Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Curves.
Sometimes my kids make great observations and at other times, they’re more like court reporters, capturing every utterance.
I’d heard that Dark Revelations got a review from RT’s
Book Reviews magazine, so we ran over to Destin for a pleasant dinner, then by Barnes and Noble to pick up the magazine (and dance around the store while I read the review aloud to the girls!), and then to Publix for chai, magenta-hued gladioli, and raspberries—sweet! It’s too expensive for my regular shopping, but I like to drop by for special items and when I want to try new things.
Publix is my favorite local grocery store, not just for the upscale variety of foods, but because it’s another “man” store. I see more single men there than in any other grocery store around here, mostly out late to buy groceries for the week on a non-Saturday or often stop- ping by on the way home from work. Usually they’re very friendly until they notice I have children and then off they go. C’est la vie! If they’re frightened off in a grocery store, they’re not strong enough to be my man. I’ll consider it “pre-screening.”
Naturally, we ended up spotting a great sale on house plants and I was in the market to replace a couple of droopy-looking ones in the house. It took a while to load everything carefully into the cargo area of the car.
So when I made the first big turn out of the parking lot and onto the highway, everything in the back went swish…sway…CRASH!
And I went, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIEEEE!! And the girls went into hysterics, laughing.
That’s when Shannon noted that I’ve become more…expressive. I’ve always considered myself open, but maybe I haven’t been as open as I’d thought. Some- time in the past year or two, I’ve started showing how I feel. When I’m angry, they know. When I’m sad or upset, I don’t hide it. When I’m happy, they get the biggest kick of all out of that.
“Like when we were playing with Grendel,” Aislinn pointed out, referring to a few nights ago when Aislinn and I played keep-the-ball-away on the floor with the puppy. Shannon was lying on the floor, concentrating on homework, and I kept tossing the tennis ball into her crotch and a split second later, the puppy would dive for the ball, catching it just as he flattened his face against the seat of her jeans. It took her a while to catch on as to why he was so frisky, but Aislinn was giddy over my own gig- gles.
“You were happy and it showed,” Aislinn added.
I’m not quite sure when this happened. I guess I did- n’t realize how much I’d been holding in.
