Masquerading as a normal person day after day is exhausting

Do you like me? Check one: Yes, No, Maybe.

As Miss O and I picked our way through a pile of Five Guys fries tonight, she suddenly ducked her head and mumbled, "I always wonder if somebody likes me." It was so quick and so quiet that I didn't understand at first. But the goofy grin and blush on her face left no doubt.

My kid, she is thinking about boys. BOYS.

In the vain hope that maybe, just maybe she meant some girls in her class or the Five Guys chick who took our order or really, anyone except BOYS, I probed for more details. 

Yeah, definitely boys. 

I had to play it cool and not let on how much this was both cracking me up and freaking me out.  "Well, are there any boys that you like?" She tried to shimmy out of it. "I like all boys." "Well, okay, but are there any that you LIKElike?" Again with the blushing. "Ummm... maybe."

For the next ten minutes we went through every. single. boy she knows and she declared him a Yes, a Maybe, or a No. Except for the ones that were halfway between a Yes and Maybe. And that one who was a quarter of a Yes and the rest of the way a Maybe. And the one at the very bottom of Maybe (poor kid). 

The final tally: 5 definite Yes men. Of those, three are in her class, one lives next door, and the last one is -- sweetfancymoses -- an 8th grader on her bus.

Where did this come from, and how can I stuff it back in there?? 

That said, if I roll my Mom Eyes back far enough I can see my second-grade self, and she's got a giant crush on Billy R. The feeling was mutual; I remember the giddiness of talking to him on the phone after school, the lumpy chair I had to stand on to use the phone because I was too short to reach the top of the dresser where it sat. I remember all the girls giggling when he left flowers on my desk, scraggly pink ones he'd picked from some poor woman's garden on his way to school that morning. 

It was innocent and sweet, much like our conversation tonight. So while part of me is decidedly not ready for all of this, a bigger part of me is thrilled that Miss O wanted to talk about it. With me. I can't tell you how lucky I feel, and how much I'd do to keep her talking about this stuff because one day she'll read this and use it against me. But trust me, it's a lot.

P.S. Want to know what pushed a boy from the Maybe to the Yes? "A good sense of humor. I don't want him to sit there all, you know... [crosses arms, frowns]. And also a good sense of food. Because I like food." 

I'm not sure I'd say hedgehogs were elegant, exactly

So I've been reading "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" for my book group this month. I started out hating every word of the book - the story almost takes second place to the writing and what seem to be lofty Profound Philosophical Musings. The fact that it's translated from French only makes it that much more stilted and esoteric. 

But a funny thing happened somewhere around page 92... I had to stop reading to pick up the kid from the bus stop and, well,  I didn't want to. Have you ever had that happen? You pick up a book and wonder how you'll ever get through it, wonder how so many reviewers could say so many great things about it, then finish it and think "um, that was really good."

When I picked up the book, Miss O was so excited. "Oooooh, it's about *gasp* hedgehogs! Can I have the book when you're done? Pleasepleaseplease?"

You might wonder why an eight year old is excited by a book with the word "hedgehog" in the title, and you wouldn't be wrong to wonder.

Meet Miss O's sidekick, Hedgie:

My bed is apparently his natural habitat; I find him in there all. the. time. Roll over, find a lump, reach down, pull out hedgehog... I also find him in the couch cushions fairly frequently, and on the hall floor.

Hedgie came to live with us this summer when Miss O went off for her first adventure at sleepaway camp. I found this awesome hedgehog puppet (it's a hedgehog! it's a puppet! it rolls inside out into a giant ball of matted fur!) and packed it in her bag with a note: "This is a homesickness hedgehog; if you miss home, cuddle him and he'll take away your homesickness."

Ever since, this silly hedgehog has been Miss O's constant companion. While he is awfully cute, I'm not sure I'd say he's elegant, or really even very particular; I keep finding clumps of hedgehog fur all over and he's looking a little matted.

I always feel like somebody's watching me

And suddenly, it's fall. 

When Miss O was a toddler, we built a family of scarecrows to put in our front lawn: one for each of us because yes, we really are that dorky. We are also apparently lazy. We let the scarecrows languish in the garage for the last several years, too pathetic to pull them out and stick them in the ground. 

This year the child badgered us relentlessly until we caved and excavated the scarecrows. After spending a few years at the exclusive Club Garage, they were looking a little, uh, scary. My scarecrow had kind of lost its head (and no, that is not in any way symbolic, thanks for asking), and DH's had absolutely no junk in the trunk; the torso and legs just dangled in a decidedly unattractive way. 

Twenty minutes and lots of staple gun wielding later, the scarecrows were finished. They look a little funky, but dude, they're up and the kid can stop pestering me.

 

A few observations:

(1) It's a tad bit disturbing to find yourself saying "I need to rip off Miss O's head and staple it back on a little lower."

(2) My scarecrow is taller than DH's, which makes me ridiculous amounts of amused.

(3) Every time I look out the front window I catch sight of the top of the scarecrows. And every time I wonder, "Who the HELL is in my front yard?" And then I find myself muttering, "Those damn kids better get off my lawn..." I might need an intervention before Halloween is over.

 

One million dollars or the chick gets it

Should I be concerned that I found this little tableau in Miss O's room the other morning?

The early bird gets the... eye patch? Lesson on digestive cancers? Whatever it is, I'm not sure I want it.

By 7:45 this morning I had:

• Consumed roughly 3 cups of coffee. 

• Spent 90 minutes at the gym (30 on the elliptical, 60 being tortured by Maria). 

• Learned all about the difference between the anus and the rectum and how anal cancer differs from colo-rectal cancer. (And Maria wondered why that poor old lady left 15 minutes into this morning's class. Ha.) What did we ever do before we could Google on our Blackberries while holding a lunge for two minutes? We must have been ignorant fools, all of us. 

