I was going to write an entry explaining St. Nicholas, aka Sinterklaas, to you all that traced the evolution of that custom into the Santa Claus myth observed in America but then somehow I got trapped in a morass of explanations and analysis of cultural mores and weird racial [...]
Somewhere in the back end of the half marathon I ran on Oct. 10, I began to hear a voice in my head singing those words.
“It’s not a hill, it’s a mountain as you start out the climb,” is a lyric from I Know I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t [...]
1. Jim has a job! A brand-spanking new job doing web-content-y stuff that he starts Dec. 14! Woot!
We are both very excited, obviously. He even went so far as to say he guessed he might head to the mall and get some new clothes for the purpose of looking spiffy [...]
…Thus would I sum up the reaction of my Small Person vis-a-vis the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
I realize we’re well past Ye Olde Celebration of the Wattled Bird, here, but I have to record for posterity that taking the kid to the parade was one of my better ideas for [...]
AM: Eliza what’re you doing?
Eliza: I’m just wandering around muttering to myself.
***
I’m struggling with the ethics of my duties as a parent. I should probably correct her when she says stuff wrong, but on the other hand, some of her malapropisms and mispronunciations are so dang cute and funny that [...]
This morning, Eliza wrote a note to Jim’s mom. She had him spell out “Dear Granny, I love you, Eliza.”
Evidently emboldened by her success, she went solo this evening to write a card for Grandma Texas. She came up with the message and how to spell everything on her own:
It was this or a tattoo on my bicep.
At least when this gets old, I know it’ll wash out. Right now, I love it. Tomorrow at 8:55 as I walk into work? Probably not so much.
But since the economy is continuing to send the finances of my employer down the [...]
Jim and I have been cleaning the house since 9 a.m. and I think we’ve just hit on the perfect Christmas gift:
All we want is for people to stop giving our kid stuff.
Is NOT a joke OMG my back from the bending and putting away.
***
Child has inherited her Grandma Texas’s [...]
The New York thing is getting out of hand. I went 4 weeks ago, we all went last weekend, and if all goes as planned we will be in the crowd for the Thanksgiving Day parade thanks to Jim’s hardcore parade-going aunt, who all but levitated last summer when I [...]
I haven’t been commenting or posting because my mom’s been here (hence the no-comment-y from her on y’all’s blogs, too).
Anyway, I have a New York eating adventure to share and more, but all I have time for right now is posting this excellent photo I snapped of the two intergenerational [...]
Jim is driving back from Boston after a day there with a good friend, a much-needed reprieve from stay-at-home-dad-dom, particularly after this week of whining.
I’ve technically been a full-time working mom my entire motherhood, but because of the flexible schedule I’ve had until this schoolyear, it’s felt more like part-time, [...]
1. The husband burned me a CD by Gaslight Anthem, completely unprompted. My iTouch has taken to starting up in random play mode whenever I hook it up in the car. The child has created an imaginary band called “Boston Rock,” who she says I would really like “if you [...]
Well, I may be joining the chorus of the hysterical here, but I am pretty sure Eliza and I had the Swine Flu just now.
I base this on the fact that when I compared our symptoms to those on her pediatrician’s website’s “Do you have flu or a cold?” checklist, [...]
If I ever do get a tattoo, it will be probably be the following, on my forehead: “If your kid is acting like an asshole, she is getting sick.”
I seem to need to learn this anew every time. Blech.
So she all but passed out in her food tonight and last, [...]
Does it come as a shock to anyone who has ever heard of this girl that she decided to be a zebra for Halloween?
Originally, I bought a big wad of zebra-patterned fleece and a pajama pattern, thinking to make a costume that way, but she fell so [...]
…A non-musical, non-child-is-a-genius post!
Instead, snippets about New York.
1. Among the activities in which I participated this weekend was a house-of-horrors night-clubby sort of thing which one of my business contacts was involved in creating.
It was supposed to be a combination of the frightening and the erotic.
When you entered the place, you [...]
