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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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Nora's bedtime has gotten so much better, it is almost unnerving. I would be perfectly comfortable with her yelling and crying in the crib if I knew it was just a toddler phase that she had to get through, but who ever heard of a one-week phase? Maybe she reads this page and was all pissed off about my oversharing. She is taking longer to get to sleep these days, but as long as she lies there and babbles (mostly a lengthy reprise of the baby chick thing, I swear I am going to leave a tape recorder in her room one of these nights: "Nora baby chick! Nora nest! Nora...worms! Nora hungry! Oh, okay. Mommy bird. Worms! Thank you! Welcome! Night-night baby chick! Sleep tight, all night!"), I am fine with it. Something else that belongs firmly in the "Whatever Works" category: I put her down for a nap and she started the shrieking thing after I closed the door, and then stopped so abruptly that I eased the bedroom door open to take a peek. And Nora was either doing an intriguingly wiggly, face-down interpretive dance in the crib, or she was humping Purple Dog. Again, I say: Whatever Works. I went to another Dials show recently and while it was quite rock-a-riffic, I became concerned about their keyboardist because she seemed like she was on the verge of Victorian-lady swooning throughout the entire set. Perhaps she was working on a sexy-languid type of cool image, but to me she only succeeded in looking alarmingly sleepy and disinterested. On the other hand, I am inclined to cut slack because there are really only so many poses one can affect while playing keyboards in a rock band---you can do the bombastic faux-Beethoven prog-rock big-chords thing, you can be kind of techie-nerd and poke at the keys really precisely, or you can do that "hold down one key and look away from the keyboard like you couldn't care less" thing. In an ideal universe, of course, all keyboard players would come in two-girl pairs, and they would wear fingerless lace gloves and bustiers and captains' hats and they lick each other's shoulders lesbotronically as they played devastatingly simple two-finger riffs on the keyboard. But we can't have everything. If you liked that textual eighties flashback, you will love all the COS-BEE SWEATAHS on this site. One topic just flows into another today! It's magical! My mom, who means well and has great taste but who also consistently underestimates my size and overestimates my fashion sense, got me a lime-green cashmere sweater for Christmas. It's a cool sweater. I like it. It fits. That is the problem, however: it fits. As in, it is on my body, and not just in the general vicinity. I am not saying I look fat in it; if only my neuroses were that simple. But when the green sweater is on, my shape is apparent, and MIMI DON'T PLAY THAT WAY. My ideal urban-hijab wardrobe would be made up entirely of black natural-fiber gunnysacks with long, flowing sleeves and high necks. The day that I finally got the courage to wear the green sweater for the first time was also a day that I ventured out to get fancy coffee from a place near my office. There was a line, and it was hot in the store, so I had unbuttoned my coat. The Obviously Very Gay coffee guy (I just can't bring myself to use the word barrista), who was doing the friendly-flirting thing with just about every chick in line, handed over my coffee and then said, "Love that color on you! You've got the 1950s Sweater Girl Thing going on!" By which, people, he meant: BREASTS. I really cannot deal with strangers, no matter what their gender or sexual orientation, commenting on my breasts. This probably would have been just-edge-of-icky for anyone, but for me, with all my Embodiment Issues, it was mortifying and I fervently wished for death as I mumbled something, paid for the coffee, and ran out the door. TODDLER FEAR FACTOR Nora and I were at the dining room table, eating grapes. I was slicing the grapes in half for her, as per the current mandate. Actually, "mandate" is putting it lightly: most baby books go on and on about THE DANGERS OF UNSLICED GRAPES until you are scared to have a bunch of grapes in the same room as your child, because one could come loose, roll across the table under its own power, leap into your baby's esophagus, and CHOKING WILL UNDOUBTEDLY ENSUE. I cannot find any information about when a kid can safely handle a DEADLY WHOLE GRAPE, but from the general terrified tone of baby books and websites I would guess at around age seventeen. I wanted some grapes for myself, and I made the error of simply picking one off the stalk and putting it in my mouth, you know, as humans do. Nora immediately wanted to eat a grape "that way," as she put it, and she repeated Nora eat grapes! That! Way! Like! Mommy! Nora do it! until I said fine, handed her a whole grape, and resisted the urge to kiss her goodbye and tell her I'd see her in heaven. She chomped up the grape just fine, asked for more, and handled those as well, and while I am still not completely comfortable with bucking the toddler-grape-slicing establishment, she is whole and healthy and unchoked. And now I have learned my lesson, which is to slice the fucking grapes in the kitchen, ahead of time and out of her sight. Cleaning up after our grapefest, I told LT, "I feel like we've cheated Death." DEATH BE NOT BREADED As mentioned before, I wear very unattractive waterproof boots in the winter. Besides warm, dry feet, one advantage of this is that I can play in/with the snow, splash in puddles, and so forth. While waiting for the Peterson bus yesterday, I was sort of staring off into the middle distance and pushing slush around with the toe of my boot. Making little slush patterns and then destroying them. It was soothing and meditative! Until I actually bothered to look down at my slushy handiwork and saw that it was not slush I was idly pushing around, but a decomposing chicken wing. Whoops! There's a winter wonderland for you! The winter wonderland of rotting garbage. In the alley we can build a snowman/made of taco meat and coffee grounds.... ---mimi smartypants with a corncob pipe and a button nose. back/forward |