• Volunteered DH and his beer for a fundraiser.  

• Showered and sheveled myself.  

• Answered at least 17 questions, most of which involved tornadoes and proper pirate attire. (Why yes, she WAS reading a book on tornadoes [her love of natural disasters has not dimmed] and it IS pirate day at camp. Whyever do you ask?) 

• Designed and created a felt-and-yarn eye patch for Miss O. PSA: Using a hot glue gun at 7:30 AM after no breakfast, 90 minutes of gym, and 3 cups of coffee? NOT recommended.   

• Lifted the lid off the blender (while blending) to check on the status of the berry banana smoothie I was making.   

• Cleaned up the purple smoothie splatters all over the wall, the counter, and my face.  

 

I'm not sure that bandage is big enough, actually

Miss O scraped her ankle the other day while she and her friend A were playing outside. I took a quick peek, handed her a paper towel to staunch the (minimal) bleeding, and walked into the other room.

That's when I heard Miss O say to her friend, "Hey! Can you get me the tape? And some more paper towels?" Never a good sign...

Five minutes later, THIS is what emerged from the kitchen.

   

I think they have a very bright future in the medical field, no?

Brace Face

Friday was B-Day: Braces Day.

It's only been three days and already I'm not sure how I'm going to endure a whole year of "Hey, Mama, can I eat [insert random food item here] with my braces on?" I am half tempted to pre-empt the remaining eleventy billion questions and tell her she can eat only broccoli and smoothies until her braces come off.

In case you can't tell from the picture, she picked alternating pink and blue bands. In case you can't tell from my eyeroll, I'm less than thrilled by that choice. Alas, this is what happens when the orthodontist has the parent sit in the waiting room. They say it helps foster independence and ownership of her oral hygeine. I say it results in some Very Bad Decisions About Color Schemes.

So far she seems thrilled to have them. She's shown them off to everyone and has complained only slightly about sores.

It's funny how the braces change the whole shape of her face and the contours of her smile; I hadn't realized just how different she'd look. 

Snorkel Dorks

I'm proud of Miss O; she gamely agreed to a snorkeling trip even though I suspect she might have been a little scared by the whole prospect.

She did an awesome job. We chartered a trip with one of the local dive shops, and yesterday afternoon we headed out on the boat with a bunch of people planning to dive. We were the only two Snorkel Dorks. :-)

   

The first stop was quite deep, and filled with amazing coral reefs. Some of them were so huge I could reach down and touch them from where I was, on the very top of the water.

Liv swam next to me, holding my hand. Every time she saw something exciting she squealed and pointed. The giant stingray at the bottom was pretty darn cool, as was the dolphin we saw diving next to our boat as we headed to the second spot.

This spot was incredibly shallow and we got an impressively close look at all kinds of neat stuff - coral, some sort of live crustaceans walking themselves and their homes across the ocean floor, and an amazing amount of fish. We swam through at least four schools of fish.

It was absolutely beautiful; I could have stayed there all day looking at that otherworldly space under the water. And now, of course, I have a yen to learn how to dive. Maybe next time...

I still have a bug bite the size of Kansas on my elbow. But, at least there was sun today...

Man, I love a place where you can order a Goombay Smash (rum, more rum, and possibly a little bit of Goombay Punch), pop it in the cup holder of your golf cart, and motor back to your beach house. Of course, the speed lumps (as Miss O calls them) make it difficult to arrive with as much Goombay Smash as you left with, but some is definitely better than none. The suspension and shock absorbers in a golf cart? Nonexistent.

Today was actually sunny - I was beginning to fear that we'd spend the whole week without sun. We started the morning with coffee at Romora Bay, sitting on the patio overlooking the dock. Proof that Starbucks is taking over the world: this tiny island has a Starbucks in one of the resorts. God help you if you need a bank or a doctor, but you'll have no problem assuaging your caffeine fix...

We spent the rest of the morning at the beach. Olivia dug another hole that must have reached somewhere near China - it was so deep she could stand in it. You cannot even imagine the sand that I found inside her bathing suit when we came home...

I wanted conch salad for lunch today, but in true Bahamian fashion, the awesomest place was randomly closed today. "Queen Conch will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday" read the hand-scrawled note on the shack. I made do with a little peas 'n rice from another place, but I'm fully planning my Thursday lunch already.

After lunch we headed to the north end of the island to do a little horseback riding on the beach. You have never felt chafing til you've ridden a horse with a primitive saddle and scratchy blanket while your own legs were coated in sand. Owie. Since Miss O was too small to control her own horse, Robert had us ride together. Since the only thing holding her on that horse was me, I had to keep him from doing a full-out gallop down the beach because I feel sure that Miss O would have freaked right out. And probably with good reason... When we got back, we had perhaps the single most ungraceful dismount in the history of dismounts. I am NOT kidding. Clearly, she should have gotten off first, but she didn't and I tried (stupidly) to get off. I sort of slid in the sloooowest slow motion ever off the horse, taking her with me. Sweet Fancy Moses, the embarrassment. Luckily we landed in the soft sand, and the only thing bruised was my ego. I'm sure Robert and the rest of the people on the beach will be laughing about that for a while. *sigh*

More beach in the late afternoon, then a so-so dinner at another place on the bay side of the island. The best part of the dinner was listening to the group of women behind us. They were, no kidding, like Blair Waldorf All Grown Up. At least one of them owns a house on the island and they've been coming here for forever (they were not much older than me) and they were just so... I dunno. Entitled? Condescending? Whatever it was, it was fascinating. Could not stop listening.

