Ellie and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I was forced to eat four cherry tomatoes at lunch and when the juice squirted out of my mouth and I spit out the remaining pulp, seeds and skin, wiping the remnants on my kitchen chair cushion, my Mom got annoyed.

When I got bored because Hanna was asking why we celebrate Victoria Day but not Queen Elizabeth Day, I started to sing a song I made up about celebrating death. “Everybody dance here, everybody dance there, it’s the death dance, getting progressively louder for the refrain: It’s the DEAF dance!” Nobody even attempted to join in, harmonize or sing along to the made-up lyrics. My Mom did however correct deaf vs. death as if it makes a difference.

I asked about how I would speak if I didn’t have a tongue and my Mom blathered on about using non-verbal cues. So, I pointed at my eyeball and waited for a response. My Mom did not pull over the vehicle or bother cranking her head around to see me in the backseat of the van and there was no effort made to guess I was thinking about playing “Eye Spy” and the colour I was spying was blue, the colour of my eyeball.

When I made up the game shovel ball on the driveway, my Mom was the worst pitcher ever. My strike zone though unconventionally high for shovel ball, was a fairly simple target with straight forward yet ever-changing rules.  I stand in front of the van with a snow shovel, my Mom lobs a tennis ball toward me at van window height, I leap in the air swinging the shovel wildly while my mother winces as if it would matter if I butt-ended the van with it.

While I was patient with my mother and sickeningly polite to her during my magic show, I had to explain a million times that I knew magic and I did not require any further assistance with my card tricks. Not to mention, I’m pretty sure she was cheating at the card she chose and so what if I mix the six card tricks I have witnessed, never been taught how they actually work, throw them in a blender and use drips and drabs from each one resulting in my own super cool trick.

When we pulled weeds in the garden, my Mom only let me push the wheelbarrow to the rear of the yard once and I only tipped it losing all of its contents three times.

We got in trouble for splashing more water out of the tub than was ever put in and when I explained to my Mom that she can’t always have things her way, she huffed and puffed while wringing out the towels.

My Mom left the room after reading only sixteen books and talking about our day and it was right when I wanted to count my piggy bank coins followed by a thorough Q & A about bad guys, specifically if they kill you or just steal your money and do monsters have more than one eye?

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