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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


2006-08-10 ... 10:15 a.m.

Now where was I?

Hello.

Last week I had that reading thing, and at the very last minute I grabbed some puppets and used them to re-enact my alternate Leaving Las Vegas script, which went over fairly well. It was hard to explain to Nora why I needed to bring Elmo with me ("I am going to pretend he befriends a hooker and drinks himself to death. Bye! Have fun with Daddy!"), but overall she is very generous with her props and costumes. Lately we have to play this game where she dresses up in weird outfits (a favorite is the lab coat/swim goggles/Mardi Gras beads combination)* and pretends to put three small stuffed monkeys in monkey jail (the newspaper recycling basket), and then they escape, and then we chase them down and give them injections with the toy syringe from her doctor kit. It is like some sort of Andromeda Strain reenactment for preschoolers, but performed by drag queens or the Flaming Lips. I usually am assigned to wear a pith helmet and huge pimp sunglasses, although my role is mostly just to clutch my head and shriek "OH GOD THE MONKEYS ARE OUT OF MONKEY JAIL! SAVE US, SUPERNORA!" This game is relatively fun but the thing about the pretend games of three-year-olds is that they are not much on plot development. The capture-and-escape cycle of our piss-poor-safety-standards monkey lab is pretty much it. If you suggest taking the storyline any further the usual three-year-old will tell you to get out of town with your "What Happens Next?"---monkeys on the loose is What's Happening Now and that is good enough.

*Because Nora is so anti-clothing, I should tell you that all of these get-ups are worn with just underpants. Which means that I take tons of pictures of her in her various disguises, because underpants make everything funnier. Swim fins, cat ears + tail from a old Halloween costume, stickers all up down the bare arms, and plastic dress-up heels? Okay. All of the above plus you are naked except for Pretty Pony underpants? HELL YES WHERE IS MY CAMERA.

So you see, I've been busy. In a repetitive way. Plus I had to write some stuff that is actually going to make money (NOT another book because that way lies madness---something much smaller). And I had to make like a real boss and help a new employee find her editing stride, and I had to get drunk with my sister, and then I had to go suddenly see SONIC YOUTH at the Double Door! Courtesy of a friend who won some tickets to the "Lollapalooza after-party" show. Man oh man. Sonic Youth all up close and personal. My back hurt like hell from standing for that long, it was hot and crowded, for a while I was standing next to gross, drunk, undershirt-wearing, arm-flailing boys* who had me thinking, "any minute now I am going to get this Guido's elbow right in my boob," and I even did the whole show without beer because I could not face the idea of the Double Door's bathrooms. But it was still great.

*While the crowd contained a lot of the aforementioned, it also contained a whole lot of people in my demographic or even much older, because, hmmm, Kim Gordon is FIFTY-THREE. And I had to laugh when the gray-haired guy next to me took a cell phone call like this: "You're sleeping over at Maddie's? Does Mom know? Okay, love you sweetie, bye."

I had a whole paragraph written about how much I fell in love with Thurston (all over again), and how adorable his chinlessness and eensy little pot belly and guitar orgasm face is, and the surprisingly graphic Thurston-dreams that I had that night, but I deleted because the things I want to do with Thurston (apparently, according to my subconscious) are an odd mix of deranged and domestic. There was a lot of kinky sex, but there was also a lot of snacking. Me and Thurston, talking dirty and sharing a big bag of Cheetos.

On Tuesday LT went to a baseball game so I did the whole fluffernutter of putting Nora to bed. Lately this takes a while, because she pops up a few times to "tell me something." I just get increasingly uncommunicative and take her back to bed, with another hug and kiss, and I did this three times and then she fell asleep. This is the only thing I ever learned from Supernanny. Other than how godawful ugly many televised suburban homes are, that is.

Then I was hungry, because Nora and I had had pancakes for dinner. Pancakes plus orange juice and an apple with peanut butter (ahoy, sugar grams!) seemed to have held her but damn yo, if you are an adult pancakes don't last. Men Don't Leave? Pancakes Don't Last. Pancakes will front like "I love you long time" but it is all a pack of lies. Pancake falsehood! There are no results for that phrase on Google.

So I was poking around for something to eat, F5ing the refrigerator and the cupboards. Things were pretty slim because we really needed to go to the grocery store, but SOMEBODY had to front like a big shot in a skybox at a White Sox game, eating encased meats and drinking beer, and thus was not able to do the shopping. And the previous night SOMEBODY had to lay around in shorts and a ratty Descendents t-shirt, scratching herself and watching The 40-Year-Old Virgin,* and thus was also not able to do the shopping. So I guess we can parcel out the no-food blame equally there.

*Which I did not want to like but very much did.

One of the times that I was standing there with the refrigerator door open a fly went in. My first impulse was to slam the door and kill it slowly, but then I decided that was gross, because it could conceivably buzz around and poop on our meager selection of foodstuffs. And would it die, anyway? Maybe there is plenty of oxygen in the refrigerator for a fly, and it would just emerge the next morning kind of chilly and pissed off.

COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS

Again, I have erred in thinking that Nora did not need very much bathroom supervision, because after a suspiciously long pee-time I found that she had made a toothpaste mountain in the sink, easily half a family-sized tube gone. I always told myself I would not be one of those Angry Parents who asks the dumb rhetorical questions, like WHAT HAPPENED HERE? or DID YOU DO THIS? However, apparently I am. Nora's first answer was "I slipped" (hmm, try again), and her second was "I couldn't help myself." Which is kind of charming now but was not at the time. If I am totally honest, I do secretly understand how you can't help yourself---you squeeze some, it keeps coming, it is blue and sparkly and beautiful. What were you supposed to do?

---mimi smartypants is very sorry and won't do it again.

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