We took a little post-prandial stroll on the part that Miss O calls Shell Beach (there are basically no shells on the beach side of the island, but you can find some on the bay side), then I convinced her to head over to Romora Bay for sunset. The sun sinks amazingly fast - who knew it could move that quickly? Miss O tormented the resident macaw, I ordered us milk (Miss O) and Goombay Smash (me) to go, and we headed home for checkers on the front porch. How 1950s of us (well, minus the rum drink, I guess).

Random aside: I have to confess that it's completely disconcerting to go through life never knowing what time it is. There are no clocks anywhere that I've seen, and since I don't have cell service, I don't carry my Blackberry with me. I never know what time it is; this is in stark contrast to Regular Life, when I know exactly what time it is (to the minute) all day, every day. Truthfully, it's making me twitch just a little bit. Need to stifle that Inner OCD with a little more rum, perhaps...

Thursday Thirteen: Good Stuff

1.  Miss O and I leave for vacation in a mere three days!

2. Today is my last day of work until June 15th. While I know the re-entry is going to suck (hello, thousands of email messages in my inbox), it was with no small amount of glee that I enabled my Out of Office notification today. Wheeeee!

3. It's Cleaning Lady Day, which means my house will not be a sty for at least the next 24 hours. Is there anything better than walking into a completely clean kitchen and knowing you didn't have to clean it yourself? Aaaahhh. Honestly, the older I get, the more compulsive I get about neatness and cleanliness.  I was a first-class slob until after grad school, and now I can't stand it when things are messy or dirty. Yeah, freakish, I know.

4. I have a container of Crack Balls (otherwise known as TJ's sea salt and turbinado sugar dark chocolate almonds) in my office. My undying gratitude to Karen for getting us all hooked on them.

5. The bank straightened out the traveler's cheque business (though in the interest of full disclosure, not without a lot more stupidity).

6. My Awesome Sister wrangled a pair of tickets to tonight's hockey game, despite living nowhere near Pittsburgh. DH is thrilled, and I'm glad he gets to go. For free, even!

7. The no-sew tutu I made for my niece's birthday (spawn of Awesome Sister) turned out better than I'd hoped, and fit her perfectly. By all reports, it was a big hit. Yay. Good lord, was there a lot of tulle in my house for a while, though. That thing? Was puffy.

8.  I love the Land's End swimsuit I ordered. It was on sale, AND it fits (and flatters). How often does THAT happen?

9. I have the entire first season of Gilmore Girls on DVD, ready to go to the beach with me. Oh, how I love me some trashy brain candy television...

10. Tonight is my favorite ass-kicking class at the gym. It's being taught by a new instructor, one who trained under Maria (she of House of Pain infamy), so I have hopes it will be even better now. Last week it was taught by a sub and it was way too easy. My motto is "If I don't hurt when I leave, it's not worth it."

11. I inched the MPG on the Honda a little higher this week. So what, you say? Dude, that thing is my nemisis. I am OBSESSED with what my calculated MPG is and am always trying to make it go higher. When I excitedly told DH, he  looked at me with a great deal of pity in his eyes.  But you know what? I'm still excited. :-) 

12.  I have a glut of good books I'm waiting to dive into.

13. Before the weekend is over, fruity rummy drinks will be in my hand, which will be attached to my body, which will be in a chair on the beach of a small little island in the Bahamas! (Oh, wait. Did I mention that already? Sorry.)

We have seriously curtailed the hair parties around here

For the last several years, Miss O has kept her hair long. She liked it that way, and she had enough length to make the required ballet-class bun easy.  

Unfortunately for all living in this house, Miss O has the kind of slightly curly (yet fine) hair that just breeds tangles. I'd say a good 90% of the time she wandered around looking like some sort of ungroomed orphan. Very attractive, let me tell you. I'm positive her teachers and the rest of the world wondered why her parents just didn't brush her hair, already.

But brush we did.

We'd brush her hair (and endure the whining and tears) before bed, and she'd wake up in the morning with the scariest, wildest hair you've ever seen. That hair? Had been doing some serious partying overnight. I'm pretty sure the police were called in more than once to break up fights.

Trying to brush out that mess every morning before school was a horror show. And even if I put in some braids before she left, she'd come home at 3:30 looking for all the world like a girl who hadn't brushed her hair since last Christmas. I don't know how she did it, but man... that was some badass hair she had going on (and not in a good way).

Two weeks ago, I convinced her to get it cut. Short. She sat in Tom's chair at Capristo and said, very precisely, "I'd like a bob, please, that is shorter in the back and then a little longer in the front." Tom, who has known her since she was in utero and has been listening to me complain about her hair for the last seven years, was only too happy to oblige. Forty minutes and a lot of hair later, she was done.

She loved it so much she sat there for the next two hours (I was getting my hair cut and colored) staring at herself in the mirror. Ah, such modesty...

Can I tell you how much I love it? There have been no more hair parties around here (well, maybe a low-key little wine and cheese soiree one night when she went to bed with damp hair) and it takes THREE SECONDS to brush it. 

Someone please tell me why it took us so long to do this?!

In which I out myself as a forgetful narcissist

I've sort of lost my journaling (and blogging) mojo. Not sure what happened, but I'd really like to get it back. A conversation with Miss O this weekend reminded me exactly why I need to write things down: My memory sucks.

"Mom, what kinds of funny things did I used to say when I was little?" (Note that she is all of 7 right now.)

I rattled off a few (pronouncing birds "boids" and calling her backpack a "packpack" and, of course, the oft-repeated-by-me "shranky") but then stopped. I couldn't remember anything else. "You're in luck," I told her. "I"ve written all this stuff down in my journal, so we just need to read through that." She was ecstatic and wanted to go find those entries right then.

