Back to Diaryland

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


2005-03-21 ... 2:26 p.m.

One of the many halal butchers on Devon has an awning that really steams me:

GOAT CHICKEN LAMB FISH VEA

The printer apparently did not have room for the "L" in VEAL, so he just left it off. VEA. That makes me mad.

The other reason I am annoyed by GOAT CHICKEN LAMB FISH VEA is a bit more complex, and that is every time I see the non-word VEA, my brain knows that it means VEAL, but my mind thinks VEA and then thinks BEA and then thinks BEA ARTHUR, and then I have to think about a statue of Bea Arthur sculpted out of ground veal, or maybe a veal cutlet artfully carved into a likeness of Bea Arthur's head. Bea Arthur Marsala, Bea Arthur Scallopine.

Even worse, sometimes I think about tiny pitiful caged veal calves, each one with Bea Arthur's face. After which you can find me weeping and fumbling with the corkscrew, because that is not an image easily handled without a vineyard's worth of wine.

WOW. JUST...WOW.

Once the egg hatches, the fly's larva journeys through the internal tissues to the host's head (if it is not already there) and begins feeding on the muscles and tissues that fill the head capsule. Eventually, the ant's depleted head falls off, sometimes while the body is still living and walking about. In Costa Rica, we have found leaf-cutting ants still wandering along trails with their nestmates, in spite of the fact that there is nothing inside their heads except for a mature, fat phorid maggot.

Baby Shakes A Lot.

Nora had a cold for most of this week, and I developed an even more ambivalent relationship with the baby monitor. On the one hand, it is great to hear all of the Nora noises, particularly when she is being cute and talking to herself in the crib. On the other hand, when the Nora noises are coughing and snuffling and the goddamn intolerable MOANING that was one of the main features of her cold, I am less enthused. God, the moaning. I don't even think she was really awake, just doing this low keening cry that makes me feel a complicated combination of empathetic (it must suck to not be able to blow your own nose in the middle of the night), helpless (if there were something really wrong I could go in, pick her up, and fix it...but what can you do for the congested toddler who has already had her dose of Robotussin* for the night?), and frustrated (shut up shut up shut up and GO TO SLEEP).

Also, sometimes the coughing would wake me up, then a truly strange noise would be heard on the baby monitor, and then silence. Which leaves me lying there wondering if she has inhaled a particle of god knows what and is now choking to death, or if that odd noise was a pneumonia-caused death rattle, or if I should just turn off my crazy brain and go back to sleep. But the OCD thing is that once you've thought it, you have to check it, so then I am creeping into her room in my underwear in the wee hours, and peering into the darkness until I can get a confirmed visual of pajama top rise-and-fall. Christ.

*Which the kid loves. Way more than she should. During the worst part of the cold she would ask for her medicine way more often than the standard every four hours, and then stand there looking blissed out and sucking on the syringe. It was more than a little disturbing, and I am now searching for one of those lockable medicine cabinets.

Here is Nora herself at a St. Patrick's day party, wearing beads that she most decidedly did not get by flashing drunk frat boys from a hotel balcony. I assure you.

---mimi smartypants under a cloud.

back/forward

join my Notify List and get email when I update my site:
email:
Powered by NotifyList.com