Author Archives: Naptimewriting

Moments of truth

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Peanut’s birthday party was this weekend, and he had a good time. He taught one of his friends, the only close friend he’s made in school, how to bowl. He held her hand while they watched her bowl bounce off the bumpers and slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y down the lane.

Spouse’s brother flew into town and Peanut gave his uncle the biggest, sweetest, most sincere hug I’ve ever seen him give a non-parent.

And when the party didn’t go as Peanut had planned, and presents had to be opened at home, he lost it in the way only a tired, overstimulated four-year old can.

So a good time was had by all.

But the most touching moment in the weekend came at the preschool potluck that night. After two hours of play and great food, a professional puppet show (one-man show of seriously high quality) enraptured all 40+ kids and parents who came. The intro, a classic slapstick comedic lead-in by one puppet, had the kids roaring. Peanut got into it and was laughing along with everyone else. Until the main show: a four puppet version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Peanut is a sensitive dude from whom we generally keep such stories because the threat of danger does not suit him well. Empathetic, eager to please, very keyed to structure and rules, he also does not like stories about misbehavior. So when the puppet boy played a trick on his puppet dad and pretended there was a wolf, Peanut was visibly upset. The other kids laughed and egged on the boy puppet, but our son was amazed that anyone would willfully trick someone else. He repeatedly shook his head and mouthed “no.”

And when the real (not at all real friendly looking puppet) wolf arrived, Peanut was terrified.

I moved to the door so he could see me; he glanced over every ten seconds and I repeatedly signed that it was okay. He screamed in terror when the wolf chased the boy and when the wolf chased the lamb. Genuine terror. Finally, he couldn’t take it any more and came to sit with me, which was much better for both of us. His heart was pounding through his shirt and he was shaking. I held him tightly and told him we could leave if he wanted, that the show was pretend, and that I knew everything would work out in the end of the story. And it did. And the awesome puppeteer came out after the show and demonstrated how all the puppets worked, revealing the stagecraft and dropping my child’s blood pressure significantly.

It was so sweet to watch him laugh at his first puppet show. And so moving to see him just terrified of a story (he gets freaked out at books, too, and articulates his fears gorgeously, but this was just too much for him). It was gratifying to be there, to know in advance that he might be distressed, to offer support if he needed it, and to give it to him when he finally could take no more. And it helped him immeasurably when I told him that he never has to stay listening if something scares him or makes him sad. There is no rule about listening when your feelings get too big; you can always leave or sit with Mom or find a friend to hold hands with.

No nightmares that night, for the first time in a long time. I thought we’d be up with him all night, but he went to sleep easily and slept as hard as he ever has.

It was a long, good not-quite birthday. Happy new year, little guy.

We’ll be taking back that award now…

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I avoid baby stores like the plague, for they are full of my least favorite things: parents.

Babies have excuses for socially unacceptable behavior. Parents? Not so much.

Example from a recent trip, taken under duress and only because there simply isn’t any way to get a few necessary baby items if one goes to a regular store (by few, I mean one; and by necessary I mean newborn head support for Hazelnut’s car seat. The organic cheese puffs were not the reason for the trip, so don’t judge me. Okay, they were a secondary reason, but the baby superawfulstore is closer than a natural food store. And the head support. I’m trying to support my infant’s head, people. And they are grilled cheese puffs, made with natural chemicals and organic empty calories to taste like crunchy grilled cheese.)

Anyway.

Dad and Mom are shopping with one year old child. Mom is carrying her, but hands her to Dad as she investigates all the useless and lame sippy cup technology available at the baby superawfulstore.

Child wants to hold Dad’s glasses. He gives them to her. She shakes them. Then drops or throws them. He says:

“No. Don’t do that. That is being a bad girl. Do not throw Daddy’s glasses. I do not want you to do that. That is being very, very bad. No, I will not hug you. You do not get hugs when you are very bad. Bad girl.” Her lip is out; she’s sad and trying to hug him. He puts his glasses back on and walks away before I hear whether she cries.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Academy, I want to give this man a parenting award. He didn’t hit her for dropping or throwing the glasses, and in so doing, allowed her exactly one chance to express a totally normal scientific impulse: experimentation with gravity. She needed to see what happened to the glasses if they dropped. Sure he withheld love and told her that she was a flawed person for disobeying instructions he thought but never expressed aloud; but he didn’t beat her as most of the parents in the superawfulstore tend to. And that generous restraint is why she will grow up with stupendous self esteem and be willing to stand up for what’s right in the world. Ladies and gentlemen of the Academy, this man is a Nobel Peace Prize waiting to happen. He’s preventing future wars and genocide by teaching love, patience, and respect.

