Milk and Ice Cream

When I was a kid we ate a lot of ice cream for desert. My dad really likes ice cream and he has this great sweat shirt that says "I get cranky with out my Blue Bell" that had a picture of a tub of ice cream on it. I don't know where or when he got this shirt but I don't remember a time before it. My Dad always poured milk on his ice cream sort of like you would over cereal so my sisters and I did too. We always put milk on our ice cream. We didn't know there might be another way to eat ice cream. One time when I was maybe 8 or 10 or so (old enough to sleep over at a friends house) Alice and I were spending the night with a girl and the parents served us ice cream for desert. I remember sitting there waiting patiently for them to get the milk out for our ice cream but they just started eating it WITH OUT milk. I wasn't sure what to do next. Alice just went along with it since she must have seen that this was "normal" here and at that age was more attentive to how to be "normal" but I couldn't let it go. I asked them for some milk for my ice cream. They were confused but agreed that it was ok I guess and then a conversation followed about how interesting and strange it was that we ate milk on our ice cream at home. That was the first time I suspected that our family might do things that no one else I knew did. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I certainly never asked for milk on my ice cream again when I was at a friends house.

I am an artist (I really feel like I'm ready to own that now) and sometimes the art making process is strange and we have somethings at our house that lots of other kids probably don't have at their houses. For example, theres a statue of my head in my bathroom (right now it has a bottle of nasal spray on its head because I have a cold). We have 3 wax waffles placed around the house, a bronze cup cake on the mantel next to a hotel made of legos and in my "work room" a sewing machine shares bench space with 3 hammers, corner clamps, wood glue, tons of paint and a paper pulp nose. oh, and a large jar of jelly beans... Last week when Anabelle came home from school I was smashing paper pulp into a waffle iron. she barely noticed. I suspect that someday Anabelle and Ava will have a friend over and their friend might notice somethings here are strange. My best friend here in NWA is also an artist. Naturally our kids have to spend a lot of time together (fortunately they seem to really like each other). My friend also has artist stuff around the house (she has her own head statue too). This week she served them popcorn for a snack in bowls she made herself- they're fantastic by the way. So the house that the girls spend the most time at besides ours is my friends with the same kinds of unusual stuff. Anabelle and Ava might be teenagers for before they find out about how we're "different."

I hope after they find out they realize its a good thing.
I think we'll have ice cream for desert tonight. With milk of course.