My Heart Blogs To You: Ellen

Showing posts with label Ellen. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Ellen – Day #5 from the A-Z Challenge

When you saw the title, you probably thought I was going to write about Ellen Degeneres. I'm not.

Instead I am going to talk about how the name, Ellen, has taunted me my entire life. I am the oldest of my parents' three daughters. My mother's middle name is Ellen.

When they were born, my two younger sisters' were given middle names of Ellen. So out of the four women in my birth family, I am the only one with a different middle name – Kathleen.

In an attempt to assuage her own guilt from choosing to exempt me from the Ellen legacy and to help me feel better about being the outcast of the family, my mother made up this story: my youngest sister was named after my sister's and my middle name combined. Therefore, her name is Kathleen Ellen.

I don't buy it. Apparently it didn't occur to my mom that she would be excluding me from the "Middle Name Ellen Club" when she named my sister Kathleen Ellen. She could have called her Ellen Kathleen, but noooooooo, she chose to call her Kathleen Ellen so that she, my sister Cindy, and my mom would all have Ellen as their middle name.

From now on, when she tells me that I am the weird one, I will say, "Had you given me YOUR middle name, I might not be so weird."

In truth, I would never say that to her, and it really doesn't bother me anymore that my middle name is different. Just like it really doesn't bother me that she doesn't read my blogs (sniff sniff, wipe a tear, try to force a smile).

Anyway (said in the Ellen Degeneres dramatic style), as Juliet said in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, "What's in a name? That which we call an Ellen by any other name would smell as sweet."

Come on – I couldn't very well use Rose here, could I? (Apologies to Shakespeare, but he doesn't read my blogs either.)

And that completes Day #5 from the A-Z Challenge. Brought to you by the letter, E.

Previous A-Z Challenge blogs:

Amazon Hates Me – Day #1 from the A-Z Challenge

Bored – Why? Day #2 from the A-Z Challenge

Craziness – Day #3 from the A-Z Challenge

When Your Daughter Develops, DON'T DO THIS!

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Monday, July 20, 2009

Sarah, This Blog's For You

Every time something happens to a family member or friend that could be construed as being even a tiny bit embarrassing, looks dart in my direction and voices command me, "DO NOT blog about this."

So you don't know even a tenth of the stuff I COULD be writing, although I do manage to write about some of my friends and family anyway by disguising the person enough so that anybody outside the family won't know anything, which makes blogging completely pointless. (You can read more about that HERE.)

But I ramble.

So imagine my surprise when one of my granddaughters, Sarah, said, "Grandma, how come you blog about so and so and so and so, but you never blog about me or my brothers?" I don't remember blogging about her sister, either, but the fact that she left her sister out means I must have, but I have forgotten. I'll have to look at all my blogs to find her.

In my defense, I'm hardly ever with her brothers and sister or her and her family, so it's hard to write about something WHEN NOBODY TELLS ME WHAT'S HAPPENING! Also, EVERYBODY LIVES TOO FAR AWAY!

And yet – I do remember blogging about one of her brothers HERE – it was my first (and only – so far) video blog. Maybe Sarah missed that one.

(Use Ellen's voice here) anyway, I decided to blog about Sarah. You see her above with her husband and daughter. Sarah looks like her mommy (my oldest baby – who just celebrated her 40th birthday – I wrote about her HERE), and Ayla, Sarah's daughter, looks just like her mommy. All three of them are so much alike in so many ways, in fact, that I call them the Clone Heads.

OK, I really don't call them the Clone Heads.

And now to relate a Sarah story to you: Once upon a time in a tiny village waaaay south of Chicago, Sarah's grandma bought a trailer in June the year Sarah was born. Sarah, who was born that following December, and her mommy and daddy (before her three brothers were born), lived in an apartment in Chicago.

When Sarah, who always saw everything as food, was finally able to articulate her thoughts, she looked intently as we drove down the street and asked, "Why do we live in a cracker house and you live in a hot dog house?"

And I wanted to say, "How come you see everything as food? Do your parents never feed you?"

But I didn't. So we went to my house where I fed her crackers and hot dogs.

The truth is I wish blogging had been around when they were little, because now, when I remember things that happened, I don't remember who they happened TO. For instance, was it Sarah in this scenario:

I always tickled (still do) my grandchildren and said things like, "You silly little goof ball." And then one of them – was it Sarah? – said to me once, "You silly little football."

Now that I think about it, it couldn't have been Sarah, because a football isn't a food item.