I was away on business from asscrack-of-dawn Friday through noon today, the longest I’ve spent away from my kid EVER.
Oh, my friends, it saddens me so that I cannot tell you some of these stories because of their work connections. Let’s just say that as usual, New York City did [...]
Getting your weekly allotment of vegetables from a farm is mostly wonderful, but it has its downside in the overwhelming mass of greens you end up with. Greens are kind of a diminishing returns deal. The more you eat them, the less appetizing they become. By March, when I was eating [...]
A week or so back, Jim was startled out of a mid-drive reverie by an eery voice issuing from the back seat. We do not play that much Bob DYlan around Eliza but something about his voice had captured her imagination and she was warbling away unself-consciously in her best [...]
Mommy, I changed my zebra puppet’s name. Her name is Impulsive Zebra now. Impulsive means listening ears, watching eyes and quiet mouths. Mommy! Is a parasaurolophus a herbivore, a carnivore — or an OMNIVORE?! A stegosaurus is a quadriped. It has things in his tail. The parasaurolophus has a horn! What’s [...]
The clutch on my car has gone out. Since I had it replaced just two years ago, I find this objectionable.
Even more objectionable is the fact that when I called my mechanic, he implied that it was my fault.
I have been driving stick-shift cars for 15 years. The first one, I [...]
So, please don’t stop commenting on the previous post, I am loving reading everyone’s own posts on the theme/meme — I just had to post this one for posterity because it had me cracking up earlier tonight:
Eliza takes a long, satisfying swig of water from her glass and follows it [...]
Part the first!
So. Kings of Leon. I tell ya, those Followill boys are goin’ places!
Major Bedhead and I spent the time before the show making fun of the girls wearing open-toed stiletto boots. These are quite possibly the single stupidest trend EVER. If we have not reached the nadir of [...]
We all really like Auntie Johanna’s boyfriend, and if you would like to know why, it’s because he makes her look like this:
Isn’t my sister gorgeous when she’s happy?
[...]I’ve mentioned this before, I think, but our cats’ relationships to Eliza have confounded my expectations. I had hazy slow-mo film in my head of Miss Thing and Barney gamboling about happily while Moe glowered in the background.
In fact, Barney is like Eliza’s annoying little brother, freaking out, touching her [...]
Oh, HAI!
How are you! I am a GOAT! I am also very inquisitive! I like to snack on people’s shirt and pants and shoes! I am hogging your camera! You should give me FOOD! Oh, never mind, I don’t want to eat, I just want to invade your personal SPACE!
Did [...]
Grandma Texas has claimed for herself the privilege of buying Eliza various special-occasion outfits, including the first-day-of-camp and first-day-of-school outfits of the past year and a half.
This year, mindful of the zebra dress kerfuffle of January, instead of buying it for us, she footed the bill while Eliza and [...]
Last night I had that running dream. You know the one, where you’re running as fast as you can while something or someone is chasing you.
The difference was that this one was exhilarating, because I won.
Ironically, my run this morning was lousy, but this is not the discouragement it once [...]
POP QUIZ:
1. Things I saw in the pit at a Bruce Springsteen concert last night that do not belong there:
A girl wearing a pearl necklace Slushy alcohol drinks A sense of cool and/or ironic detachment All of the above2. You will probably leave a Bruce Springsteen concert thinking the world needs more of [...]
I posted something I thought was cute but then I realized that if you don’t know our family dynamics from the inside it read like a disaster. So, never mind.
The Y caught fire today and so I have no idea what is going to happen to my karate class which [...]
I value strength. I like that I can run far and carry heavy things, both literally and metaphorically.
***
The other day, all three of us met up at the park after work to fulfill Eliza’s oft-stated wish to ride in the pedal boats, after which she finagled a ride on the [...]
Yesterday as Miss Eliza sat in her room at play, legs stuck out straight in front of her, I noticed her big toe looked weird. More precisely, the very tip of her toe was reddened, the skin rubbed to an irritated sheen. I looked at her other foot, and saw [...]
