I'd be worried right about now

If I were a celebrity. This is apparently, the week that everybody died. I think we all need to take a good hard look at Vince the Shamwow guy when investigating the untimely death of Billy Mays. If you'll beat up a hooker, you'll knock off the Oxyclean guy that's for sure.

I am happy to report someone who is still very much alive and kickin', Eric Carle. He just turned 80. Seriously, check out his blog. He is exactly who you would expect would write the Very Hungry Caterpillar. I don't really remember his books from my childhood but we have several of them for Ellie and we both love reading them. So that's your thing/person that doesn't suck today.

I dare you

Bet you can't get through all of this without wanting to poke your eyes out or take a shower. Don't worry, it's safe for work and contains no graphic imagery. It is disturbing though.

http://www.findingmygoddess.com/

Trickery

Today I was getting lunch ready and was trying to keep my daughter occupied for a few minutes so I (gasp) offered up Sesame Street. We've got a few of them on the DVR for just such an occasion. I turned on the Bookaneers episode with Tina Fey (one of my faves) but before the episode started they said "stick around" for Sesame Street. My daughter heard that and got convinced that "stick around" was some sort of awesome show and oh my god, she wanted to watch it. When the bookaneers came on she kept saying "stick around! stick around!" and at that point I was trying to explain, to no avail, what they meant by stick around. Finally it dawned on me. I am the one with the superior intellect here (well, theoretically) so I dug around and found a DVD and said "oh look, it's the stick around DVD, let's watch this." Amazingly, problem solved.

Here's something that doesn't suck today. The book McDuff Comes Home. We like it because McDuff is a little white dog just like ours. McDuff doesn't seem to have an obsessive licking habit though and that makes him eminently more appealing. It occurred to me just this week that the the author of the McDuff books is also the author of the Max and Ruby books as well. We were talking about Max and Ruby the other day at a playdate. Because where are their parents as they take the bus downtown and blow all their money and have to call grandma to pick them up? One of the moms says that a "theory she heard" was that Max and Ruby's adventures are imaginary. And I'm thinking a theory you heard? Are there scholarly journals delving into this literary mystery? If so then I'm really quite relieved as I'm nowhere near that obsessed in my deconstruction of children's books. But really, isn't Ruby super bossy?

The cheese stands alone

The other day when the Wall Street Journal ran an article about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford being "missing" I had a few thoughts. First, the guy sounds like a total flake. His wife didn't sound all that concerned so I guess being a flake is his personality. Then I thought, why is the guy so stressed at least he has a job, it's not like he has to worry about getting fired or anything. Unless he oh, flies to Argentina to visit his mistress with whom he's been having an affair for over a year. So glad his wife didn't accompany him to his rambling god invoking press conference to fess up and apologize. You only need to watch Cops, Snapped, and any Lifetime Original movies and you will learn everything you need to know about life: You can't get away with cheating, murdering your spouse, or running away from the police when your pants are at your ankles. You especially cannot pull off any sort of infidelity and/or crime if you are a DUMBASS. Even if you claim you spent the 5 days with your lover "crying" - in Argentina. Who are you trying to win the sympathy vote from by evoking Evita Peron? Madonna? Well, she is single.

Big Gosselin news

So apparently Jon and Kate have a big announcement on their show on Monday. I've been wracking my brain all day - I've been letting the toddler survive on pixie sticks and juice boxes all day while I ruminate over WHAT that darn announcement could be. My leading theories:

1. Jon and Kate are turning their kids over to the Duggars who are quoted as saying "18 kids, 26 kids, it's all the same to us" and they all jump into the RV and head off to Dollywood.
2. In a freakish turn of events, Iran's ruling religious panel discloses that the vote recount reveals that Jon is in fact the new president of Iran. Sadly Kate cannot accompany him to his new job because her razor sharp spikes of hair in the back keep piercing the requisite head scarf.
3. Jon and Kate divorce. Kate remarries a man with 8 children of his own whose wife left him to star in a traveling cabaret act. They have a new reality show starring all 16 kids. Hilarity ensues on the wedding day when the family dogs knock over the wedding cake.
4. Jon and Kate are leaving their show. New reality show starring me will begin airing. First riveting episode will follow me over the last two nights when I am awakened by random night-time beeping and replace all smoke detector batteries only to finally discover that it's the carbon monoxide detector. Which is plugged in so, really, must you wake me in the middle of the night to tell me your BACKUP power source is in danger when the primary is just fine?

