Category Archives: Don’t get me started (uh-oh, you just did)

Single versus Married versus Small Children

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If you’re single and have a  crappy day, you can sit on the couch and eat food from a bag while watching TV if you want. No cleaning, no cooking, no talking, no moving. Early bed, late bed, it’s all the same. In short, you can totally abdicate responsibilities. Shrug, announce “I give up,” and actually do it.

If you’re married and have a crappy day, you can sit on the couch and eat food from a carton while watching TV if you want. Or have someone else spoon feed you. Read a book, watch a movie, paint your toenails. Alone or with someone. No cleaning, no cooking, no talking, no moving. In short, you can totally abdicate responsibilities, and quit for the night. Or have someone do everything for you. Leave dishes in the sink. Ignore the laundry. Shrug, announce, “I give up,” and either get help or ignored. Either way, you can actually give up.

If you have small children, there is no quitting. You can’t just sit on the couch and refuse to move. Other people, who cannot feed themselves, need to eat. Have a tendency to become agitated when ignored, and by agitated, I mean smearing feces and shaving cats. They need freaking stories and songs and negotiations and sometimes a bath and always discipline and attention before bed. And often for a while after  bed. If you have a crappy day and have small kids, too bad for you. Pick up all the spilled food or someone will fall, sweep up all the dumped flour or the cats will eat it and puke and then someone will fall, calm the terrified cats or they will claw you at night, eye the tricycle-d wall, put away the scattered toys, discuss the hitting and kicking, find the shards of glass, clean the various things painted on the walls. Or one of those small people will find the evidence tomorrow and try it all again. At the end of the day with small children, even after you’ve been working all day and haven’t been allowed to freaking sit down let alone veg, someone has to recork the bottle. Because you’re gonna need it, again, tomorrow.

What in tarnation?

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Why does it cost me $10 to get wifi at the airport? Shame on you, SFO. Hell, the rest areas in Iowa have free wifi.

Why do small people smell a crisis and grow impatient with the world just because you are?

Why does it take ATT three days to believe me that our DSL is down. “Says here you shouldn’t have any green lights. Why do you have three green lights? Maybe you need to buy a new modem.” Did that. Changed all the cords and the modem and the problem is clearly yours. “Oh. We’ll be out next week.”

Why does the company who put in the windows (thank you…just in time for summer, we can actually open our windows now) leave little shards of glass EVERYWHERE? In the toy box, in the dishes, one every floor, in the cat box, in the beds. Why did you say “move the furniture three feet away from the windows” when you meant twelve feet? Why did you not just tell us to move out? And landlord? Why did you not do this last month, before we moved in? Good damned thing I wanted windows that open…

Jerks on the red-eye across this great country: why did you all bring your kids? And why did you all buy up the upgrades before I decided it might be worth it to pay my life’s savings to get out of coach on a red-eye? Let me guess. You’re gonna keep me up all night, with your kids and your “WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A MEAL?” nonsense.

Sigh. I’m gonna miss Peanut and Spouse. I’m gonna have a blast. And goddess help me, I’m really nervous about making it home in one piece, so help me out on that one.

Words to the wise

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Dear handyman: get off your high horse and lose the attitude. It took you a month to schedule one stinking morning appointment, so if I cancel because of a family emergency (I want to take Peanut to the concert in the park and farmer’s market more than I want the leak in the sink gone, but you don’t know that and you’re not gonna) then that’s my problem. Do you want the work, or don’t you? Don’t act as though you’re losing your home just because I canceled. I gave you 48 hours notice.

Dear printer: stop lying. You’re not out of toner. I just bought you toner. you’ve printed, like, 200  pages. I know you better than this. I raised you, printer. You will shut your paper hole and I will obligingly open every stupid door and drawer, shake the toner cartidge, and put it back in, and we’ll have another 200 pages before you lie again. And I’ll go through the whole bullshit process again, at least twenty more times, and you’ll give me at least 2,000 pages, andIi’ll wonder which is harder: kidgloving my stupid f—ing printer or putting a toddler to bed. Secret answer: I don’t know. Neither is particularly fun or easy, but I have you both down to a science, so whatever. It’s like knowing you have to start your car on a hill. Sucks, but at least you know the drill.

Dear lady outside the Starbucks’ bathroom: stop rattling the g–d—- door knob. Didn’t you figure out the first four times you rattled it that someone is in here? i refuse to holler “someone’s in here” because any idiot can figure that out from the LOCKED DOOR. Also, I refuse to holler “almost done” because I just got in here and I am not almost done. I mean, relative to the guy before me who took half and hour and peed on every square inch of the seat, I’m almost done. But relative to my need not to talk to you, I’m not. You’d think I could pee by myself one freaking time this week. Just for that, I’m washing my hands twice. And checking my pores. And practicing origami on the paper towels, because it’s not like they’ve given me a lot of entertainment options in here.