Oh my god, I was going to blog from Texas but I think I have been incapacitated by Marie’s cockroach story. (See comments 8 and 9 on previous post).
Well, the crippling effects of all those lard-refried beans I had for lunch today at the cool Mexican place may be a [...]
Because Jim’s home throughout the day now, we’ve shifted our schedule around. I work long days Monday-Thursday so that I can have Fridays free. The long works hours are usually followed by karate classes on several of those days and so it is that several times a week, I see [...]
I never seem to get around to making a bucket list, which is a shame, because I’m forever doing stuff and realizing later, “Hey, that would be a great thing to have on a bucket list!” Related, of course, is that it would never occur to me to put, [...]
I was going to write the whole entry with wonky prepositions, but it was hard and I am lazy, and also, thinking about tortilla chips with cheese on them is taking up too much brain space to allow for that kind of linguistic trickery.
So!
Here is the promised cat picture:
It’s been all-karate, all the time over here lately, and I am sparing you my treatises on the same because I am boring even myself with the center of power and the responsibility and the community and the meditative focus and the blahblahblah OMG WILLSHESHUTUPIFWEHITHEROVERTHEHEADWITHHERBELOVEDNUNCHUCKS
Also, the blatherings about how Friday [...]
1. The karate thing is a go — I take over next Wednesday. I am thrilled/panicking, because that class has a LOT of people in it.
2. I am contemplating signing up for a half-marathon in Boston and of course my mom is all DOITDOITDOITDOIT! I might.
3. Today I borrowed Jim’s [...]
Yesterday Eliza and I encountered a very large beetle in our backyard. I googled it today. I resisted entering “giant black beetle that is freaking me the fuck OUT” as a search term, but apparently “large black beetle” was enough because I got this picture among the results, which [...]
Granted, we expect to start panicking about Jim’s economic status in a week or two, but as of right now, I am SO. LOVING. the lay-off.
The house is neat, the kid is happy, I can go to as many karate classes as I like without worrying about a sitter, the [...]
Eliza is telling me about something she did “last week” when she “went to a house with three boys that had a lot of toys in it.”
I am mystified and ask her questions to get to the bottom of this, because I cannot think of anyone who is a friend [...]
11:55
ME walks in. She’s a third-degree black belt.
We’re the same rank but because she tested two years before me, she’s my senior. However, I know the kata we’re working on, the highest in our style, better than she does because I memorize kata fairly easily, something she admits she has [...]
For those of you who don’t read my Tweets, the Economic Sword of Damocles has fallen — Jim was laid off today. We have been expecting that he would be laid off sometime this year but were taken by surprise that it happened today. He just bought new work shoes [...]
I tell you, nunchucks are a dangerous weapon. Mostly to the person who is wielding them, if said person has no clue what she is doing. Amazingly, I have neither a black eye NOR a bloody nose, although I suspect I will be wearing turtlenecks for some time. This appears [...]
Herewith, a rare glimpse of my extreme literal-mindedness, which is probably funny only to me:
I was futzing with my organization’s website today, trying to get some items to show that just wouldn’t.
I sent an email to the guy who designed it for us, asking for help.
He emailed me a piece [...]
Eliza’s teacher had a little party for her class today, and somehow, neither Jim nor me figured out exactly what this meant, because we sent her merrily off to school with some banana bread she and I made for her classmates yesterday and thought nothing further of it.
Then I showed [...]
For the past month or so, it has been my privilege to be witness to a blistering war of culinary words that has stretched across several platforms, including email, facebook, twitter, blog posts and comments, between two of my friends, Leslie and Meredith.
These two had never met in [...]
1. Vocabulary word of the day: Sciencer — A person who invents things
We have apparently entered the Rube Goldberg phase of childhood, because all I have been hearing about lately is “my amazing inventions!” These are usually precariously-stacked piles of tupperware, kitchen equipment and toys, and woe betide the individual [...]
[...]
