“I have unclasp’d to thee the book even of my secret soul.” ~Twelfth Night

My dad coached basketball nearly all my young life; from a very early age I can remember going to the gym with him and bouncing a ball along the sideline. To this day, the smell of popcorn in a gymnasium does wonderful things for my psyche; it gives me a special kind of adrenaline rush to walk into that environment. I sat behind my dad at games, listened to his words, absorbed the environment. His ball players babysat me, I got to twirl batons at halftimes, mom put yarn pom-poms in my hair so I could match the cheerleaders, and basketball became a routine part of winter life in the Bartscher house.

Sadly, I never connected to the game as a player the way that I could have. I played most of my high school career with varying levels of success. No one would ever accuse me of being especially good at it, but I kept going out for the team mainly because basketball had been so prevalent in my life for so long that it had become a part of the skin I was wearing.

Looking back at the basketball playing memories that have stayed with me, very few of them have anything to do with playing the actual game. I remember that freshman year Coach Cue started me at point guard for our first game of the season. We were in Wells in that dark gym/auditorium and I must have looked shocked because he said, “What’s the matter?” I told him that until that moment I had only ever played post. He said, “you probably could have mentioned that before!” But he started me there nonetheless. That year I learned to see the court from the front half of it for the first time. I also remember that I was a real thorn in the poor man’s side all season. During a frustrating practice where our team (me) was doing everything wrong and we (I) had to do it over and over again, I leaned against the wall in the gym and inadvertently shut off all the gym lights. I flipped them back on of course, but in Blue Earth’s old junior high gym the lights needed time to “warm up.” There was tense silence, followed by a deep sigh. It must have taken a supreme amount of control for Coach to dismiss us for the day and only glare at me as I walked by instead of throttling me as I probably deserved.

When senior year rolled around, I’m sorry to say that I decided to stop playing ball. There is a long and complicated reason for that, which I won’t elaborate on today. But the short answer is that it had stopped being fun. All the wonderful parts of the sport had become lost for me and I decided I needed to be finished. My dad bore it well; he never pressed me or pushed me to stay. I credit my parents over and over for always being able to see what I needed and set their own feelings aside – there are many examples of that in my life and I feel so lucky for that. I turned in my practice jersey one cold November afternoon and went home after school with an odd sense of detachment.

Coach Cue found me the next morning. He didn’t ask me to reconsider – he asked me instead to help him coach the freshman team. I was so surprised – the thought had never occurred to me before. That moment became a pivotal moment in my life. I am certain I would have never looked at a basketball court again after high school were it not for that invitation.

The first time I sat next to him on the bench during a game, he leaned over and discussed coaching decisions with me the entire game. That was the first time I realized how much more there was to the game of basketball than my limited experience as a player had afforded me. I began to see offensive patterns developing, I saw defensive weaknesses, I learned that chemistry on the floor is more important than individual skill. It was like getting a new pair of eyeglasses – I could see the basketball world so much more clearly from the sideline and a whole new passion emerged in me. I found that I could talk basketball with my dad on a completely different level, bringing me even closer to him through coaching than being a player ever could.

I helped Coach Cue for the first time in 1993; I have coached a basketball team every single winter since that year – for 23 years now – and learned something new every single year. When I got to college I looked up the local high school coach and volunteered my services. That opened the door to get a position as a 6th grade traveling coach for a local Wisconsin program. After college I landed back in Blue Earth for a year where Coach Cue hired me back again as his freshman coach. When I moved to Colorado and found my first teaching position, Robert Crowther took me under his wing as the Varsity Assistant Coach. That was especially challenging; Colorado basketball is vastly different from Minnesota basketball. It took me three or four years to get that entirely figured out – especially that trademark match-up zone he so masterfully commanded. Coming back home, I was worried I would have to wait a while to find a place in a program; I shouldn’t have been concerned. Between the CER youth programs I do three times a year, the school ball program where I’ve coached every single level from 7th grade to assistant varsity, and the traveling association programs, I have had my fill of basketball.

I’ve had some special players over the years, special seasons and important milestones in coaching. For the last three years, I’ve been especially lucky to coach my own daughter’s traveling team for basketball. I was worried about that a little; my dad never coached one of my teams. Each time I reached his level, he swapped positions with another coach in the program. I really really wanted him to coach me – but he always felt that it wouldn’t be fair either to me or to the other players. I’ve been really mindful of that, coaching Emma. I’ve tried to be as impartial and careful as I can be when it comes to her and the team. I hope I’ve done well, though there was one embarrassing moment when I jumped up and hollered “Emma Ruth!” at her when she picked up another unnecessary foul. I have to restrain myself from using the middle name anywhere outside of our house.

