Before we go any further, I have to warn you...

Being honest is really important to me. Like, if David says to me "Did you forget to do that think you said you'd do?" I will cringe and say "No, I thought about it but it was inconvenient and I was in bed eating chocolate and didn't want to get out and figured I'd do it in the morning." That level of honest. Which is strange, because it doesn't bother me at all that (say, in the last four lines of this post alone) I have proven myself to be self-centered, gluttonous, and lazy. I am good with those flaws. But honesty is important to me.

Except where exaggeration is concerned. Exaggerating, you see, is not lying (this applies only to the telling of stories). My dad used to say (of the wife and four children that he and his eardrums were blessed with) that we'd "never let the truth get in the way of a good story". This is not technically the case--sometimes there is a good story but I won't tell it because it's true. Privacy and all. Like the story about David on the bus when he was nine and the thing Anthony said about testicles the other day.

When Nathan was twelve he went to a wedding reception, came home, and announced "Liz is never coming to my wedding". Apparently, he thought I would tell stories.

"Hah." said David (then eight), "Liz will never remember the stories that long."

"Hah! Will SO!" I countered (with my usual practice of meeting eight year olds where they are in terms of maturity level) "because I WRITE them DOWN!!!"

(This is true. I have chronically messy house, my car only gets an oil change when it rolls over, sticks all four wheels in the air and goes into convulsions, and my yard has been a GIANT heap of garbage for SIX YEARS, but I have meticulous baby books. I like to write. It's like talking, but you don't have to find someone who will listen to you.)

"AAAAGGGGHHHHHH!" Nathan shrieked, upon learning that I was writing about him, "The Book of Doom!!!!"

So, I have great sets of baby books labelled "Books of Doom" for each child. And the new car, which has bluetooth cell phone capability, has learned to dial the oil change place itself and book an appointment.

So my point is that you have been forewarned that from time to time I exaggerate. In case you didn't figure out out from the part in my blog post where the car rolled over on it's own and started dialing my phone. This exaggeration is particularly true of medical conditions. Gary thinks blissfully of the days pre-internet medical sites, when he was greeted with "How was your day?" instead of "I have immune thrombocytopenic purpura." So, reader beware.

In the interests of accuracy, I must note that I don't think Gary has ever been greeted with "How was your day?" (see prior note regarding self-centeredness). Ironically, I think if this ever happened, he'd send me to a neurologist to rule out a brain tumor.

Hey, speaking of brain tumors... So, this friend of mine (I have been reading blog sites and learning that you aren't supposed to use real names, so I'll call her Mrs. Smith which is really ironic because I call her that in real life, too, and it's not her name there either), this friend of mine burned herself on my tea kettle on account of side effects of a brain surgery she had years ago. I burn myself on that kettle all the time, and there's nothing surgically wrong with my brain, but you know what hypochondriacs people with brain tumors can be. Well, actually, it wasn't a tumor, it was a brain cavity (caused by a congenital condition). I have to tell you, if I had had a cavity in my brain, I would be referring to it as "part of my brain was born missing!" for my whole life because that is way more dramatic. But Mrs. Smith is not a big exaggerator.

So, David enters the kitchen part way through, and I say to him,

"Did you know she had a brain tumor?"

"It was a cavity." Mrs. Smith corrects.

"I figured." David says. "That's how Liz tells a story. Makes me glad I have perfect teeth."

I'm really not that bad.