And if they don’t give him an award, they are very, very bad and he won’t hug them even if they cry. A guy’s gotta put his foot down, after all, with a parenting award committee that’s totally new to this planet and its rules.

URL surprises abound

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Did you know that, if, in a fit of rage, you type ihatemyhusband.com into the URL box thingie up top there, you get a squatter site that links to Russian brides? That is just six kinds of wrong.

And seriously? Nobody has claimed and developed these sites?
apathy.com
futility.com
whythehellbother.com
myhusbandbugsme.com
Iwanttothrottlemyhusband.com
mykidisdrivingmecrazy.com
mykidsaredrivingmecrazy.com
shootmenow.com

But these URLs forward as follows…
failure.com to a scientific and engineering firm
despondence.com is a clearinghouse for mental health ads

no surprise….
depression.com is owned by a Big Pharma company selling their bottled happiness. So why don’t they buy mykidsaredrivingmecrazy.com and iwanttoothrottlemyhusband.com ?

Musings

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Seems to me it’s significantly less terrible to slip with a “You’re killing me” at a small person if they don’t yet know what “kill” means.

Precocious is as precocious does. And as precocious procreates. Damnit.

On a day when I leave the car parked at the M.D.’s and walk three blocks to the grocery store, then forget about the distance and buy four bags packed with heavy stuff (I’m talking juice and pineapple and canned soup, y’all), and it starts pouring rain, and the shopping cart refuses to cross the imaginary boundary the store established for “jerks” like me, and the small person with me and the small person growing in me both turn out to be woefully weak in the bicep department and kind of fail to earn their keep; then I get home to find the plumber blocking the driveway and the whole freaking county parked along my street and I have to park two blocks away and hope the groceries I unloaded in front of the house aren’t stolen, and I find when I get to them that they’re probably only there because the paper bags are shredding in the rain; well it’s on that day that I am really grateful that I don’t live in an impoverished nation where I would have to carry water several miles every day and boil it to prevent parasites.

Seems to me that clearing out the anti-gay-rights politicians who get caught in gay sex scandals (yup, another) and the anti-family-planning politicians who have affairs in which they’re clearly using contraception and the “clear-out corruption” politicians who pad their coffers with bribery and graft and nepotism, that maybe there will be six people left in office. By coincidence, it seems, they’d be women.

When a state refuses to raise taxes or cut corporate welfare and decides to cut its education budget so severely that it will be last in the nation and doesn’t see how that compromises its future economic and social health, why then that state needs a wake up call. Can’t get something for nothing, California. And as soon as you stop counting the departments in which Berkeley tops all other schools in the nation, that’s when the whole state will fall into the toilet. So don’t protest on campus, people. Protest in Sacramento *in* lawmakers’ offices.

Kind of like a parking ticket

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Doc: Everything seems fine. Any concerns?
Me: No, but talk to me in a couple of weeks and I’ll be ready to complain.
Doc: Done. Want me to check to see how dilated you are?
Me: Any reason other than curiosity? Cuz I’m good skipping it.
Doc: No reason. Some people just want to know.
Me: Well, they’re welcome to take my exam for me.
Doc: Thank goodness you said that. I have a quota to fill, see. I’m like the meter maid of cervixes.
Me: Your degree-granting institution must be so proud.
Doc: They would have been, but you just knocked me out of the running for a set of steak knives.
Me: Sounds like a great prize for a surgeon. If it’s any consolation, I’m sure someone in early labor will submit willingly.
Doc: Heck, yeah. But I get my most hits on the 41-weekers who are desperate for some progress.
Me: Suckers.
Doc: Indeed. See ya next week.

