HB Pengo Janetto Cookie Tester Penguin Hoosh! (ark ark)
Yesterday and today belong to Pengo Janetto. Tomorrow too. Actually, she more often goes by Nook these days but being an old aunt (grok grok, ya mean ol’ BAG, dontcha? grok gfok), old habits die hard. Yesterday, she graduated from high school. Today she turns 18. And tomorrow is her graduation party. Click here or on the pic for a mini slide show.
I don’t know what’s next for Janet besides college and life. I wish her all the luck in the world but, as she’s the last of my branch of Fin Family Moominbeach G4ers to turn 18, I find myself looking back a bit. So I’ll tell just a couple of old stories from when she was around four or five, hopefully not embarrassing ones.
Janet was usually the first kid up in the morning at the cabin. All the others would slug around for half the day if they could get away with it. When Janet would come downstairs, Grandroobly would be sitting at the breakfast table eating his two tablespoons of raisin bran with milk and probably telling the politicians on NPR to “stick it” or whatever. The Commander would be bustling around or drinking her coffee and I’d probably be processing dishes and/or garbage. One day Janet came downstairs and announced, “My brain is going around and around and around so fast I can’t stop it.” I said something like, “oh, that’s nice,” and went back to whatever it was that I was doing. She was quiet for about five minutes and we all forgot about the spinning brain until she suddenly piped up with, “My brain just stopped. It stopped on salami.” Salami for breakfast, anyone?
And then there was the day that old Jimbo (her dad, my brother) was sitting at the breakfast table showing off The New Morning Look and I can’t exactly remember what was going on but he was harassing the heck out of Janet, as was pretty typical. Finally, she had had just about enough, so she got right in his face and yelled, “You’re the Big Ugly Giant!” A reference to Roald Dahl’s The BFG, which *everyone* was reading that summer, even the grandparents.
Add your own story to the comments if you want. Or your congratulations. HAPPY BIRTHDAY PENGO JANETTO! and CONGRADULATIONS CONGRATULATIONS!
June 8th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Toddler stories:
When she leaped out of the minivan and landed on the driveway with her teeth…then told the dentist the next that that she “still had croncrete in her tooth” (one of her front teeth had gotten chipped). Dr. Birnie was very amused by the “croncrete in her tooth” statement.
“Get your face out of my nose!” (can’t recall if that was directed at Grandroobly or Jimbo)
The summer we stayed at The Old Cabin, and every morning Nook getting up, grabbing her box of Cocoa Puffs, and trotting across the “parking lot” to have breakfast with Grandroobly. [That, sadly, was also the same summer week that my little bro’s first daughter was stillborn.]