There have been so many times over the last few months when DH has mentioned some bit of (fairly recent) history that I've completely forgotten. I've even forgotten those important kid milestones, like when Miss O got her teeth and how old she was when we took various trips and what her first word was. Is it normal to be this forgetful? If it isn't, I'm not sure I want to know. (And if you tell me, I'll probably forget, anyway.)

Although I have no idea what prompted me to start journaling in the first place, I am so very glad I did. As I write blog posts or LiveJournal entries, I'm mostly just doing a brain dump of sorts - daily life, or an anecdote about the kid. These are things that are, I know, not really interesting to many people. Yet this weekend's conversation with Miss O reminded me of why I need to keep journaling. I want to be able to remember her childhood, to answer her questions and, maybe when she's older, to help her understand the person I am (or was). 

I suspect that for many in my generation, our parents are complete mysteries. Sure, we know what they watched on TV and what they liked to eat for dinner and -- thanks to the magic of Polaroid -- what that favorite pair of purple and black plaid pants really looked like, but how many of us know what our parents thought about on a daily basis? The stuff they found funny or absurd or sad? All those small experiences, accomplishments, and setbacks that individually aren't much but which, when taken together, actually make up a person's core? 

People complain about the rise of narcissim due to social media - we like to talk about ourselves endlessly even though no one really cares. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Maybe one day those narcissistic natterings will help our kids understand who we were and what their early lives were really like, without that gauzy filter of unreliable memories. 

Just think! They'll no longer have to wonder just why, exactly, Aunt Sally doesn't speak to Grandma any more or why weird Cousin Timmy lived at home until he was 49. No more will they have to feel like the worst parents ever when they hear us revise history and say "Oh, honey, I don't know why this is so hard for you. YOU never cried at night AND you were magically potty trained in a day when you were only 6 months old!" 

They'll know it all, for better or for worse. Is that good? I don't know. And as a narcissist, of course, I don't really care.

Things that rock: my kid, and Soba

Miss O rocked her first set of standardized tests. We got the scores last week and I was very proud of her. Actually, I was proud of the entire second grade - their scores put them at a 6th-grade equivalency level across the board. That? Astounds me. 

Honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect from her scores. I know she's a smart kid, but I also know that she's an anxious kid and a bit of a dawdler. A few weeks before the tests her teacher approached me. "I'm a little worried about Miss O' - she seems nervous about the tests, and she also has a hard time doing her work quickly." Definitely not a good combination for a timed standardized test...

I talked up the whole testing thing for the next week or two, which was completely easy to do because I was a total nerd and  LOVED standardized tests when I was in school - it wasn't until the GREs that I started twitching at the thought of filling in little ovals with a #2 pencil. At the same time, her teacher talked them up, too, offering a bit of SWAG to sweeten the deal. "Mama! Ms. S. said we get our own water botttles during the tests! AND we get special snacks during the tests!"

The first day of the testing her own little Inner Nerd shone through. "Mama, I am so excited about the tests I could just SCREAM!" she squee'ed on her way out the door. 

That's my girl. :-)

We have a tradition in our house: when Miss O gets good grades, she gets to pick a place to have dinner. Sometimes that backfires and we end up eating at Max & Erma's, but lately she's been on a  Soba kick. How much do I love that kid?  Mama gets a lovely cocktail and lobster maki while the kid gets her beloved avocado maki and spicy cucumber salad. Win-win, that situation.

Also, how much do I love the servers at Soba? We didn't have our usual one (Bob), but he stopped by the table and asked whether Miss O got good grades again and then made her blush when he thanked her for coming to see him. Our actual server saw us toasting Miss O, asked what we were celebrating, then brought her dessert out with a candle in it to congratulate her. Those two small touches were very much appreciated, and I sent off a quick note to Soba to let them know. Yo, other Pittsburgh restaurants: you might want to take note. Have your servers treat guests nicely, and your guests will return again and again. Simple equation, but altogether too elusive for so many places in this city.  

Mile 21

P-Street is smack at Mile 21 in the Pittsburgh Marathon. Our friend and neighbor was running his first-ever marathon yesterday, so the whole street turned out to cheer him on.

A few things I learned from my first marathon viewing experience:

• It is extremely handy to have a friend who will set up two lovely lawn tents at the end of the street to keep us all dry.

• Those tents? Will negate the need for Tom's kiddie-swimming-pool-as-family-umbrella idea.

• Even with seven kids and a husband running the marathon, Lisa will make scones and cookies and coffee for everyone.

• People will run in the weirdest stuff. Some woman had a tulle skirt and plastic leis around her neck - OMG, the chafing.

• If you run the marathon while juggling five balls, you will come in almost dead last.

• Men use band-aids on their chests for a real reason. The one dude who didn't ran by with a bloody shirt and it was all kinds of horrifying.

• Only one person vomited at Mile 21.  Personally, I thought it would have been more, but maybe I'm just a wimp. (Actually, I would have lost it somewhere around mile 3...)

The kids all stood on the curb and held out their hands as the runners passed; I was touched and surprised by how many of them actually (literally!) ran out of their way to come over and slap hands and thank the kids for coming out. 

I was also surprised by how fun it was to stand and watch a bunch of people (many of them looking near death) run a crazy long distance in the rain. File this as another entry under "Things I never thought I'd do and enjoy."

 

All the P-Street kids lined up during a lull in the action. Photo thanks to my awesome friend Karen, who was the only one smart enough to bring a camera.

In which I just make sure her hair is all pretty and her bow is tied

As you all no doubt know by now, DH is the Catholic one in this family. Therefore, the particulars of Miss O's first communion? Were left completely up to him, and also to the kind people at Carlow who prepared all the kids for their sacrements this year without any effort on the part of the parents. 