That’s an easy one

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Problem: two terrible evenings in a row where Peanut spends the time from nap until lullabies out of his mind with the urge to scream and cry and physically torment his parents until well after his alleged bedtime.
Solution: bogle petite syrah port. two ounces in wedding crystal.
Problem: guilt over subjecting in utero second child to that particular avoidance technique
Solution: eat an entire sleeve of ginger snaps to go with the port.
Problem: it’s been four months since I’ve had a drink and I’m a lightweight. A very bloated, itchy, kind of grouchy lightweight.
Solution: more ginger snaps.

Bolano 2666 quote of the week (6)

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This week’s reading succeeds in showing, rather than telling, Bolano’s intentions regarding Santa Teresa. “The Part about Fate” grows darker, more labyrinthine, misogynistic, bigoted, befuddled, surreal, and violent as we follow Fate around city, to the fight and a bar-hopping and city-encircling drive that grows increasingly menacing until he leaves with Rosa.

The section, the novel, the story of the crimes are twisted, hidden, dark, and ignored in favor of bluster and ignorant banter, which makes the characters in this section almost unbearable. As Rosa Amalfitano notes, “they seem right, they seem authentic, but they’re actually full of shit” (327). Oscar Amalfitano recognizes this, just as he clearly recognizes his own descent into madness (332). Like Seale in Detroit, Chucho and the other men Fate talks with in Mexico present their existential theories based on nothing; they mislead and confuse and cloak, which leaves both Fate and the reader more and more distanced from the city’s reality.

The sense of Fate having landed on a Martian landscape is reinforced each time he calls New York and someone who doesn’t sound quite right deflects and avoids; when his editor refuses to hear him; when the voice seems a million miles away. This section, as with the others, is well written, expertly crafted, intriguing, and intelligent. But Hobbesian in the “nasty, brutish, and short” life way, with booze and beatings and drugs and sex and talking all taking on characteristics of being dirty and dangerous and heavy handed and curtained yet cartoonish. This section’s metaphor lies in El Rey del Taco; and in the fight arena where Fate can’t find who is calling him; and on the maze-like dark streets and the closed doors and the dreams that swirl in and out of waking.

The same foreboding that clings to the end of The Part about Amalfitano lingers at the end of Fate’s section…was the black car Amalfitano spied outside waiting for Rosa? Will Fate get her out of the city? And is that imprisoned suspect Archimboldi? Bolano has a Dickensonian facility with cliffhangers.

Quote of the section, I think, is:
“The tone, he thought, was solemn and defiant, the battle hymn of a lost war sung in the dark. In the solemnity there was only desperation and death, but in the defiance there was a hint of corrosive humor, a humor that existed only in relation to itself and in dreams, no matter whether the dreams were long or short. Sonoran jazz” (308).

Your reactions?

you and me both, buddy

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Me: Peanut, please take off your clothes for bath.
…
M: Pea, it’s bath time. Please take off your clothes.
…
M: Peanut. You’re in the bathroom with your clothes on. What’s the deal? I’m asking you patiently. Please take off your clothes.
P: Mommy? You’re boring.
M: You mean it’s boring to hear the same words over and over.
P: Yup.
M: Well, gotta tell you, bud. It’s boring to say something over and over. Tell you what. You listen the first time, and I won’t have to say it again.
P: That’s still boring.
M: Well, you’ve got me there, buddy. Having rules and being clean and getting naked is boring.
P: No it’s not! Watch! Naked is fun.

in which I do *not* thank the Academy

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I would like to thank most of the English-speaking world for thoroughly screwing up some damned fine names. This whole baby naming process is much harder after the havoc wreaked by parents, novelists, and serial killers. Thanks for making our list much shorter.

You’re one of the big winners, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Daisy could have been lovely, but you made her a self-involved boor.

You, Marlon Brando, have completely eviscerated Stella for us. Others are brave enough to withstand the bellows, but we’re not.

Thanks a lot, popular culture, for ruining Chester. We daren’t name a molester.

You also did some damage to the grown-up possibilities of Cherry. And Dick (which is not a name we covet, but between the penile and the vice presidential, there might never be another person named Dick ever).

Sesame Street, you’ve killed great early century faves like Kermit and Grover. Not sure how Ernie still survives, but show me a kid named Bert and I’ll name my next child Elmo.