What is going on in these books?

I've written before about one of our favorite bedtime books, Bedtime for Frances. The other night we started reading Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Side note: my mother tells me that this book was somewhat controversial because the police in the book are represented as pigs (the title character is a donkey). I'm noticing an odd trend in these books. In both books the characters are animals - in Frances they are badgers in Sylvester they are donkeys. And in both books the parents are wearing clothes but the child is not. What's up with that? Is it only offensive for adult animals to be naked in books? Not that a naked badger is offensive, I'm just trying to figure out the rationale.

Oh and we have had this book called No No Yes Yes forever and my daughter just discovered it on the book shelf. I guess it's supposed to teach kids right and wrong - like the NO NO page shows a kid coloring on the wall and the dog and the corresponding YES YES page shows the kid coloring on paper. Well all this book has done is give my daughter the bright idea to walk around with her finger up her nose (something she never did before) and throw things in the toilet. So uh, good consumer testing whoever published that book.

Speaking of toilets that reminds me of a funny story about when my brother and I were little. We lived in a house that had an unfinished basement but had a 1/2 bath in the basement. Many of you probably know the kind - sort of scary and one you'd only use out of necessity. One day we were in the basement with my mom while she did laundry - I was 3 and he was 2. My mother noticed that the toilet in the 1/2 bath wouldn't flush and was starting to overflow. So she asked us "did somebody put something in the toilet?" My brother replied "not nails."

Recipe

I was making a recipe last night that involved using a pan to sear some chicken (not for me) on the stove then let it finish cooking in the oven. Apparently they assume that the people making this recipe will be far smarter than I am because they seem to have omitted a key part of the recipe. The part that says "Hey dumbass, remember that pan was in the OVEN, which is you know, hot, so do not grab the handle with your bare hand. THREE times."

Moving on to reality show stuff. I know, I'm addicted. But have you seen this show "Little Couple" on TLC? I love this couple. They just seem like such a neat couple and it's refreshing to see a bit of normalcy on tv. If they have octuplets and she gets an awful haircut I'm going to have to stop watching. There's only so much of that my brain can make room for.

Offending my delicate sensibilities

Let me start by saying I'm not a prude. But yesterday we went to our local public pool, which is a pool specifically designed for children. That is, lots of slides and kid related stuff. There was a mom there who is apparently very proud of her big fake breasts. She was no taller than 5'3" and was very thin. She had at least D cup breasts barely covered by a bikini top. The bikini covered pretty much only her nipples and her breasts were popping out the top, bottom, and sides of the suit. Is it necessary to look like a porn star when taking your toddler to a public swimming pool?I've worn a bikini in my day, that is, before I had a child and my abdomen and ass have taken such a strange turn that I have yet to find the words to adequately describe it. So I'm not opposed to somewhat revealing swimsuits. This whole TRYING TO BE a MILF thing is just a little too skeevy for me though.

Back on track. How about something that doesn't suck? Do you have non-stick pans that you worry about stacking because the metal will scratch the non-stick surface? I did and I used kitchen towels in between them but that was kind of a pain (particularly because my husband never folded the towel the right way between the pans). Then I went to a Pampered Chef party and saw these things. Problem solved. They're great, they fit perfectly between the pans and are much easier to deal with than the kitchen towels.

A sober interruption

I know tons of bloggers have already commented on the murder of Dr. George Tiller so I can't add much to what's been said. But I watched this PBS show yesterday highlighting a few of the doctors who continue to perform later term abortions. One of them, Dr. LeRoy Carhart, I am familiar with because he practices in my old hometown. He said something that I think so illuminates one of the big misconceptions (that terrorist anti-choice groups would love for everyone to believe) about later term abortions. That they are sought by women who just decide that they don't want to be pregnant anymore and decide to terminate a totally healthy viable fetus. The interviewer asked Dr. Carhart how many of those women he sees. "I haven't met that woman yet" was his response.

