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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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THE BUTTERFLY, SHE IS SOCIAL Nora was invited to two birthday parties this coming weekend. One is for a friend's kid, and although it means driving way the hell out to Beverly,* also means sipping a beer on their back deck while watching a bunch of adorable children all hopped up on cake and crashing into each other. The other is for a preschool classmate, and is being held at a Gymboree. The back of the pre-printed, corporate invitation contains this terrifying instruction: Parents are a vital part to [sic] the success of our birthday parties. We encourage parents to follow the Play Leader's example and participate in ALL the fun activities with their child. Translation: "Be prepared to take off your shoes in front of other human adults and waste an afternoon singing Farmer In The Dell." Guess which invitation I accepted? However puzzling I find the Gymboree birthday-party guidelines, I continue to be delighted by the phrase "Play Leader." Comrades! Smash Workthought! Let Us Turn The Jump Rope In Accord With Socialist Principles! Our Benevolent Play Leader Is Wise In The Ways Of Hopscotch! *Traveling to this neighborhood from my northwesterly city location is a pain, although I must admit I enjoy the South Side transitional zone where it's all ghetto chicken shack after ghetto chicken shack and then BOOM! Cute little cop/firefighter/salt-of-the-earth family bungalows! Also, this transitional zone was where we once saw an elderly black man swigging from a bottle of Crown Royal while wildly swinging a white cane around, and I said, "I think this guy is drunk AND blind" and LT said, "Nice combo" and then we both just started to laugh. (Nora, desperate from the back seat: "What's funny? What's funny, Mommy? What's funny?" What I did not say: Disabled elderly substance abusers, sweetie!) SOME MORE NORA-ISMS "I have a lot. I have a million!" "This is hard for me. I think that is because it is difficult." "Can I help you cook? Can I be your helper? You give me a big knife, the biggest knife I've ever seen! And I will chop and chop and chop and if the onion feeling goes in my eyes I will say AHHHHHH! Go away, onion! And onion says NO! And I say TIME OUT ONION!" 1. "You want to feel like a princess every moment of every day," Ms. Beech said, "even if you're riding a bike or kicking a soccer ball." I may vomit. 2. Happy birthday Felix Hausdorff! You have a really strange head! 3. Dog spa book. My childhood dog died years ago, but it is cracking me up just to think about what his reaction would be to a doggie spa treatment, particularly in his declining years (which went on forever---he was a creaky seventeen-year-old by the time he was finally through). My dog would have been like, "Okay, you have all gone nuts, please put me to sleep now." This is short because I have to go to a meeting about punctuation. For real. ---mimi smartypants firebombed a Krispy Kreme. |
