Oisin8

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Entry 8 -- Home with Stasch
Stasch and I made it home while my dad and stepmom were still in the shop. For those who don't know, my dad is a partner at O & R Printing and All Color Sign. We live in the apartment upstairs. That is not as bad as it sounds. Stasch and I each have our own bedrooms, and I even got to paint mine last summer. I used special effects to make a multicolored square patttern all over my light blue walls. My room looks like stage lights or freight trains or bricks gone crazy, none of which really describes it.

Anyway, I had to be in the living room. Stasch wanted to watch TV, but he wasn't watching. He was playing bounce on the hassack. Stasch is in first grade. He is in regular classes but he is ADHD. He got diagnosed last year and his meds work so he can do work like the other kids, that is if he takes his meds. He's supposed to get a dose at the nurse' at lunch time. Boing, boing, boing went Stasch happily singing to himself and letting off more steam than a grate in a Chicago sidewalk.

Boing, boing, boing. "I know someone who didn't take their fucking meds," I snarled at my younger brother. Boing, boing, boing went Stasch whose only reply was a Bronx cheer. "Great going, Stasch. I'm going to get Aunt Aliza. Don't tear up the apartment."

I let myself out the kitchen door, ran down the stairs and opened the back door to teh shop. Aunt Aliza, my stepmother, was laying out a calendar using Adobe Page-Mill. No we don't have Macs for this kind of thing, and yes this is a complicated job. Somewhere long ago, Aunt Aliza says she went to college but never finished. That's why she likes that I want to go to a big name unviersity some day.

Aunt Aliza is fat in all kinds of round ways. She even has a round pink face with round pink cheeks and stubby nearly black pig tails and small bright eyes. That cute little girl look may be why dad liked her better than mom. Yes, both my parenst screwed around when I was in second, third, and fourth grade and maybe even before. Hey, parents aren't always that bright, but parents are in charge.

"Yes," Aliza looked annoyed to have me underfoot in the shop especially when she had complicated work to do.

"Stasch didn't get his meds in school. He's bouncing again," I announced.

"Fuck," said Aunt Aliza who can NOT tell me not to curse.

The two of us headed back up the stairs and in to the apartment. Stasch had a roll of popping fresh biscuit dough out of the freezer and was trying to saw it in half with the tomato knife.

"What are you doing idiot?" Aunt Aliza asked my little brother.

"I want some rolls."

"Put that dough away," answered Aunt Aliza. "We've got bread and that tube has been there for six months. It's probably no good. Here, I'm throwing it out...Now did you get your pills at lunch."

"I played kick ball," Stasch said and he smiled and shook his blond mop topped head. People who don't know Stasch think he is cute instead of trouble. We who are his family know otherwise.

"Stasch, if you take your pills I'll give you bread and butter," Aunt Aliza was trying to be nice.

"I can butter my own bread," Stasch told his stepmotther whom he calls mom because he really doesn't remember our real mom that well. He came to live with dad when he was three so you can understand. I was eleven and I went to live with dad to escape my bossy older sister and to make sure Stasch didn't grow up an only child or an only child with one or more half siblings. You have to think of things like that. At least that was the way I felt before sixth grade.

"Fine, then I'll give you the bread and the butter AFTER you take your meds."

"Can I have them with juice?" asked Stasch who was now vying for attention in a way that would have been cute if Aunt Aliza did not have to go back to work and we two did not have to clean the fucking living room.

"If there's any left from breakfast," said Aunt Aliza.

It turned out there was orange juice but "that was not the good kind."

Aunt Aliza said Stasch could have water or milk for his pills. Stasch had milk and two pieces of bread with butter which meant he would have no appetite for dinner but at least he took his pills.

I ate an apple and started working on the living room solo until Stasch' meds kicked in and then I got Stasch to help me. He said they are going to do addition and subtraction in school. "Maybe we'll both be engineers," he told me. Stasch can be very cute, though he's much cuter when medicated like he's suposed to be.

In an hour I was able to vacuum and I dusted and straightened up the magazines. I managed to find Stasch a new box for his legos since he pointed out the current box leaked. I decided to save the Fountainhead for later and read economics and then work on proofs and French. Econ in the book was better than what the teacher had said, but our book had graphs without numbers. Something told me that was wrong. This was econ for kids who did not yet have algebra and real economics used algebra. I made up my mind to talk to the librarian and yes, also to Senora Garcia, the Spanish teacher so we could borrow the foreign language classroom at lunch for studying. It's hard when you're in with the kings and queens of different subjects, but you have to compete if you want to go to a big name university some day. It's a long road from there to here.