camp.'

Great.

OSFO prayed they wouldn't have enough room but they did. She didn't want to tell her mom that she didn't want to go. She'd make a big thing about that, too.

That's the trouble. She makes EVERYTHING a BIG DEAL and OSFO hates that.

So, going to sleep-away is like a giant balloon filled with lead weights hanging in the sky above OSFO. She just can't get it out of her mind. Being without her family for two weeks (even if they are annoying). What if she gets really, really, really, really, really homesick? What if she feels like crying?

OSFO still sleep in the big bed with her parents sometims..

OSFO hopes that that day in July never comes. Maybe that day will be eliminated from the calendar: July 8th has been cancelled this year. Maybe it'll snow or there will be a hurricane or a tsunami.

Sure.

Most of all, OSFO is going to miss her 2-year-old cousin, Ducky from Russia. She lives a few blocks away in Brooklyn but she was born in Russia and was adopted by OSFO's beautiful wonderful special perfect Aunt DD.

Ducky is the best thing that ever happened to OSFO because she is so, so, so very cute with her red hair. She loves the way she smells. And the way that she giggles hysterically when we play Hide-and-Seek. She loves rubbing baby lotion on her tiny bottom after her bath. Oh and she loves to give her a bath.

She loves to put her to sleep by reading "Good Night Moon" when she points at the moon and says moon in her cute little voice.

And she hates it when she goes to sleep. She can't keep myself from going in and checking on her, "Stay out of there," Aunt DD will scream. "Ducky's going to sleep."

Sometimes she accidentally wake her up.

OSFO has a picture of Ducky naked at the beach on my Writer's Notebook that she looks at all the time. Taylor, that annoying boy who sits next to OSFO said, "Is that you?"

She stared him down and said, "No, like, I don't have red hair. That's my cousin, STUPID."

So OSFO is going to miss Ducky so, so, so, much when she goes to that stupid sleep away camp.

Two weeks without Ducky sounds yucky. Like her poem. OSFO wishes she could come with her Maybe Aunt DD will let OSFO take DUCKY away.

Yeah, right.

OSFO would spend all her time with Groovy Aunt and Ducky excpet for the Grumpster. That's Aunt DD's husband. He's so grumpy all the time, he doesn't like noise, he doesn't like mess, he doesn't like anything that kids do.

OSFO doesn't now why she ever married him. SM gets mad when I say that but it's true. OSFO remembers Groovy Aunt before she got married. She lived in a tiny apartment near where they set up the ballons for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. One time they stayed over and saw the Elmo and Teletubbie balloon.

OSFO isn't sure if she really remembers that of if she's seen the pictures a lot of times. Either way, it was really cool.

Life was better before Aunt DD got married to The Grumpster. She used to sleep over on the cot that we call the colorful bed because it has a striped mattress.

But OSFO knows that if she hadn't gotten married then she wouldn't have found out that she couldn't have her own baby then she wouldn't have decided to adopt and she wouldn't have gone to Russia to get DUCKY.

And now OSFO is just so so so so so lucky to have Ducky. Like the poem?