So this Saturday found me flat-ironing Miss O's unruly hair and tying a big old butt bow on the back of her very tasteful Strasburg dupioni silk dress  (omg, the craziness; I'm pretty sure I made my first communion in a peach-and-brown dress with a sleeveless vest thingie that went over it for extra fashion points, reinforced-toe pantyhose, and brown wooden sandals to show off those pantyhose toes).

The kid can really clean up when she tries.

We all (barely) survived the mass in the eleventy-billion-degree chapel;  Miss O did her bit without dropping the Large Cup (and it really was large) and without spilling or tripping. Always a bonus.

After, we took the grandparents and the godparents to lunch at Mallorca. Oh, how I love their sangria - yum.   We capped the day with an unexpected but completely lovely barbecue at M&T's house (two of Miss O's godparents).

    

You're out!

I knew Miss O was outside playing this afternoon, per usual. Also per usual, she was running around in the next door neighbor's back yard with the gaggle of boys who live there  - we put a gate in between our yards so they could entertain each other with minimal parental effort.

Being the ever-involved mother that I am, I paid no mind to the kids as I sat in the kitchen working on tomorrow's lecture.

Until, that is, the phone rang. It was a friend, calling to see if Miss O wanted to come down to play.

J: We've got the zip line and the sprinkler going. Does Miss O want to come down?

Me: Uh, she's out in the back with the boys, doing something... [At that point, I turned and looked out the window. And started laughing hysterically.]  Actually, I think she's playing 7th Grade Gym Class. 

J: Um...

Me: The boys are hurling balls at her while she runs back and forth along the fence. It's kinda like dodgeball gone all kinds of wrong. She's giggling, so I'm guessing she's having fun.

Dude.  When did kids start playing dodgeball FOR FUN? I vividly recall it as more torture device than awesome game and am pretty sure you couldn't pay me enough money to play it ever again. Not after that traumatic incident in middle school, anyway. *twitch*

Reply hazy. Try again.

Because everything we had in our own childhoods (Little Miss Chatterbox and moon shoes, anyone?) is cool again, it should come as no surprise that Miss O owns a Magic 8 Ball.

That thing? Is trouble.

Sunday night she came clattering into the dining room all in a tizzy. "I think I broke my nose!"

A quick poking and prodding yielded a sizable lump. "What happened?"

"The Magic 8 Ball fell on my nooooooose!" she wailed.

First of all, how the HELL does that even happen? Second, how do you NOT laugh at that? It's so incredibly ridiculous.

A while later I heard Miss O in her room asking the Magic 8 Ball, "Did you break my nose?" *shake shake shake* "Oh,  'my sources say no.'  *pause* Are you SURE you didn't break my nose?!"

Yeah. As if the Magic 8 Ball was going to cop to that...

All that's missing is a little Rockford Files action. Or maybe some Shaun Cassidy.

The 1970s? They are alive and well, and hanging out in my backyard. In moon shoes, no less.

 

Mutiny

Miss O's class put on a French play - Le Petit Chaperon Rouge. Because she was playing Little Red Riding Hood and because she's seven and still likes her mommy, she begged me to come and watch.

I rearranged the schedule to make it work. Frankly, 10:00 on a weekday morning is a teensy bit inconvenient but, y'know, she's my kid and it was important to her and it's all about priorities in life, yadda yadda yadda.

As the parents coagulated around the room at the designated time, we noticed a sign. "French play for 2A at 10:40 am."

TEN FORTY?

What. The. Hell.

We had two emails and a sent-home note that clearly said the play was at 10 AM.

Let me tell you, you have never heard Disgruntled and Annoyed and Whiny until you've forced a group of parents to duck out of meetings and busy schedules in the middle of the morning, forced them to find child care for younger siblings, and THEN tell them that WHOOPS, THE TIME IS WRONG and they have to mill about for forty minutes until the play actually starts.

One of us grumbled that since we had a quorum, we should totally storm in and make them do the play right then. Everyone else agreed. Apparently that stairwell? Is bugged. Not two minutes later, the school director came to tell us that they would be doing a special early performance for us, as well as a second performance at 10:40 for those parents who had already stormed off to try to be productive for 40 minutes.

Ah, the sweet victory of parent mutiny.

And, most importantly, Miss O did fabulously as le petit chaperon rouge, even if she was a tiny bit nervous at first. In fact, I was hugely impressed by ALL the second graders.

It's always about the food in this house

Yesterday's spelling test came home in the backpack. Miss O had been asked to spell moose.

Her answer?

Mousse.

Proving that children are indeed stunningly shaped by their environment, Miss O didn't even contemplate that there was another sort moose. Nope. Her mind went right for the fancy French confection, thankyouverymuch. And, amazingly, she spelled it correctly.

It's all about priorities in this house, people. Who cares about antlered animals when there's dessert to be had?

No one here but us chicks

DH spent the weekend peering into Evgeni Malkin's locker (report: a pair of shoes and a Russian magazine that looked suspiciously like Cosmo) and doing other manly hockey things at the Pens Fantasy Camp.

Miss O and I, on the other hand,  took advantage of the opportunity for a relaxing girlie sort of weekend.

We watched some bad TV (thank you, SuperNanny, for serving as such an effective parenting tool - "If you ever acted like that, you wouldn't see the outside of our house for about 4 years...") and lazed around in our pajamas.

We fixed my Target Withdrawal (no trip since December!) with a nice long trip, most of which was spent in the Valentine candy aisles.  While there, she bought us both decaf nonfat nowhip peppermint mochas with her Starbucks gift card from Grammie and Papu. God love the genius who thought of putting a Starbucks INSIDE the Target.

We also entertained. Mandy and her daughters came over for dinner and wine on Friday night - we don't see nearly enough of them and I loved the chance to just chat.

