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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


2008-07-16 ... 10:36 a.m.

THE STRANGE THINGS PEOPLE SAY

1. Yesterday Nora was watching Prehistoric Planet on the couch when she suddenly brought her leg up to her face and announced, "My knee smells like a hotel."

2. Later we went to the playground and got in a fight. Perched primly on top of the climbing structure were two Orthodox girls in matching velvet dresses and tights (although they were not twins). It made me hot just to look at them. Nora did her sandbox thing and her monkey-bar thing and then she climbed inside the tunnel of the climbing structure and started to make weird noises. I guess the acoustics in there were cool or something. The girls kept whining "Stop it!" but of course Nora did not stop. I saw no reason whatsoever to intervene in this drama, it is not against the law to make weird noises in a tunnel (THANK YOU AMERICA) and if the Miss Prisses hated it so much they could jolly well leave the area. Then their mother marched over to me, righteously indignant in her snood, and said, "Can you ask your daughter to stop making those sounds? My girls are scared."

Wait, they're SCARED? They are easily seven or eight years old. They saw Nora enter the tunnel. Oh G_d, deliver us from the terrifying heathen Oriental! Who makes the goofy vocalizations inside the plastic tube!

I think I said something like, "She's not hurting anyone" and we left it at that. Nora eventually wearied of her jape and the girls moved on to the swings and all was well. I still get amazed at how little it takes to get someone on your case, though. Honestly, I don't let my kid indiscriminately bother people but a playground should be a "safe space" for clowning around with one's peers. And said peers could use a little butching up, as well.

3. I am sick of the baseball fans clogging up my transit. I keep picking the worst possible days to leave work early and then I have to ride the El with scores of Cubs fans. Who do not even have the decency to TRY and act cool, and keep yelling down the train car to their friends: "Hey! Six more stops until we get off, right? Six more stops? See the map? One, two, three, four, five, six, right?" Look, we know you're from Bolingbrook, you don't have to advertise. It is not that I have a hate-on for tourists or anything---everyone is a clueless tourist at some point, and I am sure I stuck out plenty as I tried to navigate the Beijing or Cairo subway systems. However, I didn't feel the need to wear a fanny-pack and flip-flops and converse VERY LOUDLY about how I had never done this before.

MEDICAL RANT, PART THE FIRST

Yesterday I had my annual doctor's appointment, the timing of which was actually awesome because I also have this horrible hacking cough. It came out of nowhere, not with the usual summer cold but all on its own, and it sucks donkey cock. I can't sleep, I cough to the point of gagging and frighten people on the El (not going to puke, fellow commuters, I promise!), and enough is enough. So hooray, two-for-one, I will have the general state of my health assessed and I will end this foolishness with my lungs.

The first sign of trouble is that the lose-ten-pounds doctor is now a lose-fifteen-pounds doctor. At height/weight check it was found that I weigh exactly the same as I did last year, which I frankly considered a victory of sorts. Because hey, I am getting old and I eat a lot of pizza. This is why I was surprised when the doctor pulled out her stupid cardboard wheel and announced that while my weight was still WITHIN THE "NORMAL" RANGE, fifteen pounds lighter would be "more ideal."

ME: Really? Because last year I weighed the same, and you told me to lose ten pounds. Not fifteen.
DOCTOR [stammering, consulting her doohickey again]: Well, ten, fifteen, somewhere in there...
ME: Yeah. Anyway.
DOCTOR: Your weight is still in the normal range, it's just thought that a healthier weight would be more like...
ME [interrupting]: I've got my eye on you. I had better not come in next time and hear that it would be awesome if I weighed eighty-five pounds.

So it was not exactly telling her to eat a bag of dicks, as I longed to do in that last entry, but at least I said something.

MEDICAL RANT, PART THE SECOND

I gave them blood and pee, and the minute I get home from Evanston my cell phone rings with one of the nurses asking uh, we did not have quite enough pee to do all the tests we needed, can you come back today and pee some more? Well no, I cannot. Can you pee for us tomorrow? No. Here's an idea for you, lab techs: QUIT DRINKING THE PEE. Then you will have plenty of pee to study.

Pee Guy! We need you!

MEDICAL RANT, PART THE THIRD

The cough portion of the appointment was just as fraught. The doctor said I basically have walking pneumonia and gave me antibiotics. Yay. But then she also wanted to give me something for the cough, and there were two options---either a pill that relaxes the bronchial lining and takes away the cough reflex or a cough syrup with Vicodin.

Now, some drug-taking part of me lights up like pachinko at that, but she phrases the choice in a weird way by saying, "The capsules might be better if you'd rather avoid narcotics" and like an idiot I find myself agreeing, oh yes, avoid narcotics, certainly we must. WHAT THE HELL? WHAT AM I SAYING? I am so, so disappointed in myself. Why exactly should I be avoiding narcotics? Let's see, I am middle management at a medium-sized publisher, have a brilliant and fairly self-sufficient five-year-old, a rarely-updated online diary, and a book-a-day reading habit. Yeah, better be at the top of my game. Fuck.

---mimi smartypants is trying real hard to be the shepherd.

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