I never want to have to terminate a pregnancy. But I'm not so smug to say that I never will. I could be that woman who has pre-eclampsia that forces her to choose between between her baby's life and her own, I could be that woman who happily goes in for a routine ultrasound only to find that her baby has a fatal condition. Any woman could be that woman.

I admit, I'm a bit complacent because for my entire reproductive years, abortion has been a choice for me and so I just assume it always will be. That's dangerous complacency.

Post it notes and hail and toddlers are weird

I just went downstairs to give my husband a post it note with the auto insurance damage inspection place info.  It was a post it note with Grover, Elmo, and Zoe on it.  They were $1 in the cheapo bin at Target and I thought "Hey, Ellie likes sesame street" so I bought them.  Not really thinking that "Hey, Ellie can't read and has no real need for post it notes."   If she could read, our house would be plastered with friendly reminders like "poop goes in the toilet" and "don't tease the dog with chocolate."  But I digress.  The auto insurance info is because we had a crazy storm blow through last night with golf ball sized hail that did a nice little number on our car.  Geniuses that we are, we TALKED about swapping out the cars when we saw ominous weather coming, but then blew it off, so the good car is the one that got hit while the 8 year old car with door dings and some nice scrapes from my husband dragging the christmas tree off the roof of the car and alongside it sat safely in the garage.  

Yesterday my daughter was running around blowing this weird whistle (kind of sounds like a duck whistle) and then just decided to throw it in the dog's water bowl.  My husband's response was to say "why did you do that?  why would you throw that in the dog's water dish?"  "She did it because she's 2, don't try to understand the rationale behind her behavior, it makes no sense" was my reply.  In the spirit of weird toddler behavior we went to the open gym at the gymnastics studio by our house today.  It was fun but about a half hour into it Ellie said she had to go potty so I took her to the bathroom where she did actually go potty.  As we were finishing up washing her hands she pulled a wet paper towel out of the sink (not ours) and PUT IT IN HER MOUTH.  Again, don't try to understand it, there's no sensible reason to do that.

How about something that doesn't suck?  Have you guys seen the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are movie?  It's a Spike Jonze movie and I think it looks awesome.  

love/hate

I have a love/hate relationship with all things Apple.  I love my mac, until of course I'm trying to use iMovie and can't get the music right and then I hate it.  I loved my iPhone until it took a drop of approximately 5 inches (while in a hard case) and cracked.  This was one month into my relationship.  The hairline crack eventually spread across the whole screen and while I could deal with that, I couldn't deal with the giant smudge that appeared under the crack and obscured a good 1/4 of the screen.  I had to basically guess when there were controls on that side of the screen and just touch it at random and hope something happened.  I decided yesterday (after 8 months - it was a slow boil) that I'd had enough so I made an appointment with a "genius" at the apple store.  The genius told me that the crack could only have happened with intense impact and they could replace it for $200.  Really?  An iphone can't withstand a minor fall?  Doesn't everyone on the planet drop their cell phone at least daily?  One of my friends dropped hers down an elevator shaft - you know that inches wide gap when you get in the elevator - and it survived a 3 story fall and still worked.  So the birthday money I got and was going to use to buy Apple TV (which I'd love for a month or so then hate with seething rage after it deleted a movie) I ended up buying another phone.  This is the genius of Steve Jobs.  He gets you hooked on his products then makes sure they have some sort of flaw to force you to get new ones (we've been through several ipods here due to battery/hard drive lock issues).  It's technological meth.  I want to stop, but it's so very hard.  Because you can tweet from your phone.  Or watch a movie.  At least the iphone doesn't make your teeth fall out.

Your thing that doesn't suck today is Phil Spector's mug shot.  Perhaps your family is not quite as obsessed as mine about Phil Spector.  One of my brothers thought that Phil's crazy hair was his own so I was delighted to send him the above pic yesterday to put that matter to bed once and for all.  A few months ago my mother sent my brothers and me an email with a picture of Phil during his trial and said that her only question was how Phil got someone to marry him recently.  One brother responded by saying "that's your only question? I've got nothing BUT questions about this guy."  