This team of 18 wonderful girls has been the highlight of these last three years. I’ve loved watching them develop – I remember when they could barely dribble and walk at the same time and now they can run complex plays and transition the floor almost autonomously. I made a promise to myself and a commitment to their parents that I would care more about their development than I do about their wins. We divide evenly into teams every single week, every girl gets exactly the same opportunity to learn every position and to learn every skill. I’ve never divided them into A and B teams – the day you tell a girl that she is a “B” player is the day she stops believing she can ever be more than that. I know that time is coming, but I just don’t believe in doing that when they are still young and growing and learning.

This philosophy has had so many benefits: they get along with each other on an exceptional level. Believe me, I have coached girls for a LONG time and that is a rare thing. When they show up to every practice and know that I’m going to work them exactly the same, treat them exactly the same, and give every girl exactly the same opportunity, the impulse to compete AGAINST each other is replaced with a drive to compete collaboratively WITH each other – and that’s a game-changer. And believe it or not, this whole fairness thing has resulted in wins – both teams win, they win a lot, they come home with lots of hardware and the best part is that I don’t have a clear top and a clear bottom. I have lots and lots of good athletes – the higher skilled players set the bar and the lower skilled players strive to meet the expectation – and I don’t think they even have any idea that’s what’s happening.

Next year, however, they will be 7th graders. Their school ball team will divide them, and I have no idea how or what will happen when that happens. I don’t know if everyone will stay out, I don’t know if anyone will be disappointed or upset with the outcome – I have no control over it. I hope that whatever happens they will look back on these three years as fondly as I do. We’ve laughed and been silly and been sad and weathered bad refs and terrible fouls and concession stand food together. We have a million pictures of a million beautiful moments and I’m going to treasure them.

I’m currently coaching the 8th grade school ball team, so I will probably get them back in a year or so, for one last hurrah before I send them to the high school program. I feel like I’m handing over my cherished possessions and hoping that the high school receives them with the same love I’ve poured into them. They will be a fun group to watch – up and comers with skill and purpose and the best sense of teamwork I’ve seen in a long while. May they be successful, may they stay together, may they love each other, may they continue to work hard and love this game. And may I have the strength to let them go.

I have had a terrible writer’s block this year; I can sit at the computer and stare at a blank screen, willing my fingers to move and they can not. I have tried many writers’ methods of getting jump started – but those seem to work only on my fiction writing. I maintain my fiction work on a separate site, and that one seems to be flourishing this year, but my poor blog – the one I write for my family – is really suffering.

I know that the move has something to do with it. Sometimes when I open the blog, I look at the title and description, and I feel like I’m no longer on “the path less traveled.” Living out on the farm, working toward sustainable living, having our crazy adventures made me feel like we had taken a path of living separate and different from the average bear.

Now we live in town, just like every regular Joe. Our adventures are still pretty entertaining, of course, but I think that it’s time that they fall under a new title.

My love of great literature generates a tendency toward finding a metaphor everywhere I go, in everything I do. Unless I’m in the company of a fellow literary junkie, I try to keep all my references to myself, and live in my own head much of the time. When I started the blog I felt inspired by Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. It was a both a literal and figurative representation of our life on the farm, and I wanted the name of my blog to reflect that. Of course, every possible variation of that was already in use, so The Path Less Traveled was as close as I could get.

Once I decided that I needed a new name for our new chapter, I began searching for the right moniker under which we would continue our family tales. I pored over my literary favorites, looking for allegories and references that felt right. I’m not sure why Ray Bradbury rose to the surface; I have so much love for Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison…I feel like Emerson and Thoreau wrote the template for my life. But Bradbury’s collection of The Martian Chronicles has a stubborn pull. I teach several of his short stories to my 8th graders; he masterfully built a collection around the idea that humans would start over on Mars. His stories are realistic yet fantastic. His characters have depth, they are real in their interactions, despite the surreal environment in which they find themselves. Each story has a deep human truth buried underneath the bells and whistles of a future imagined by that great storyteller.