Benedict? Gone. Brutus? Not in a million years. Adolf. Of the radar. Lucifer…hey, now we’re talking!

So, so wrong

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Crossing the street, I saw something red in the road. My heart skipped a beat as I thought it might be a Red Vine. I actually started thinking about whether it would be wrong to eat faux licorice out of the street when I realized it was some sort of electrical tubing.

And *then* I realized I have a problem.

Surely I should have known before this little incident? Or been shocked when I realized I wasn’t even a little embarrassed that I have the germ ethics of a toddler?

Soothsayer

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Parenting dilemma:

We try to be all gentle and attachment parent-y and respectful and non-carrot-and-stick-y here at Chez Naptime, and we’ve found ourselves perched on a parenting dilemma. We don’t do the authoritative parenting thing; it’s really not our way or the highway. We’re here to teach and we’re here to learn. There are some inviolable rules, but most things, when they don’t deal with safety or or treating human beings gently, are open to negotiation. I’ve posted here before about how open we are with language, with profanity, with ideas.

We try to respect our son as a person (no such respect for the soon-to-be child because that bugger will get way more say in our lives than we want, as it is, so for now it just gets giggles for its spleenectomy skills and and is otherwise ignored) and demand the same respect from Peanut. We’re not his servants. We’re people. We respond to polite talk and ignore grouchy talk. We respond to all manner of emotions and honor them without correction, but won’t listen to whining. Cry if you’re sad, ask for a hug if you’re angry, laugh loudly and unabated if you’re happy. Find an alternative to hitting and yelling. And we try to practice what we preach. Try. The yelling part is hard.

Blah blah, blah, Nap, get to the juicy stuff.

Fine. Preschool has been an interesting lesson in other children, a really informative lesson on gentle parenting options (Bev Bos inspired co-op means there are lots of great parents there all the time and I’ve learned from them), and a crash course in crappy child behavior. Several whiners, a few takers, and lots and lots of exclusion and surliness. All age-appropriate, all carefully handled and redirected, all exhausting. Most of which is coming straight home for practice.

So Peanut spent a week or so sticking his tongue out when he was displeased. I didn’t want to make too big a deal out of it (grand scheme of things, a universally recognized sign of displeasure, freaking hilarious, pretty innocuous; but not something I’m gonna put up with long term because I find it offensive and don’t want to be the mom whose kid does that to grandparents.) I mentioned each time that we don’t do that because it’s just not friendly and if you disagree it’s time to use your words. Fine. Tongue is mostly gone.

What we have now is “poopy.” As in “NO! You’re a poopy Mommy!” Or “Get out of here you poopy Daddy!” And my favorite: “Why do we have to have cats? You’re poopy cats and I’m gonna flush you down!”

Now, I don’t care about the scatalogical reference. I’m one of those Moms who plays along when he says he’s making a stew of squirrel eyeballs and whale poop in his pint-sized kitchen. I grab a bowl and pretend eat and tell him how disgusting it is and can we please add worms for texture. I don’t mind honoring his need to tell me off and to distance himself from me when I’m saying something he doesn’t like. he’s allowed to his opinions, even if they’re strong and anti-Mom.

But I don’t particularly like being called poopy. Not in the “I’ve sacrificed everything I am and want to be so I can take care of you, you ingrate, so show some respect” kind of way. Close, though.

I also think I need to manage the beginning of the name-calling phase. Calling people names isn’t nice. It’s hurtful. Poopy is not a big deal, but it’s teaching him about power and language and derision, and I think I need to parent here instead of hoping it goes away if I ignore it.

So, I ran it by my “how would you feel if he did that in front of your sister-in-law” radar, which is a pretty accurate measure of how I judge acceptable versus not acceptable (I can’t use the older generation, because they disagree with just about everything we do, and we don’t particularly agree with their parenting values, either. My s-i-l has a similar parenting philosophy about most issues and a lot more experience, common sense, and patience than I do, so that’s where I go).