Letting go, a bit

First, have you seen the guy behind Elmo?  Do a search on Kevin Clash on YouTube.  I didn't really have a mental picture of what his puppeteer would look like but it seems kind of crazy that the weird Elmo voice comes out of this guy who has a normal (maybe even a little deep) man voice.  I want to know how he stumbled upon the Elmo voice.  Enough Elmo, moving on.

One of my friends is having boy/girl twins in just under 3 weeks.  She has weekly perinatologist and OB appointments so I watched her 2 and 4 year old girls for her yesterday while she went to a doctor's appointment.  Her girls were born in the winter and so she said she doesn't really have any summer little baby stuff for a girl (since they are having their first boy people have deluged them with boy clothes).  Before I knew it I was saying "Oh, I have a ton of stuff you can borrow."  Not that long ago I was thinking I was ready to give away all the baby clothes and close up the baby shop and yet I have a freaky attachment to those clothes.  Part of me doesn't want to lend them, wants to keep them good for the next baby.  It's totally ridiculous, I have way too much stuff and most of it was worn just a few times, and the friend is hardly the sort who would trash something.  It's just hard to let go of the baby stuff, even temporarily.  

This morning I heard something funny on the radio that made me think of childhood.  It struck me as odd because the DJs were talking about Catholic school and CCD.  That's odd here because I rarely meet Catholics, it's kind of heavy on the non-denominational Christian churches and Baptists around these parts.  I went to Catholic school through 8th grade.  Overall I hated it.  I hated wearing a uniform (it was brown plaid) that involved wearing a skirt even in the winter.  In Nebraska.  I hated the mean nuns, one of whom called my mother one time to tell her that my brother and our friends and I were too loud at the bus stop - even though we were off school property and waiting for a city bus.  If you had benevolent Catholic parents who didn't make you go to Catholic school but were still sort of religious then you went to catechism classes once a week - called CCD.  CCD was held in the Catholic school classrooms.  In my school it was on Wednesday nights.  And every Thursday morning we'd arrive to find that the CCD kids had rifled through our desks and stolen our good pencils and stuff.  If anything ever went missing we would all immediately blame the CCD kids.  So this morning on the radio the DJs were talking about CCD.  One of them went to Catholic school and one was a CCD'er.  And the CCD guy said something about being too busy stealing pencils to pay attention at CCD.  And the other DJ, and me, and every other Catholic school kid who heard it immediately said "I KNEW IT!"  

Randomness

I know I'm not the first to comment on this but some channel is showing Land of the Lost re-runs and holy crap did that show suck!  I remember being kind of scared by it - I was 6 when it was on so that kind of makes sense.  But seriously, I probably could have staged a show of equal quality and set design in my basement, and again I stress that I was 6 years old.  

Speaking of tv, now that I'm pretty much the Elmo video expert, I have noticed a few things.  For every segment, Elmo will ask a baby.  Like "let's ask a baby how you comb your hair" and then they cut to a cute baby and Elmo will ask him/her something and nuzzle the baby and they'll cut to Mr. Noodle or something.  95% of the time the baby seems pretty unimpressed with Elmo.  Mostly the reaction is one of "uh, what the hell was THAT all about?"  I'm going to have to go with Wild Wild West as my favorite and give thumbs down to Bananas (the Elmo version, not Woody Allen's Bananas, I'm still a Woody fan).  Although there's a segment on the Bananas one where some little kid "michael" has a banana feast for his friends and it's gotta be early 80's and his mom has super big permed hair and long fingernails with frosty pink nail polish and their kitchen looks like one where someone on House Hunters would walk in an go "OH MY GOD, this thing hasn't been updated in 30 years."  

I finally had to turn around my daughter's car seat, she was too tall for our smaller one to ride rear facing so I turned them both around.  Her reaction was priceless, this morning we went out to get donuts and she thought she got a new car seat.  Then this afternoon we went on an errand in the other car and she kept talking about being "high in the air" and telling me she could see cows out the window.  

