Meet Gigi

It is a dark and stormy night here in Anoka, MN.  Seriously, the lightning is absolutely nuts!  It makes me a little worried that we are having thunderstorms in March....maybe those Mayans were on to something.

But, December 21st is still 8 months away so let's enjoy the time we have left!  I want to introduce you to someone who has been around my whole life.  She is very unintentionally creepy.  She is Gigi.

Gigi is a doll, obviously.  My mother purchased her from a drugstore in central Minnesota after her grandmother (my great-grandmother) gave her some money to go and buy her newborn daughter (my sister) a present.  This was 1980.  Gigi is nearly 32-years old and my sister Cori still hold her dear to her heart.  Everyone else...not so much.  Especially her husband.  My brother-in-law, Derek (yes, of Interview With A Wiccan fame) hates Gigi with the passion of a thousand burning suns.  Even though he is some kind of wizard, he still is afraid of something that has eyes that close when you lay it down.  And I'm sure it doesn't help that Cori keeps her propped up in the closet in their spare bedroom like that, so whenever Derek is searching for something in that closet he opens the door and was greeted with a standing plastic doll with ever-staring eyes.   

Cori refuses to allow me to use Gigi for nefarious purposes, so I've never had to opportunity to prop her up on Cori and Derek's bed, or hide her under the covers for Derek to find whenever I am alone in their house tending to their dogs or something. 

But, Derek, and my husband Jim, are no better.  When my mother moved into her new house Jim and Derek were putting her extra things into the attic above her garage.  Those two jokers ran across a baby doll of my mother's from when she was a child (which would make the doll from the '60's) and a small doll-sized rocking chair.  Instead of stacking the doll and rocking chair in a sensible manner that would allow more of Mom's things to fit better, Jim and Derek put the doll, who shared a lot of Gigi's physical traits, in the chair, facing the attic door, so whoever decided to go up there would be greeted with a creepy sitting doll in a rocking chair.  I think that was still a secret/surprise until right now, because I texted my Mom for a picture of that doll and she texted back "What do you mean?"

Back to Gigi.  She is still clothed in a pair of feety-jams that belong to my sister when she was about that size, and they have held up quite well.  She had lived with Cori every where she has gone in life, which is pretty remarkable considering I don't know where the majority of my things are from when I was a kid.  Currently living with Cori and Derek in their home and now being introduced to her daughter (and my daughter, Cori's niece, who went straight for the eyes.)

I asked Derek for a comment on Gigi.  "She's creepy."  He said, "And always watching."

Cori said, "I'm the only one who loves her."