Alison came for a sleepover on Saturday night and -- are you ready for this? -- I had them asleep by 9:30. As Miss O ages, I will sorely miss the ability to hyperbolize and spin things in my favor. "You can stay up all the way 'til 9:30 - that's a whole hour after your bedtime."  

Of course, there WAS the Great Glitter Incident of 2009 during the sleepover. It is, I admit, mostly my fault. I knew I should have been suspicious of the quiet. I could have stopped working on my lecture notes and gone to investigate. But I didn't, and the contents of a tube of nail glitter (OMG, WHY does such a thing exist?!) ended up all over the girls and the bathroom. And my socks, when I walked into said bathroom.  All three of us were sparklier than any human being has a right to be.

Five loads of laundry (and about 8 extra rinse cycles) later and I think we've gotten rid of most of it. I did catch a green sparkly flash in Miss O's part this morning, though. Man, I hate glitter.

To ease the horror, I suggested we cap off the girlie weekend with dinner out. "Where do you want to eat?" I asked Miss O. She didn't even miss a beat. "Soba," she said, definitively. She's a big fan of their avocado maki and the chocolate sushi dessert and regularly picks it as her Good Report Card destination. The kid, she has some expensive tastes...

When I made the reservation I asked to be seated with our favorite server (Bob). Love that dude. Not only is he good at his job, but he apparently has a knack for remembering people. When we sat down last night, he immediately recognized us and said to Miss O, "Hey! Did you get good grades again? Is that why you're back to see me?" She was beyond thrilled that he not only remembered her, but knew she came there last time because of her report card. He also earned serious points with her by telling her to whack the heck out of the chocolate caramel bombe we shared for dessert. "But mom, he TOLD me to really whack it hard with my fork! *whack whack thwack*" What kid doesn't love being told to smack the crap outta their food?

And now it's back to the reality of Monday. There oughtta be a law making Mondays illegal. Especially after a Sobapolitan the night before.

I didn't think we'd have that discussion for at least another 12 years

"Mom, Jackson says he wants to marry me. But I don't want to get married so I'm just going to live with him. AND we're going to adopt eight kids: four from Italy and four from the United States. Does that sound like a good idea?"

I just nodded and stifled my giggles because really, what else can you do?

A bit less of the -less

Miss O just handed me her weekly spelling test.   Among the usual words I found this string, all one right after the other:

homeless
jobless
useless
endless

Does that list not make you want to leap off a bridge?

I'm totally suggesting she give depressed and downtrodden as the challenge words next week.  'Cause if that's how the kids are gonna feel, they might as well know how to spell it...

We got the beat

It's important to be fully dressed and accessorized before rocking out, you all.

She'd just come home from an ice-skating party and dressed herself in what might appear to be a random assortment of items (cute knit skirt, Little Ms. Chatterbox tee, sparkly crocheted cardi, and her skating headband) but was actually a carefully cultivated fashion statement.

I apologize for the heinously shadowy picture, but I had only one chance -- the second I clicked, she protested. "Moooom, you're DISTRACTING me by taking that picture and now I LOST THE BEAT."

A picture from meme to you

To say it has been a crazy week (I have wildly over committed myself yet again) would be accurate. I haven't stopped going in some capacity or another since last weekend.

The first thing to fall victim to my stress and overwhelm was sleep. The things that run through my head at 1:35, 3:27, and 5:08 am are amazingly diverse. And also completely unnecessary to think about before the sun even rises.

The second thing was blogging.  And honestly, I wouldn't be blogging right now except for the fact that both StylishBoots and Stinky tagged me for the  sixth-picture-in-the-sixth-folder meme. And because I really needed to do something other than work or lecture prep, I took a break to do a little meme-age.

So, like all good memes, this one has rules. Here they are:

1. Go to your picture files
2. Go to your 6th folder.
3. Go to your 6th picture.
4. Tell us about it.
5. Tag 6 friends to do the same.

The sixth folder is called ChristmasCards_Round2_2007, and the sixth picture is one I never even looked at twice because, dude? Miss O's tonsils do not a good holiday card make.

It was still in its original sideways, underexposed form, which I handily rotated and cleaned up for your viewing pleasure.

I took this in early December of 2007, in our backyard. I was attempting to get a good shot of Miss O for our holiday card.  I tried everything I could to make her smile because it was stupid cold outside and already dark and she was starting into her phase of not liking the camera. I wish I could remember what I said to produce this laugh. It was as likely to be something having to do with bodily functions (you all, even girls find farts funny)  as it was a corny joke.

And now on to the final rule: I tag Red Pen Mama, Karen (yes, you, Karen B.),  Kim Z,  ClumberKim, and Kellie.

Wordless Wednesday: Can someone teach me how to tie that sweater, please?

  

The Joseph to her Mary

Once upon a time Miss O's class did a nativity play, which is apparently one of the hazards of sending her to a quasi-Catholic school.  She was cast as Mary and her beloved was cast as Joseph (I guess the teacher might have noticed their, uh, fondness for one another).

They rehearsed and rehearsed to make sure everything would be perfect for the performance (the performance to which parents were not invited and not allowed).

While this picture is cute, I had BETTER not be seeing
some version of it in 10 years with an actual live baby.

On the day of the performance, they donned their "costumes" (why yes, that IS a poncho, why do you ask?) and acted their little hearts out in front of the 1st and 6th graders.

The end.

More, please

I can count on one hand (with fingers left over) the number of times Miss O has played with a baby doll in her seven years. Seriously. The kid is just not interested in playing with babies.

I was shocked when a survey of her various Christmas lists showed Baby Alive occupying the top slot, the REALLY WANT slot. One appearance I could have chalked up to a fleeting "hey, that looks fun" sort of whim. But three appearances, all at number one?