We are starting over, in a way, by moving to town. We’ve turned a page and imagine a future for ourselves beyond the borders of the farm where we began. So The Gudahl Chronicles it is.

We move forward, we evolve, just like the Bittering family from Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed, the final story in Bradbury’s collection. We cling to our identity, yet press outward in an effort to acclimate. I just love that story; it used to make me shiver when I read it, anticipating some dark outcome from an unseen threat. The threat, it seems, is no threat at all; the change comes from within. It’s wonderful. Dark They Were And Golden Eyed (full text)

And also: if your mom suddenly loses all her friends and her job and nobody talks to her for days and months and years – this is probably why – people don’t like it when you ruffle their feathers. On the bright side, we’ll be able to play lots of board games. Please pay attention the world around you, kiddos. Read the news, read all the news, strive to see the whole picture, and never take anyone’s word on something unless you’ve fact-checked it yourself. And when you do have opinions, vote. Put the right people in charge of this messed-up world. Put people in charge who will leave everyone in their care better than when they found them. When in doubt, love. Lead with love, no matter what. XOXO

We’ve been settling in to the house in town for a couple of months now. I think I will still be adjusting to town life for another year or so, but it is amazing how fast we acclimate to new surroundings. Most of my concern and worry centered around my kids. Collectively, I’ve moved dozens upon dozens of times; I’m actually quite skilled at adapting to new places. But we moved to the farm in 2007, when my kids were 3, 9 months, and still incubating. The farm was the only home any of them remembered, so I have been watching cautiously for signs of stress and trauma.

Cooper had been lamenting about his woefully small bedroom since he was old enough to communicate clearly, so he was fully on board with the new bedroom which roughly tripled his play area. The move placed him right next door to a built-in buddy that he met this summer on his baseball team. We were painting one afternoon with the windows up when I heard this shout through the screen: “HEY COOPER! WANNA COME OUTSIDE AND RIDE BIKE?” Cooper was playing on the floor in the hallway and shot up like a bullet. He hollered, “YEAH! I’M COMING!” And out the door he went. I had to take a moment to ponder the awesomeness. He had never had access to other kids that way before.

It reminded me of two of the best years of my own childhood when I lived in a tiny little house in a tiny little town in northern South Dakota. Renee Brandner lived across the street and I spent two blissful years climbing her apple tree, dancing to Simon and Garfunkel’s Cecelia in her living room, eating whatever amazing hot dish her mother put on the table, and sleeping on piles of pillows on the floor of her bedroom. She was my first best friend, and was so important to my youth. I am so happy that Cooper will have that opportunity.

The girls now have to share a bedroom, which thrilled Carys and caused Emma to shoot searing laser beams in my general direction. There is a “secret reading nook” in this fabulous house, though, so we gave it to Emma along with some bean bag chairs and a fully stocked book shelf which soothed the savage teenager looming inside, at least temporarily. Emma is my most conflicted, which is not surprising given her age. She is young enough to appreciate the social opportunities that town has to offer, but old enough to recognize that she is giving something up in the process. The farm is still for sale, so we make periodic trips out there to clean before a showing or move additional items to town. On one recent trip, I was turning into the driveway when I heard a small choking sob from the seat next to me. Emma was trying (unsuccessfully) to hold off the tears. She said, “I just miss this so much!” And all I could do was stop the car and give her a hug, because I know. I know. I miss it too.

The hardest moment for Carys came when we had to re-home the farm kitties. She had helped Mama Kitty give birth to four pretty little tabbies. She fed them, played with them, cleaned up after them and worried over them for nearly a year. We couldn’t take 5 cats to town, of course, so we found a wonderful farm at a friend’s house for them to grow up. The day we had to gather them, put them in a crate in the back of my car and head down the driveway almost broke me. She sniffled through the packing, dripped big salty tears all over their toys, and then climbed on to Aaron’s lap and let those big wracking sobs take over while Mom drove away with her babies. (For all of you who thought I should let her come along…well…those cats did not take happily to crates. They were a snarling bundle of you know what by the time we got them in the car. I was more concerned that Carys remember Henry & Oliver as sweet lap kittens than as angry Toms, so I went alone. Two weeks later, we visited the farm where I took them, and Carys got to see them in their new home: fat and happy, and very excited to climb on her lap and cuddle. All’s well that ends well!)