And my sil radar is befuddled. I don’t know what she would do. She might laugh (though she’s one of those awesome parents who’s smart enough to turn away or leave the room before laughing so the behavior could hypothetically be corrected at some point). She might casually say there are better ways to tell Mom no and let’s try some. She might ignore it. She wouldn’t yell or punish him, which some of the parents who I respect would. I don’t judge that impulse. I just don’t want to pick this, Battle No. 367 of today’s 928 battles for time out or yelling or general stakes-raising.

So I don’t know. Do I ignore being poopy? For, let’s be honest, I’m a grouchy pregnant woman facing her last few weeks of productivity with a list of things to finish a mile long, and am quite often a scatalogical word that he doesn’t even know yet, but that might correspond with “poopy.” Do I use “poopy” as a springboard for discussing how to talk to people and how to disagree in ways that wins friends and influences people? Do I let it run its course without the reinforcement of attention? Do I send him to Grumpa’s house for the beginning of his medieval training in “back in my day”? (Yup. Just called Grumpa several names, but in a way that seems simply delightful. See how much I have to teach a child? I can’t let “poopy” go without teaching Peanut to push real buttons, right?)

I know I don’t want to cut him off and make him think it’s not okay to disagree with me. I want to honor the independence without approving the fecality of this recent phase. I want to stop overthinking the small stuff but want to catch the big stuff early when it’s manageable.

Suggestions?

Holy handful, batboy!

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Oh, boy, do we have a handful and a half living in our house.

Thankfully, the past few weeks have been quite enjoyable. Sure, we’ve had age-appropriate struggles and nonsense and frustrations, but totally in proportion to what normal children dish out. Nothing like the batshit insane we often endure (barely) here at Chez Nap (see for instance the popular posts that involve my child being a bit off-the-charts in general), or that they have handled for many more moons over at Bad Mommy Moments.

This weekend, when gently instructing Peanut on the reasons we do not jump on the furniture in our house, he told me, “Don’t worry about me, Mommy. Just worry about yourself.” I usually give a gentle but firm lecture about respect and ways that we talk to other people before leaving the room to laugh my ass off, but I didn’t make it. I burst out giggling, and then called Spouse over for a conference. I had heard those words before. Directly out of my alleged partner’s mouth. So that Peanut announcement, though saucy, was not entirely his fault.

Today, though, while we were climbing at best of the neighborhood’s awesome rock parks, he told me, “Look, Mom, I’m almost four and that’s older than you, so just climb your rock and let me do my day.”

Um….so torn…want you to grow up. Dig the independence. Absolutely groove on you pushing back. But dude? That rock is several stories high, and covered in moss and rain. Also? I’d leave you here in a heartbeat after a comment like that if I hadn’t already invested quite a bit of care and hypervigilance and patience and reason and what was left of my sanity over the past few years. If you didn’t have so damned much Mama Equity in you, you’d be on your own.

So instead I played along. “Well, yes, almost-four is older than almost-forty, so you’d better go to college and get a job and find an affordable house and get a mortgage and pay your way, because otherwise, I’m gonna be the boss for a few more years.”

His answer? Predictably: “Just worry about yourself, Mom. Don’t worry about me.” Would that such a thing were possible, dude. Before we left for the rock park, I was thinking “four down, twenty to go.” But we all know I won’t stop worrying (or butting in) after another 20 years. Sweat equity, patience capital, and sanity stakeholding and all.

Bolano’s 2666 quote of the week (5)

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Ah, “The Part about Fate.” I was pleased with the introduction to Quincy, and was ready to read on about him, but Bolano baited and switched for Oscar Fate, whom, I have to be honest, I almost loath. The man whose intimate moments open the section just doesn’t seem to be the same man whose nom de plume gives this chapter a sense of faux purpose. This meandering, lost chapter may be about Fate, but it doesn’t ring true about fate. And when I wasn’t careful, it drew me into some appalling dark corners that I’d rather shine a light on than hide in.

That Fate barfs through most of this week’s reading is pretty much spot on where I was in forcing myself to complete the section. “I don’t know, I don’t feel very well, if I felt better I’m sure I could figure it out,” (244). Clearly it’s not just me. Could be my fear of the next section, distaste aimed at a variety of things in my life while I read. But I think not. I think this section is overreaching and strikes chords that sing out “I’m supposed to be important or funny” instead of actually being insightful or funny.