Yeah. It looked like someone was getting a Baby Alive for Christmas.

Santa discovered that while the regular Baby Alive was $50, Amazon had the Baby Alive Learns to Potty on sale for $18. Guess which one he kindly left under the tree?

And yes, I AM twitching over all the quotes, thanks for asking.

So this thing? Is 87 kinds of weird and creepy and just plain wrong. As evidence:

(1) Her table manners are atrocious. She chews with her mouth open, smacking each mouthful of that delightful faux food that she will in the next instant poop out. And then she burps. Seriously. I could not make this up if I tried. At least she simpers "excuuuuuse meeeee" when she lets one fly.

(2) When she has to go, she HAS TO GO. Stick her on her potty chair after she eats and she makes peeing noises that rival Niagara Falls. Listening to her? Makes ME have to pee.

(3) She sings "tinkle tinkle...I'm a star" while she is pottying. The day I find myself singing that song while I pee is the day that doll leaves our house. Just sayin'...

The creepiest of all, however, is this:  When you clean her out (which of course you have to do after each feeding because really, what doll doesn't need a daily colonic?) you have to give her a bottle of water, shake her, and turn her off so she pees it all out.

Without fail, she yells "MORE PLEASE!" while I am vigorously shaking her.

And without fail, I laugh like some deranged lunatic. Because honestly they could not have planned that better if they'd tried. Oh, the inappropriate amusement...

I leave you with this PSA: Don't turn your Baby Alive Learns to Potty upside down when she says "I haaafta goooo poooottteeee" because she really means it and you will end up having to clean up her potty bits from her face. Yum.

This is why we don't let her decorate the tree. Or really, anything.

Miss O wanted to make a gingerbread house today and conned me and her grandmother into making it happen.

When I left the kitchen to talk to DH, the house looked like this:

When I came back a few minutes later, it looked like THIS. Sweet fancy Moses, thatsalotta crap on one little gingerbread house.

   

Hey, Burgh Baby, is this enough Christmas Crazy for you?

Battle of Wounded Knee

"Mama, my knee is wounded."

A close inspection yielded nothing except some minor -- VERY minor -- redness.

"Your knee is fine. Dude, get down so we can go see the elephants..."

"But MAAAAAMAAAA, it's really wounded! Lookit! Right there... See?"

*exasperated sigh* "No, I really don't see. There. Is. Nothing. There."

Strangely enough, the next time she looked she couldn't find it either.

Ha!  Parental victory in the Battle of Wounded Knee.

Wordless Wednesday: I < heart > Presents

 

 

Apparently we live in a gulag

Cabbage and water? Poor Santa.

The kid really shouldn't torture him, seeing as how her attached list? Is MULTIPLE PAGES, front and back, and numbered in order of preference. Damn those toy catalogs and her commercial-television consumption at Camp Grandma...

Dear George

Have y'all seen the Elf on the Shelf? The premise behind it is sheer genius: this funny looking elf goes all Orwellian on the kid, watching her every move and reporting back to Santa each night.

Every morning the elf turns up in a new location, ready to recommence spying duties. The theme song sums it up nicely:

Ooooh, the elf on the shelf is watching you,
what you say, what you do!
The elf on the shelf is watching you,
each and every Christmas!

(For the record, that song is 87 kinds of annoying and highly likely to get stuck in your head.)

Anyway, Hope sent us our elf last year and Miss O promptly named him George. We had a few mornings where George had to be hastily tossed onto the nearest surface (the dusty fridge top, the advent calendar roof, the dining room table) as Miss O clattered down the stairs a bit too quickly in her excitement to see where George ended up overnight.

Needless to say, he was a big hit, and a fabulous parenting tool. "Do you REALLY want George to see you whining like that?" "George will tell Santa if you don't clean up that mess right now!"

This year Miss O's been asking when George was going to show up. While "when your parents finally get off their butts and dig him outta his basement hiding space" might have been the correct answer, it was not the appropriate one. 

To cover our lazy tracks, I suggested that maybe he needed to be coaxed out of hiding, preferably with some cookies. Yesterday she set out on Operation: Lure George with a note and a plate of excellent Trader Joe's chocolate shortbread stars.

Dear George,
How's the weather up there? Ours is kind of snowy. How's Rudolf? Please hurry up and get here faster. We have a list for you to take to Santa. Hope you like cookies. Love, O.

How's the weather up there?!? Dude, she is like seven going on seventy. If she asks to watch the Weather Channel, I might just die.

So of course George had to appear last night. He was supposed to show up next to the note and plate of cookies (ahem) but instead perched on top of the china cabinet. Miss O's squeal of delight when she found him made my morning.

Her last words as she left for school: "Daddy, can you write on that note 'P.S. What do the elves like to eat?' because George didn't like those cookies."

Let the Christmas Crazy begin...

In which the jig was almost up

Miss O believes in Santa still, and she's got a FIVE PAGE list for him this year.  I fully blame the Christmas porn toy catalogs that I left lying around.

Among the gems: 

REALLY WANT... super star theater
Full stage and puppet and more show,
Back stage entrance,
refreshments,
ticket booth, pockets for star photos
with showtime clock.

The kid, she is specific.

Needless to say, she is NOT getting the super star theater, with or without a showtime clock and back stage entrance. She is also not getting a fun mermaid swim fin (huh?) or the girl hair extension salon.

Last night I asked her to please whittle down the list a bit... say to maybe five or ten really important items.

"Okay, I want Bolt!"

"Honey, that's not out on DVD yet," I said, without really thinking. (Note to self: always think before speaking.)

"But... I thought the elves could make ANYTHING!"

"Uhhhhhh..."

I had to think fast. "The elves can't make everything. There are some things that even they just can't do, and new movies are one of those things."