Dear blogosphere: get back here. Just because I post anti-spanking and anti-segregation instead of lame jokes about how much my kid gets my goat, doesn’t mean you need to stop reading. By half. How the f— do half of you go away just because I talk all serious about stuff? Fickle freaks. What, are you over at the Bloggess listening to her in prison on the Nimitz story? Please. “Oh, look at me, I’m funny and patriotic and not ranting about respecting your kid.”  Fine. I get it. You’re not tough enough to take my brand of genius. Whatever. Your loss.      Wait, I mean, get back here. I’ll try to be funny. I swear. Or not, if that offends you.

Dear so-called medical experts: shut the f— up. You have no idea what you’re talking about. ‘Nuff said.

Ditto you parenting experts, job experts, and Pynchon experts.

Dear lady we saw yesterday: you’re damned right, you should be embarrassed. When you’re walking your first grader home from school, with your iPod blaring, you *should* feel guilty enough to drop the earbuds and listen to your talking kid. Kind of pathetic that it took us running by (not judging you because we didn’t know, until you dropped the buds like they were contraband) to make you listen to your kid. After she’d been in school all day. I’m glad you feel bad.  You totally suck.

Dear advertisers: stop manipulating people.  You suck.

Dear government: would you please get them to disclose what natural flavors they use? You know it’s anchovies, I know it’s anchovies. Would you please make them put anchovies on the label? Cuz otherwise I might someday thing, well, it’s natural, so it couldn’t possibly be ground up carmine bugs, right? Wrong. Trade secrets my ass. The amount of  brown sugar in something is a trade secret. The fact that they’re feeding dead chickens to cows and dead cows to chickens should be on the front of the package. In simple pictographs because nobody reads labels anymore.

Dear neighbor: please don’t call the cops. He was doing that because we’ve had trouble with deer eating our brand new sunflowers, and we thought that the only natural defense we have, since the Ivory everyone else swears by isn’t working,  is human urine, and I know you probably looked the other way when it was a three year old, but he doesn’t have a big enough bladder and the tall guy does. Besides, what are you going to tell the cops? It’s our yard. And our urine.

Negotiating

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Cat sinks claws into Spouse’s back while trying to cuddle him. I trim cat’s claws, because Spouse refuses to. Never has. Nine years.

After the trim:
Me: Would you grab the dustpan and sweep up the cat’s nails?
S: You trimmed ’em, you sweep ’em.
M: I trimmed them for you. You sweep ’em.
S: You trimmed them haphazardly. You sweep ’em.
M: I swept all the crumbs under P’s chair. You sweep this.
S: You made *and* served food that made crumbs. You *deserve* to sweep.
M: There is no deserve about sweeping. Our house, our chores.
S: Nope. You find the puke, you clean it. You cut the nails, you sweep ’em.
M: [speechless]
S: That’s right. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
M: That’s not how you use it!
S: [Grinning and walking away] I know.

It’s a wonder I haven’t killed him yet.

And did I sweep them? Of course. Because while Spouse is at work, enjoying his own thoughts and peeing by himself  and getting paid for it (that’s all I remember about work now is thinking and peeing and getting paid), Peanut will step on cat claw trimming and scream bloody murder about how something hurt him and then will sit down to examine it and will undoubtedly try to eat it and then shriek that it’s gross and then try to stab me with it to see if it hurts me the same way it hurt his foot and tongue, and I’m not going to have that be my morning. So, yes, I swept up the nails. It’s a wonder I haven’t killed me yet, either.

Reason number 572 I will never live in the South

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A friend posted this article on facebook, and I was shocked when I read it. They still have segregated proms in Georgia, Mississippi, and other Southern states. One night is the white prom (exclusively), and one night is the black prom. Students responded overwhelmingly to Morgan Freeman’s offer to fund an integrated prom, but white parents submarined it. Schools don’t sponsor the proms; student groups plan them with parents. And efforts by some students to combine the proms always fail because the white parents say they won’t pay for a prom where there are black students.

Are you freaking kidding me? You think we’re gonna have thoughtful, engaged citizens when parts of this country still act as though people are different just because of their color, gender, religion, orientation, politics, learning style? Geez, Georgia, what the hell is wrong with you? America, what the hell is wrong with us?

Segregated proms are a symptom, but a pretty big symptom, of intolerance and fear and hatred and ignorance.  People who believe you can’t marry someone you love. People who don’t “believe” in evolution. Beating other people because of who they love. Government sponsored killing. Government sponsored torture. Wiretapping Americans. Disenfranchising citizens.  Blaming other people for our failures. Corporal punishment. Death penalty. Body by McDonald’s. And AgroBusinessChemicalUSA. Picking and choosing who we help and who we leave on the side of the road. Concentrating wealth in the hands of, like, four hundred people while the rest of the world starves to death.*

Could we, as a nation, be more backward and uncivilized? Didn’t we used to stand for something? Like, maybe, equality and democracy and secular morality? Why do we now seem to stand for narrow-mindedness and hatred?