Really, my first thought was, what does this Chilean author, who has been masterful with southern Arizona and northern Mexico (what I know of them, anyway), know about aging Black Panthers in Detroit? Yes, some people, particularly those in political and social movements, are caricatures. But seriously?
“As you all know, said Seaman, pork chops saved my life” (250). Seaman goes on to detail his nonsensical life philosophy and cholesterol-free recipes using relatively large amounts of butter in them. Funny if I’m in a good mood. Bordering on annoying stupidity if I’m not. The author, as always, is quite engaging. His characters and what they say, throughout this week’s section, are irritating.

Seaman’s half page on metaphors about stars is another example. If I were grading a stack of typical freshman English papers, this would strike me as hilarious because it does highlight how inane most humans are, especially while pontificating. As it is, I’m not teaching this semester and found Seaman’s totally asinine view of metaphors sad, trying, and indicative of a whole culture of bullshit. That is, of course, the point. American pseudo-intellectual, self-help, social change culture is bullshit. But that strikes way too close to home, and made me resent this week’s reading.

So, fine, I’ll bite. let’s travel with Fate to Mexico to see if humans are somehow more…human…there. The illogical diatribes south of the border, a few pages later, are just as lame and hollow and misinformed. Humanity is screwed because we’ll all too stupid to live, really, is what I got from the beginning of The Part about Fate. Chucho and Charly are just as reprehensible as Barry Seaman. Reinforcing this frothing aura of stupidity and human foibles writ large is the abhorrent sport of choice…boxing…in which humanity’s worst instincts and natures come out for a modern version of bear baiting.

So this section is rife with racism, misogyny, and bullshit. Great. Can I get back to Quincy Williams and his intimate moments after his mother’s death? Please?

So this week’s quote? All I have, really, is the second-hand assertion that
“There’s no place on earth with more dumb girls per square foot than a college in California” (288). As with everything else in this section, it’s so wrong and so offensive and so pinpoint accurate and so galling that I don’t know where to go except to agree. And that’s the pain of The Part about Fate. We’re led, unless we shake our head to clear it after every sentence, to believe and feel and watch bullshit of our own volition.

Glad I’m forcing myself to continue, because this is too small a section in a huge book to break me. But it’s trying.

what about your weekend, punk?

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You’re all talk, Naptime, about how much work you have and the things you need to accomplish on the weekend when Spouse, the only child care option you have, is available to weather the 4-year-old storm for a bit. So what’d you accomplish, punk?

Finish your articles?
Not really. One is 98% there and if I’d only proofread and double check my sources I’d be done. But then there’s the submission process and that seems daunting enough to put the thing off another year. The other, half-done article, is such a mess on paper and so freaking genius in my head that I just don’t know if I can reconcile the two before baby brain takes over. Again, I just need a solid weekend. But my sitting and thinking skills ain’t what they used to be.

Did you revise your book?
Yup. Last weekend. Total overhaul. Need a new title, though, so the new and improved version can go out to agents who might notice it’s just rearranged. Any suggestions are welcome, even though you haven’t read the danged thing. Seems that’s the way they name most novels, anyway.

Well, okay. Did you finish Peanut’s art project that you started a year ago?
Nope.

Edit any of the 34 hours of Peanut footage you keep swearing to send grandparents?
Nope.

Did you do anything of use, now that you mention it?
Well, snarky-pants, it just so happens I did. You read about the nightmare with the cat worms that included a day of steam cleaning the house in scratch-the-skin-off-my-body-and-buy-all-new-furniture horror. Well this weekend was two hours at the incompetent vet (yes, again) for a condescending variety of friendly ramblings, concluded by her asking whether, if we have a boy, we will circumscribe him. I guess she meant drawing the circle around him in the co-sleeper, so I said no. I might write circles around him in the crib when he or she moves to Peanut’s room, but I left it at “no; there’s no reason to.” Didn’t see the need to draw out a discussion about circumscription, since it’s so fraught with emotion.

