possibly gifted

Oh hi! Where the hell have I been? Traveling, visiting a bunch of barf bags, LITERALLY, but I’m going to save that story for next time.

I never gave much of a reason for the title of this blog, “Possibly Gifted.” Knowing me in real life is very apparent but indulge me for a moment.

My parents sent me to a private Catholic high school so I needed to get my academic record to transfer. When I was in fourth grade my teacher wrote that I was ‘possibly gifted’ and for the longest time, I was confused by it. Was it a compliment? An admonishment? It seemed a little backhanded?

The part that has always, and continues to, strike me is the ‘possibly’ part. Is she above average intelligence? Does she need remedial help? Her last name starts with Z and I’m sick of filling out these goddamn evaluations?

So as I clomp through life I think about this probably on a weekly basis. It was never more apparent to me than the other day as I was doing some spring cleaning.

I don’t know what happened, but I’m much more thorough when I clean now. Oh wait, yes I do: Prozac happened. (That’s a story for the time after the barf bag story.) So when I was cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast on Sunday, *I decided to wipe down the fronts of all the cabinets. Then that turned into cleaning out the refrigerator.

*Eric let Jack have peanut butter off a spoon as they were standing in the kitchen and Jack wiped it all over everything.

I decided it would be easier to take all the contents out of the drawers first and wash them out. We have a split sink (I DON’T WANT TO EVEN GET INTO IT) so it was hard to fit them in and try to wash and rinse them but I managed ok. As I was putting the bottom drawer back in, it kept ramming into the back and it wouldn’t close all the way.

I kept trying to get the drawer on the track and lift and lower and nothing. So I removed the bin. And I looked at the other bin. And realized I had mixed them up. They fit like a glove. Cool, problem solved.

Look at this mother fucker shine

The shelves were boring. I just took the stuff out and wiped them off. I only had to discard one yogurt container that was a middle school science experiment while we were in Buffalo. Brilliant.

Halfway through the door shelves, Jack woke up from his nap so I had to go rescue him and give him lunch. As I resumed putting the shelves back in the door, the first one at the very bottom collapsed and all the stuff on it fell on the floor.

“FUCK YOU I HOPE YOU DIE!” I yelled, reasonably, at inanimate objects. Then Jack started yelling and half-crying. Cool. Way to be a role model.

I assured Jack I was yelling at the fridge (totally normal) and got him calmed down. I tried that damn shelf about a dozen times. How does a drawer come out but not go back in?

Eric came back from the store to me sitting on the floor trying to jam the shelf back in, the fridge alarm beeping in my face, and Jack throwing food on the floor.

“I can’t get the shelf back in and I don’t know why not. Can you do it please?”

If I’ve learned anything in eight years together it’s that Eric is better at life than me and much calmer. So sometimes I just default to him.

After 3.2 seconds of examination he turned around and said “What about those drawers?” and pointed to the ones on the counter. There are two kinds. SURELY I hadn’t tried to put the wrong ones in the wrong spot AGAIN…

The lesson here is that if you want someone to strategize your communications, I’m your woman. If you need a smidgen of common sense to get out of a wet paper bag, might I introduce you to Eric?