So. We live in town. Where cars throw light patterns on the walls at night. Where neighbors walk right in front of your house and stop in at random moments to say hello. Where there is no apple tree, no raspberry bed, no greenhouse or garden. Where the grocery store is actually a possible solution to being out of an ingredient, and where the Dairy Freeze is blessedly three blocks away. Where we can fish in our back yard, build sand castles, have friends over, and go cosmic bowling at the Bowl Mor on Saturday nights.

I still miss the quiet peace of farm living, but I’m glad I got the chance to give it to my kids for a while anyway. I certainly wouldn’t trade the farm chores for the sandy beach I’ve got in my backyard right now. I’m anxious to spend the holidays in the new house, creating new memories and solidifying new patterns of normal. I hope the extra hour we have gained each day by not driving to and from the farm becomes time I can spend connecting with my kids, and that they’ll be just as happy here as we were when we were there. I’m hoping they will feel the way I feel about all the homes my parents gave me growing up. Each one was special for it’s own reasons, but we never really left “home.” It is a cliche for a reason: home is really wherever you make it.

I’ve been absent from the blog for 5 long months. The weight of all our untold stories press heavily on my heart. I’ve tried to come up with a neat little explanation for posterity, to remember the great summer of our discontent. (Apologies to Richard III) The truth is simply that I could not write. Physically, emotionally, I was at a stopping place. There were too many changes, too many decisions, too many words; it was just too much.

But. Last week I finally felt the first little tugging at my fingertips, itching to write a few words. I sat at the computer and looked a blank screen for about 10 minutes. Yesterday I wrote four sentences, erased them, and wrote four more. I read them, re-read them, erased them, and logged off. Today I have managed 11 so far, and I’m still typing, so maybe. I think maybe once I get going I may not be able to quit. We’ll see.

Today I’m just going to ease back in, slowly.

We moved.

Whew – that was tough. I wrote and re-wrote a six paragraph explanation, but really I can simplify it down to just two words. We moved. We left the farm, our little oasis from the real world and moved into a vintage fixer-upper on the lake. I’m not sorry, at least not yet. On paper, this was a very good decision. Four blocks from school, snuggled into a quiet street with amazing neighbors, we have a sandy beach walkout only a block from the park and the Dairy Freeze. I’m not sorry – the kids ride bikes, go fishing, build sandcastles and play with friends and we aren’t in the car for an hour every day. I really like the house – it needs some work, but it has amazing potential.

Sometimes, though, someone peeks into my soul and asks, “But how could you leave the farm? You seemed so happy there…”

We were happy there. We were. And we will be happy here.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. I walked out to the beach and curled up on the sand and watched the water lap against the shore line. Within a few minutes I felt an easing in my shoulders. I breathed deeply the green smell of the water and I wished I could find words to bottle the moment. This morning, this poem popped up in my daily Poetry.com feed, and I see that once again the world is speaking to me.

As usual, it is language, in its startlingly beautiful simplicity, that can bring me back to the world.

Let me start off right now by saying I feel guilty for even writing this post. I feel waves and waves of guilt pouring over me as I contemplate my next few paragraphs. I am swimming in the guilt-ocean because on Mother’s Day I opened my Facebook page to an outpouring of motherly love and happiness over the various states of motherhood that the entire outside world felt like glorifying this past weekend. Maybe my lack of mommy-posting went unnoticed by everyone out there – but the honest to goodness truth is that what I wanted to post went so far against what everyone else in the universe was posting that I thought it might be wiser to just keep my mouth shut.

You see, I love my kids. I adore them. I would do all the things everyone always says they would do for their kids – would die for them, would do anything for them, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, insert cliche saying, overused phrase, etc.  I hope that 5 years of my endless posting of pictures and cute moments, and passionate love-filled blog posts will drive that point home for me. Because I didn’t do anything even remotely resembling good mothering this weekend.

In fact, I did no mothering at all. And THAT, my friends, might have been the best Mother’s Day ever. I know that this is borderline sacreligious, so I just kept that little truth nugget to my own self this weekend. But honestly – I love my kids 24/7 and spend time with them 24/7 and this was the first weekend in, maybe, ever, that Aaron and I went away by ourselves for two whole days and didn’t do any parenting whatsoever at all.

And it was amazing.