The most frustrating part of parenthood

You know what I find most difficult about parenthood? All the assembly required.  It starts with the crib and next thing you know you're in a death spiral of activity seats, jumparoos, and play kitchens.  As far as I'm concerned the main selling point of Craigslist is that the shit is already put together.  

My parents got Ellie this little car for her birthday.  Nothing fancy (that is, it does not have battery power and she must use her fat little feet for power).  It finally arrived today and seriously, the feeling of dread I had when I heard all the parts rattling in the box then opened the box to see that it was indeed worse than I expected was not dissimilar from the feeling I had that one time I hit a pedestrian.*

If you are thinking of buying this toy (and really, it's a fun little thing) and do not have the good fortune to score an already assembled one, let me share a few things with you.  Little Tikes should probably update their instructions to include these as well.

1. There are no fewer than 10,000 parts.  You will have approximately 300 leftover parts when you are finished.  As far as I can tell, those parts are extraneous.
2. Tools required: someone with an engineering degree, preferably from MIT.
3. Assembly time: if you have the proper tools (see #3), maybe 1/2 an hour.  If not, about 4 hours.  
4. Your toddler is going to learn lots of new dirty words during the assembly process.
5. If you choose to assemble the car when your toddler is around, add another 2 hours to the assembly time as you will be spending lots of time trying to find the car that your toddler has been dragging in a loop around the kitchen/dining room/living room though you've only gotten 2 of the wheels on the car.
6. If you are potty training your toddler then add another 1/2 hour to the assembly process when you go clean up Ms. Poopy Pants.
7. Make a mental note to request Amish fully assembled toys for birthday #3.

*I hit a pedestrian once when he jumped in front of my car.  When the police arrived he was lying in the street barking.  Much to my relief several neighbors arrived on the scene to inform the police that (a) this guy's pastime was jumping in front of cars (b) the barking was a pre-impact activity.  He was in fact not injured and went quickly back to his car diving ways.  

Narration

The wee one and I have some sort of bug so I was sleeping in the guest bedroom last night across the hall from her bedroom (master bedroom is downstairs).  Around midnight, when her last dose of ibuprofen wore off she woke with a fever.  We got some ibuprofen and a drink of water and then I just brought her in to lay in bed with me for a while and let the ibuprofen kick in.  She proceeded to alternate sucking her thumb with having an ongoing monologue for the next hour.  It then struck me that having a two year old is like having a narrator to your life.  To point out the mundane and odd.  Something like this:

Wee one: What's that noise? Air conditioner. Air conditioner.  Air conditioner.  Cool off house off.  Medicine. Mouth. Make feel better.  Medicine.  What's that noise? What's that noise? What's that? Light. Light. Light.  What's that? Smoke detector.  Make you safe.  Safe. Safe.  

Right now we are still enjoying her sweet little voice but I'm pretty sure she's going to be one of those kids where in about a year we'll be thinking "please, just stop talking for 5 minutes or so." 

Fwing

My daughter has a thing with the letter "S" in front of a consonant.  With "SW" it becomes "F" so she likes to "fwing" or go "fwimming."  But our dog Skippy is just Sippy.  Makes no sense to me but she appears in all other ways normal so I'm sure it's just a quirky two year old thing.  Back to the fwing.  A few months ago the rope holding it to the tree got frayed (from so much use) so we told her we couldn't use it until my brother came to fix it.  We dared not attempt this fix ourselves as my husband is not handy (see story where he mowed the starter cord off the mower as proof) and it was just one more project I didn't want.  Well we didn't know how good we had it in those days of swing broken-ness.  Because my brother fixed it and now from the time she gets up in the morning until she goes to bed her free moments are spent longingly looking out the back door saying "outside, fwing?" or spending a ridiculous amount of time swinging.  What's a ridiculous amount of time you ask?  Oh, so much that the person PUSHING her gets dizzy and has to call for back up.  

My friend's husband is an engineer and at the birthday party the other day I begged him to devise an automatic solution to the swing.  So the swing is today's thing that doesn't suck.  Doesn't suck being a relative term.  It surely doesn't suck for the swing's occupant.  If you're the pusher, well, that's another story.