Part 7 

Time passes by when you’re least expecting it; you wake up one day and realize that weeks have passed you by and you’re left wondering where exactly the time went.

That right there pretty much summed up my life… and the here and now.  I mean I pretty much came alive when I was called into slayer service and everything after that just spiraled into some kind of blurry nothingness.

My mom, Dawn, Giles, Alain:  Now that I think about it, and I have been, thinking about it that is, I’m thinking that I’m getting my second breath of air, coming alive again so to speak… but to be honest, it’s more like… I thought I knew about life, love and living but with each passing day I come to realize that I didn’t really know squat… cause this here, with this family, now this was living.  It gave me a purpose, they gave me a purpose and I finally felt at peace.

I’d finally gotten the hang of watching Amanda without burning down the house, don’t get me wrong, we still had tons of mishaps and most of them my doing.

One in particular comes to mind and it proved to be a huge embarrassment. 

A few weeks ago, I’d gotten a job, and to be honest, I’d called in an old favor from an old friend, Robin Wood.  He recommended me for a part time counseling position at the local school.  Of course it was catholic, and I didn’t mind, didn’t know anything about Catholicism but that’s beside the point, they needed help with the troubled teens and that’s what I was gonna do; give them help, regardless of whether they wanted it or not.

Okay, so to get into the teen frame of mind, I decided if you want to win them, join in and I did, musically speaking of course.  I’d just rock out day and night, make the hand signs, bob my head and carry on like a big dope. And this is where I made my first big mistake.  I’d gotten in the habit of making some kind of hand sign and stating ‘rock on’.

And you’re probably thinking why is that a mistake.  Well, see, me and my bright ideas decided to teach it to Amanda, who’s like three and a half now, she’s small but she’s so bright for her age really; like she can talk very well, well pretty much and she can potty but you’re asking for trouble if you let her wipe herself.

I got off track.  Okay, so I taught her to say rock on and make the hand sign.  And I’m just as pleased as punch, or I was up until Faith came home.

Amanda was so thrilled to learn something new and she ran right up to faith, shot her a bird and said, “fuck on mommy.”

Faith stopped dead in her tracks, looked down at her little girl and asked disbelievingly, “What?” 

To make matters worse she picked Amanda up, I’m guessing to get her closer to her ears.  By this point and time, I’m cringing, cause really, I’d no idea her ‘rock on’ would sound like that, but now that I’m thinking about it, she can’t say butterfly either, it comes out as fuckafly.

So I watched in fear.

Faith looked at her again and asked, “what?” 

And little Amanda smiled big, shot another bird and blurted out something that sounded like, “fuckher mommy.”

Faith arched her brows and looked directly at me and me, well I was looking at the floor, the ceiling, the door was looking pretty good, anything but looking into Faith’s eyes.

I finally sighed and explained about the ‘rock on’ and got a ‘you fix it’ speech and believe me it was a lot worse than the yard work debacle.

Just a week ago, I was working outside and I tipped over the wheel barrel again and I threw a tool and said something to the extent of, ‘I’m sick of all this shit’, and low and behold, later that night, Faith was reading in her rocker as usual and Amanda walked to the door and pointed out it and said, “mommy, look at all that shit out there’.

Faith actually smiled at that before cutting her eyes at me, and me, well, I was cringing, waiting for the earth to swallow me up.

Okay so back to the problem at hand and the new words learned or mis-learned to be more accurate.  I’d created an embarrassing little monster cause little did I know it yet, but I’d have to go to work for a crisis.

Faith was at the doctor’s office and I was alone with Amanda and the phone started ringing off the hook. Long story short:  A kid was crashing, talking suicide, stuff like, ‘I give up’… so I got up and went, no questions asked.  They called; I went.

So I grabbed up Amanda and we headed to school. 

So we’re walking past the nuns or sisters, who weren’t very tolerant of my living arrangement anyways, and they hesitated and scowled at Amanda and me as we’re walking up to them and past them.

What do you think Amanda did?  Well I’ll tell you.  She shot them a bird and said, “fuck on.”

They scowled, huffed and scurried away from us sinners… so we entered the room with the deranged kid, who was being questioned by yet another sister.

Amanda goes right over, hangs ten, or really a bird and tells them all, “fuck on.”