Spouse and I also made huge headway on our organic garden by building a raised bed—6×6 extravaganza of…well, for now just wood and protective mesh screening. Soon it will have dirt and our awesome compost. Then it will have spinach and basil and carrots and strawberries and squash and cukes and such things. But for now it’s prepped. The best part was building in the rain, while Peanut played in the huge teepee we just built him. (Building semi-permanent forts sounds really good but takes way more time and energy that I believe my child is worth, but really tall bamboo teepees are freaking easy enough to finish in about 20 minutes. 8′ diameter, 6′ tall. $20. 20 minutes. My kind of building.)

I also read 2666 (next post) for the bolanobolano.com group read and got frighteningly far ahead. Must go write my assessment of The Part about Fate, which I freaking loathed. Suffice it to say that even brilliant writers need to know their limits, and Chilean/Mexican/Spaniard novelists need not try to capture the creakily-aged Black Panther movement in Detroit. Even if they succeed in making some of it funny, relevant, and thoughtful. It was like reading from inside a cubist painting. A very well done cubist painting. But still.

I wiped the hard drive of the computer that crashed AGAIN (shakes fist and grouses incoherently at Microsoft, the voodoo doll for which is coming soon) and have almost got all the backup docs and software restored. Once my software finishes updating I will have all the preschool fundraiser stuff for this week done.

Got a haircut. Completed several towers and puzzles with Peanut. Cleaned out the freezer. Wrote another novel. (Kidding. I rearranged the freezer. Big difference.)

So. I made inroads on changing the world by growing food at home, and am done preparing the house for babe. I just didn’t make any progress on the stuff that will win me fortune and fame. And that reminds me, I need to submit my game show application soon so I can win and actually afford to live here. Unless people figure out there’s as much profit in killing game show winners as there is in killing lottery winners.

Lessons from the Olympics

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Every two years I learn a bit more about human nature from watching the Olympics. Here’s what I’ve learned this time.

1) There should be compulsories in every life pursuit, including citizenship and parenting. Required maneuvers, put your own stamp on them, but prove you can do the basics, or GET OUT.

2) People who genuinely succeed in life see the big picture. “I’m here to do my best, and in that performance I achieved something I’ve never done before. It was a personal best. That’s the point, and I’m thrilled with actually doing my personal best.” People who live like leeches off successful people, for instance those who produce and write and report on television, have a completely f—ing screwed view of life. “He’s been having a terrible Olympics. yesterday he came in 13th and the day before 18th.” In the WORLD. Because he did his absolute best, and so did everyone else, and 12-17 bodies happened to just fire a bit faster on those two days. You “television personalities” are the oxpeckers of our culture.

3) Any sport that involves going faster than the human body can travel on its own is anathema to mothers. Wanna cross country ski really fast? Cool. That’s like running. Wanna hurl down a mountain at freeway speeds with just a helmet and goggles to protect you? Mama says NO. Serious negative bonus points if your sports is named after the part of you that could break…say, maybe, skeleton.

4) Holding your skate is not impressive. All that other stuff…wow. Holding your skate is really really dumb and I wish you’d stop it.

5) The absolute worst pseudo-food, food-like products are advertised during these sporting events, as though somehow putting those food-like substances in your body will make connected us to world-class athletes. Mmmmmkay. I’d rail against this faulty logic except that most of America gets suckered by this, just as they believe that pseudo-food will get fat, balding, short, flatulent men the tallest, thinnest, most intelligent and beautiful women. You just go ahead and think that, America.

6)The world will be a better place when ice fashions eliminate the flesh-toned stretchy fabric crap. “Oh, my. It looks as though she’s basically naked. How will she leap and twirl…oh, wait a minute. I see. It only looks as though there’s no fabric there. How clever. He didn’t bedazzle his flesh, he simply bedazzled some fleshy nylon. Kudos. It allows us to pretend to see her whole back and midsection without actually revealing anything, heaven forbid, in that skin tight everything-but-labia revealing dress.” You know what else makes a costume look like skin? Skin. Some of the fine competitors this year used their own skin to look like skin and it worked wonderfully well. You know what else holds up outfits? Real fabric. Straps of it or swaths of it or whole pieces of it. Other competitors used fabric. In bright colors or tasteful neutrals. Also worked quite well. This 1970s body stocking bullshit simply has to go. Thanks to the competitors who have already realized that.