We checked in to the W Hotel in Minneapolis on Friday night. A valet took my keys, said, “Welcome Back to the W, Ma’am” and then directed a bell hop to take my bags upstairs for me. When we checked in, it appeared that I had won the Starwood Preferred Guest lottery because the desk clerk spent a good 10 minutes making sure I had everything I possibly wanted. A bottle of champagne was waiting in the room with a hand-written note letting me know how glad they were to host me this weekend.

Okay – pause button. What? Just? Happened? The last time a group of us stayed at the W, I put the reservation in my name, so I guess I racked up a lot of points or something because they acted like I was the Queen of England – me, in my denim capris, track t-shirt and flip flops. I even found a card on the table offering me $50 in room service free of charge for the weekend. Which, by the way, we took immediate advantage of. (Hello, 12 oz ribeye and lamb sliders, how very nice to see you.)

We’d planned to kick off our weekend away in style – we had tickets to see the Gear Daddies. If you know who they are, I don’t need to say anything else – point made. If you don’t know, well, I can’t explain it to you. Here, watch this. You probably still won’t get it. If you weren’t around southern Minnesota from roughly 1986 – 1992, you may just have to accept that you missed something amazing.

They played their 25th reunion show this weekend, at First Ave. If you already know about First Ave, then I don’t need to say anything else – point made. If you don’t know, well, go there. Today, tonight, this weekend, sometime…just go. Or go home and watch Purple Rain. Then you’ll maybe have some kind of idea.

I think somewhere around 10pm on Friday night it began to sink in. I was at First Avenue, listening to the Gear Daddies, holding hands with the boy I have known since we were in 4th grade, and I swear to absolute goodness, I felt so much more like myself than I have felt in centuries. My children were anything but on my mind – it felt like I was young again – truly young – and life hadn’t yet actually begun. I was blissfully unaware of everything around me for just a few short hours, and I just can’t tell you properly what that felt like. Billy Dankert sang Blues Mary with all the verve he could muster, Martin Zellar sang She’s Happy right to me and right through me, and I felt free and light and young.

Of course, reality came crashing back in when a lovely lady I will refer to as Drunk Amy spilled a large pink cocktail on me. She was a perfectly lovely person in her less-drunk state of mind; she had introduced me to her 35 closest friends as they staggered back and forth from our spot in front of the stage to the bar. Even when she spilled sticky grenadine-soaked something on my jeans, she was so NICE about it. “Sorry Sara! I did that! Oopsie! I can dry-clean your pants for you, if you want!” No thanks, Drunk Amy, but I do appreciate your concern. In fact, the boys are starting to play Little Red Corvette as their first encore and I am feeling so good right now, I don’t even mind the sticky shoes all that much.

Walking back to the W after the show, the Minneapolis skyline was alight in all her glory; we passed street musicians and patio bars and people laughing and walking together and enjoying the 65 degree weather. We rounded the corner on Marquette and the Foshay building looked spectacular. My phone had died long before, so a photo was out of the question. But I’m going to cheat and use this photo I found online – it looked like this – something we don’t see every day out on the farm.

Carys has a well-documented passion for animals; we’ve seen that quality in her from a very early age. Her heart is terribly tender when it comes to her furry friends, and we have weathered many storms already when it comes to the lives of the creatures on our farm. At any given time we have half a dozen farm cats inhabiting our outbuildings, and cats happen to be her particular favorite.

Unfortunately, the life expectancy of a farm cat is woefully short; sometimes they stick around for a year or two, but often they come and go as regularly as the weather. Her poor heart just couldn’t bear it, so we decided to get a kitten for the house that would be a constant companion.

We found Sophie in the winter of 2012, and gifted her to Carys at Christmas. Aaron brought her in the house in the bottom of a brown paper bag, and Carys burst into tears immediately. We put a crate in her room so the kitten would bond to her, and my little 6-year old became an instantly responsible caretaker. She feeds and waters her, changes her litter, and gives that cat the kind of love I wish I could give every cat that wanders our way.

In return, Sophie has become her companion in play and her protector at night.  She sleeps curled up next to Carys, tucked into the space behind her knees. When I come upstairs to do one last check each evening, Sophie becomes downright protective. She meows loudly at my arrival and sits up and guards her sleeping ward. Sometimes if I try to smooth Carys’ hair in the night, or put my hand on her, Sophie will actually bat my hand away and meow as if to scold me for interfering.