"Oh. *sigh* I guess that means I can't ask for Madagascar 2, either. Aw, man..."

I later relayed this conversation to DH, who said. "You should have just told her that even elves can't violate copyright law and you don't want Santa to get sued, do you?" 

Good point, and why HE is the lawyer in the family.

Move over, Martha...

The other night I heard DH call down the stairs, "Hey, how old am I right now?" I offered him my best guess (hell, who keeps track once you hit 30?) and idly wondered why he was asking.

A few minutes later I wandered into the kitchen to find Miss O perched on a counter, notepad and pencil in hand, furiously scribbling. "Whatcha doing?" I asked. "I'm takin' notes. Hey, Dad, what's your favorite color?"

Again with the idly wondering bit, but there were plants to water and laundry to fold and I just sort of didn't have the energy to ask. 

I figured it out soon enough, however. This note was left, face-down, on my laptop. 

The child was putting together a dossier on her father. His favorite colors, cake flavor (chocolate ice cream), gifts (beer, beer accessories), and party food (Ruffles -- not just ANY potato chip, mind you -- and steak and cheese and prosciutto, which she finally just gave up trying to spell because no one would help her because no one could spell it without some serious google-fu).

Why the superseekrit CIA-like file, you ask? 

Because she wants to throw him a surprise  party (surprise, honey!) for his birthday. Which is IN FEBRUARY.

That girl is gonna make a fine wedding planner one day...

Wordless Wednesday: Not quite ready for that job at the MAC counter...

    

 

Hot monkey love, disheveled meerkats, and tiger teddy bears

So often I forget to set aside my running to-do list (must remember to fold laundry today), my worries (omg, did I answer that email about the translation date?)  and my natural tendency toward crankiness (would you please for the love of all that is holy stop doing what you are doing because it is driving me CRAZY?) and just enjoy the moment for what it offers. Such is the hazard of a Type A overworked, overextended mother of a Type A child, I guess.

Once in a while, though, everything coalesces into a beautiful snippet of time where there are no worries, no irritations, no nattering internal voice listing all of the crap that needs to be done. And no whining by the resident seven-year old.

We had one of those snippets a few Fridays ago. Miss O didn't have school, it was unnaturally warm (sunny and 72, in November - thank you, Global Warming!), and we hadn't yet been to the zoo to see the new elephant and tiger babies. And thus a plan was hatched.

Normally the zoo just exhausts me. All the people. And the smell of poop. And Miss O's insistence on spending 90% of her time on the zoo playground instead of looking at the animals. 

But not this time. We had a completely enjoyable and whine-free afternoon, from the walk down there to the two visits to see the elephant babies to the walk back home while clutching two stuffed elephants and a large stuffed rhino. (It should not shock anyone to learn that this garners some odd looks from passers by...)

A few highlights of the afternoon:

(1) The monkey house

As always, there was some super-hot monkey lovin' going on in the monkey house. I have never ever not once been to the zoo without seeing hot monkey love, hot monkey nose picking, or both. This visit was no exception. I only rue the fact that the lemur's glass was too smudged to get photographic evidence.

As usual, my favorite resident of the monkey house was slumped in his milk crate. If his hands didn't occasionally move, I would swear he was dead. Or stuffed. 

 

 

I do wonder why the poor sloth lives in a milk crate. You'd think they could spring for a snazzier, more comfortable box...

A what-the-effie (tm by PittGirl): The obnoxious Yinzer Woman who thought it was an awesome idea to taunt the animals with a snack-sized bag of M&Ms. She waved the bag and banged it against the window until the animals came up and tried to grab it. Y'know, I couldn't help but wish the glass would shatter and she'd be attacked by crazed M&M-wanting monkeys. THAT would have been entertaining. Possibly more entertaining that the hot monkey love. Also, well deserved.

(2) The cute and the not-so-cute

The two baby elephants are so. freaking. cute, even if they were in the elephant house and not outside in the fauxvannah.

What was not so cute, however, was the meerkat. He was clearly having the mother of all Bad Fur Days. Not sure if the picture does justice to the full-on sticking-up-and-patchy horror that was his fur. 

 

Seriously, have you ever seen a mangier meerkat? *shudder*

(3) Even tigers need a teddy bear

The tiger cub has his own teddy bear. 

Really.

Raawwwr. All ur teddy bearz are belong to me.  

Oddly, the tiger cub wasn't with the other tigers. Instead, he was squatting in the snow leopard's enclosure, minus the snow leopard. Maybe the other tigers were making fun of him for his teddy bear.

Protesting turkey

This came home in Miss O's backpack yesterday:

Yes, that IS a protesting turkey. 

And yes, it IS wearing boots.

(Call me juvenile, but I can't help thinking there is just something intrinsically funny about hand turkeys. Add in a pair of galoshes and it gets even funnier.)

Clearly, the Prop 8 protest she saw on Saturday made an impression. 

Also, I think I take her to Chik Fil A a little too often.

Wordless Wednesday: Me and my shadow

Hidden agenda

I found this while cleaning up the kid's nest. (She spends the fall and winter camped over the heat register in the dining room; she feathers her nest with books, snacks, art supplies, and random other bits and pieces of detritus which I come in and swoop away once every few days, much to her displeasure).

Apparently her recent playdate with Charlotte required an agenda.

Let me just state how much I love that she included an agenda item to clean up her spider web, because the spider web activity? Involves taking a skein of yarn and winding it ALL OVER the first floor to create one ginormous yarny web. I had to clean that up once and after a quality hour spent with scissors and a trash can, I vowed never again. *twitch* 

Also let me state that there was a whole lot of Item 4 and Item 6 going on, and a little bit of Item 5, but the rest of the agenda flew right out the window. Kinda reminds me of the meetings I have every day...