The sister acts like the devil incarnate just invaded heaven, the kid laughs like crazy and everything turns out just fine.  Go figure.

Another day, another dollar and I’m looking for… another job, so until I find one, or Robin can hook me up again, I’m back to watching Amanda so Faith can write.

And this brings us to today or THE DAY, as we’re all calling it.

Faith and I had a little argument over Amanda’s… ‘Pets’.  See its like this, she’d gotten some baby lizards and had been keeping them in a cricket cage, complete with cricket’s, flies and whatever else they eat.

So I’m making some lunch and she comes bee bopping into the kitchen and I sit her up on the counter and that’s when I see lizards attached to her ear lobes, just hanging there; of course I freak out, scream a bit, cause I’m thinking they’re attacking her… so I’m trying to hit them off of her and I’m freaking out more and in turn freaking her out.

I finally knock them off of her and she starts balling, yelling bout her ‘rear rings’ and I’m completely, utterly, baffled and silent.  I mean; she was wearing them on her ears as jewelry.  What kind of rational person would’ve thought that?  I certainly didn’t.

Faith pretty much came downstairs and explained to me, that you just squeeze the lizard slightly, their mouth opens and you give them your ear to bite, let go of them and they’ll hang on forever or until they die.

I watch in stunned silence as Faith returns to writing, well as she waddles back to work and think to myself, this is way to country for my ass; seriously, its like a squirrel runs past them and they automatically get out a knife and fork; me I go, wow that’s a squirrel and they go, mmmmm, dinner.

So, Faith leaves me with a squalling kid and I can’t do anything because it’s ‘my fault’ that her… ‘pets’, ran off.  After… two minutes of her crying, I’m about ready to self-combust, so I do what any sane, rational woman would do.

I ransack the house for something to catch the lizards in.  What did I find?  Well, the only box we had was a tampon box, so I dumped out the contents and grabbed up the box and went on a lizard hunt.

I found a stick and there I was, crouched over, sneaking; stick in one hand, empty tampon box in the other, trying to catch the pet lizards.

Five minutes in and I was ready to quit so I turned to look at the still tear stained face of Amanda, trying to explain it away

“I think they’re gone.”  I said lowly.

“Nooooooooo.”  She screamed.

I inwardly rolled my eyes and started looking again, poking my stick in the bushes and along the flowers and that’s when I saw it, a long green tail. 

I readied myself, set my feet and got my special lizard equipment ready.

I lunged, box down, ready to retrieve, the stick in scoop and flick mode. 

The lizard ran.  I blocked with the box, flicked the beast with the stick, moved the box to intercept and the thing, at the last minute, caught hold of the stick, and jumped for freedom, only it’s freedom was right between my eyes.

I started screaming, jumping around, flailing the tampon box and stick, acting like I’m being eaten alive.  The lizard’s faking me out; right, left, its beady little red eyes watching me for any sudden movements.

And I moved:  I bolted forward and ran into the porch railing, the ringing of the metal meeting my head rung out loud and proud.  I stilled momentarily and fell over backwards, still clutching the box and stick.

When I woke up, everything was blurry.  Amanda was sitting across my stomach, jumping, pushing the air out of my lungs and Faith was laughing, holding up a video recorder.

I reached up and felt a huge goose egg right between my eyes.  Faith finally lowered the camera and offered me a hand up, which at that point I accepted it, cause truthfully I was still dazed.

I got the rest of the day off and some TLC, which I really needed, even Amanda cut me some slack, she didn’t accuse me of losing her lizards, however she was still blaming me for killing her fish.

Really the fish weren’t my fault.  We went fishing, caught a few and while she was playing I filleted them, who knew she thought they were her new pets… granted it made eating them kinda grimy, but they were fish.  Never mind.

Anyway, that night, Faith cooked and we settled in the living room to eat dinner and watch some television and that’s when it came back to me that Faith had been taping.

We watched a playback of my lizard hunter days, complete with slow mo and playback.

I’ll tell you, life with these two, is anything but dull and truth be told, it’s quite a funny tape.

So funny in fact that Faith uploaded it and sent it to everyone we knew.

Payback is a dish best served cold I thought as I looked over at my tormentor.

I shook my head and smiled.

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