Occasionally, Sophie will hear me coming up the stairs and she will reach her paws through the railing above my head and swat at me as I come up the steps. In the morning when I call for Carys to wake up, Sophie will come immediately to the top of the stairs and stand glaring, her tail twitching, daring me to disturb the sleeping princess further. It’s all bluff and bluster – as soon as I get close she scampers away, but it delights me anyway to see her puff up all fierce and loyal.

The other night, the bond between these two became even more glaringly apparent. Carys was in the shower getting ready for bed. Sophie was standing sentry outside the door. I was in the living room, picking up the remains of a pillow fort, when I heard a vague cry coming from another room. It was a truly distressing, high-pitched cry, but I paused, trying to determine where it was coming from – the TV or one of my children? I didn’t have to wonder for long – Sophie came flying at me from the other room, growling low in her throat. I started for the bathroom, but Sophie beat me to it, clawing and biting the door, while Carys wailed from the other side.

She’d squeezed the shampoo bottle too hard, and some shampoo squirted into her eyes. She was crying like someone had lit her on fire, poor thing! I started to help her wash it out, but it was harder to do with Sophie tangled up in my feet, pacing in front of the shower curtain, still meowing. I alternated between saying comforting things like, “It’s okay, Carys, Mommy is getting it out,” and scolding the cat with “Sophie! Get out of here!”

Ten minutes later, I had Carys dressed and bundled up on my lap in the living room. Her eyes were still red and she was still sniffling, but she had calmed considerably. Sophie perched on the back of the sofa until we got comfortable, then she carefully made her way onto Carys’ lap. I watched that cat gently sniff my girl’s face all over, and then she actually licked the corner of her eye. Gently, so gently, that cat was trying to do what I had been trying to do in the bathroom. Carys met her forehead to forehead, and Sophie just purred and purred and loved on her until the tears were dry.

My phone was nearby – I tried to get a picture to commemorate the moment – it was almost unbelievable to me – but these shots are the best I could get. That cat is a keeper.

Everything that is wrong in the world can be summed up in one Verizon commercial that I saw this weekend.

Sometimes my kids are hilarious. Their random comments don’t always amount to an entire storytelling experience, but if I don’t write them down, I will probably forget them. So every now and then I’ll devote a post to the best of their rants and ramblings.

*Morning Call Downs*
Me: “Cooper! Get up! I have called you three times already this morning!”
Cooper: “Mom, it’s not my fault! Dad put an extra blanket on my bed and made it really warm…tell him not to do that anymore!”

*Watching Emma get fitted for contacts*
 Carys: “Emma’s growing up so fast, isn’t she, Mom?”

*Saturday Clean-Up*
Me: “Cooper, get upstairs and clean your room.”
Cooper: “Room? What room? It’s nothing but a glorified closet.”
(Okay, his room is a little smaller than the others. But where did he learn how to use the word ‘glorified’ correctly in a sentence?!)

*Car Ride Conversations*
Emma: “I’m getting really good at Geo Graphy.”
Me: “But clearly NOT doing well in pronunciation.”
Emma: “What?”
Me: “You meant geography, right?”
Emma: “Oh. Yeah. Well now I feel like an idiot.”
Me: “Sorry.”

*Passing a road-kill raccoon, being devoured by a pack of crows*
Cooper: “Mom! Are those birds eating that raccoon?”
Me: “I think so, Coop.”
Cooper: (stunned silence)
Carys: “Circle of Life, Cooper. Circle. Of. Life.”

*Saturday Morning Clean-Up*
Emma: “Cooper! Get down here and help me clean up this mess!”
Cooper: “Why don’t you come up here and make me?”

*Eating at our favorite bar & grill*
Waitress: “What can I get you to drink?”
Cooper: “I’ll have a Bud Light.”
(stunned silence)
Cooper: “Wait – what’s a Bud Light?”
Emma, whispering: “It’s alcohol.”
Cooper: “Oh. Never mind. I’ll have Sierra Mist.”

*Listening to Blake Shelton’s “My Eyes” on the radio*
Cooper: “Mom? He says my eyes are the only thing I DON’T want to take off of you.”
Me: “Yep.”
Cooper: “So what DOES he want to take off of her?”
Me: “Uhhhhhh…..”
Cooper: “Does he mean her clothes?!”
Me: “Uhhhhhh…..”
Cooper: “So she’s just standing there NAKED? And he’s just looking at her?”
Me: “Uhhhhhh…..”
Cooper: “Okay, that’s just weird.”
Me: “……”