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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


2009-03-11 ... 10:56 a.m.

SCHOOL IRRITATION

The other day I received a message from the kindergarten teacher. It said that Nora socializes in class too much, and if she does not tone it down LT and I will have to come in for "a conference." What would we learn in a conference, exactly? That she talks too much? Of this I am aware. Also, isn't it the teacher's job to get Nora to shut up in class? I can remind her to keep her lip zipped, I can (and will) go along with whatever (reasonable) consequences the teacher wants to give out, but I cannot manage the classroom from afar.

Anyway, I drew a bunny on Nora's hand today because a bunny has two big ears for listening but a little tiny mouth for not much talking, a trick that I stole right out of some crappy women's magazine. Nora loved it. That right there should show you how susceptible to crap psychology children are. In my dictatorship, junk like the Chicken Soup books or whatever will be banned for anyone under 18 years old. And if I have to go to a conference, I will smile pretty and act like I care. I *do* care, sort of, I am just fatigued by all the things that have been "wrong" with Nora thus far in her short school career. In preschool she supposedly had a speech impediment (nope), ate too much snack, and played too rough (in retrospect, this was a horrifyingly gendered incident involving consensual playground wrestling. Not very progressive of you, Montessori.) Now we are cracking down on a kindergartener for talking too much, even though she does her work, gets along peacefully, and follows (most of) the rules.

Honestly, I feel for the teacher. It can�t be easy to deal with all those kids, and I certainly would not want to do it. But I also want to tell her to get back to me when she has a real problem. Every time Nora is being exasperating all I have to do is go out in public to be reminded that she is an amazingly easy, well-behaved child---maybe the kindergarten teacher could visit a few horrible underperforming schools and get the same perspective.

MORE EMOTIONS, MOSTLY ABOUT MEDIA

Slight bashful feelings of goodwill: After my Loop-ish lunchtime errands I hopped a bus to get back to my River North office, as it is still a tad chilly and wet to be walking across the river bridge. (If you ask me. Did you? No.) I settled down with Bitch magazine to enjoy the ride and a stranger poked me and held up her own copy, hey sista! I kind of hoped for a feminist fist bump or touchdown dance but we settled for smiling awkwardly.

Elation: Any bad day can be made better by Weird Al, and lately I cannot get enough of the video for "White and Nerdy." I have a particular love for Donny Osmond's spazzy background dance. Oh how it cheers me.

Sorrow: This is a 45-minute documentary about North Korea. It is kind of all over the place, but the hidden camera stuff where children pick in the mud for scraps while adults are eating nearby made me sick. I know I don't live in a repressive dictatorship and I walk by homeless people every day, but I like to think that I would not be able to enjoy a hearty meal while less than a foot away a starving kid scrambled around in the dirt for uncooked grains of rice.

A weird horror/mirth combination: Last Saturday we had a family party thing and I drank a bunch of beer in the afternoon, which led to a very sleepy and non-rocking Saturday night. I ended up sitting on the couch with the cats and watching exploitative murder documentaries. Have you seen the one in that link? I wouldn't call it "hilarious" since someone was murdered and there is nothing hilarious about that, but the story of the accused is something else. Pretty much all the prosecutor has to do is get up and say, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you believe this ridiculous shit?" What a goofball. A guilty, guilty goofball. It reminded me of another one of those lurid murder shows, which I cannot seem to Google up, where the husband claimed that his wife came home from a hair salon appointment and then rigged up a complicated gun trigger/string combination to shoot herself in the face through the basement door. Because that's how women kill themselves, surely! We get our hair highlighted and then shoot ourselves in the face, using the most complex method possible! Oh, and supposedly his wife left a note but he burned it to save the family embarrassment (yeah right), and he took the gun and dumped it in the river for the same reason (so tidy), and he lied to the police about all this because he was scared he would be blamed (good call!) Oh murderers are so whimsical.

More horror plus a very slight "oh shit": LT was trapped in the oil-change "service area" as he waited for our car, and he was subjected to Oprah on the television in there. It was one of those horrifying-child-neglect stories, a girl so deprived that she more or less grew up feral, and he overheard the shocked Oprah voice saying, "This six-year-old child weighed only 43 pounds." Uh oh Oprah. (Hey, that sounds like a board game! Uh Oh Oprah! New from Hasbro.) My six-year-old weighs 36 pounds. But she can walk, talk, feed herself, and do math, so I suppose we are safe from child protection authorities. And from Oprah.

The Germans should invent a name for this feeling: The feeling I got when I scanned the Jewel-Osco weekly ad (such a "mom" thing to do!) and saw the offer for a free Tombstone frozen pizza with the purchase of a fifth of Jim Beam. Does that also come with free bullets? For when you are "cleaning your gun" later that evening? Is it a special-edition frozen pizza, with I HATE MY LIFE or GODDAMN THAT CUNTWHORE spelled out in pepperoni across the top?

---mimi smartypants is walking around in a hashless, acidless, un-southern comfortable haze.

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