*no claim of moral equivalence in this list of terrifyingly unAmerican realities in America.

Moms gone wired

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Clearly, these people who accuse mothers of small children of being “at risk for Internet addiction” and who belittle the habit of switching tabs from Twitter to Facebook to blog to email and back until someone responds are not whip-smart blogging mamas. (Okay, yes, I read the article, and yes, she is exactly that. But she’s a quitter, too, because she dropped her four blogs because they were taking time away from her kids. Um, hello, that’s the point.) And the authors and publishers and contributors and  promoters have it  out for mom blogs. (Forget for a moment the article is written by a mom who spent as many as eight hours online a day while the kids were awake. Lady, do you know how much I could get done if I got to be addicted like that? Why can’t I have that personality instead of the “eighteen projects sitting half done because I can’t bear to ignore my child-rearing job” personality?)

They don’t understand that we have finally,  in blogs and twitter and facebook, found forums in which people who understand us and empathize flock to our feet to hear our pearls of wisdom. At home/work we’re ignored. Yelled at. Shat upon, literally. Online there are others like us, feces-covered and chagrined, wishing someone would hear us and tell us we’re worth a shower. Online we all respect each other. Dote on each other. Celebrate each other.  I think these people at CNN are mamablogga haters. And we don’t allow the word “hate” at our house, do we mamas?

People who bandy about the term “addiction” do so without acknowledging that it’s a relatively new term (twentieth century) that basically applies to any activity that takes you away from the socially mandated priorities of work and family. If we were a culture who valued laughter above all else, alcoholism would only be applied to nasty drunks. Silly drunks would be contributing members of society. Since we are Puritanical believers in work and family, online activities that take you away from work or family for one, two, or nine hours a day allegedly represent problems. (But somehow, work that takes you away from family for twelve hours isn’t a problem. Oh, right. That’s just for men. Work that takes women away from family for one, two, nine hours gets a big ol’ judgemental eye roll, too. Lady, do you know how much work I could get done…oh, wait, I’ve already pulled that in this post.) If we were just a society that valued Twitter (don’t hold your breath, for that would be an even more despicable society than we have, really), maybe then moms who spend one, two, nine hours online would be contributing members of society. You moms who Tweet every freaking thought, stacking seven posts on top of each other (which, for the record, is a blog, not Twitter, so stop it and compose your thoughts into something longer and more coherent) would be the superstars of our society, overpaid and overappreciated for your prolific online contributions.

So let’s be honest. We use/dabble in/devour facebook and Twitter and blogging and online shoping and email because it’s almost like being a whole person and having friends who can actually make it to the dates you’ve had to cancel three times, mutually, for sick kids or sleepless nights or filthy houses or school projects.

As one of my friends (whom I would not know without the glory of the Internet) said, she takes all the facebook quizzes just in case the results will reveal a deep understanding of herself she had never achieved by other means, and will save her in therapy and life coaching fees.

Being at home with a small child (or more, heaven help you ladies and gents ‘cuz I’m barely making it with just one) can be frustrating and anger-provoking and stifling and unwelcoming. Those of us used to doing eighty things in a day, being respected, being listened to, being creative and logical and articulate and productive have a hard time, since the product of our labor will be unpaid for twenty to thirty years. Not until we see who our children become, what they love and whom they love and how they love will we know if our work was done well. Not until our children send a Mother’s Day card like the one my brother just sent my mom, apologizing for every single hour of sleep he ever cost her, does the job pay decent wages.

So if we spend a few extra hours on our blogs, or spend one third of our otherwise billable Saturdays off scheduling seven blog posts to arrive each morning, just as though we were productive members of society (ah, crap, I just gave away the secret of my prolific blogging), maybe you’ll cut us some slack and not call us addicted. As long as we promised the padooter will only go on when the wee ones sleep, who does it hurt that we’re on facebook at midnight?

Ah, hell, what do I care if they call me diseased? As long as you’re reading my blog, I don’t care what they call either of us. Cheers, readers. Hope something on the padooter makes you feel a little less stressed at whatever issues your day brought.

*for the record, the CNN article is actually pretty gentle, even if it’s groossly sponsored by pediatric fiber tablets and full of links to sunshine and buttercup links about how to enjoy parenting.  Treacle. But mocking their gentleness is not as much fun as hyperbolic mamablogga hating.

I’m so, so old

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Just when I start using a technology, it’d dead. I swear, if there were such a thing as a penultimate adopter, I’d be the model.

I resisted CDs though the 90s because I thought something else would come along. It did, but not for about 10 years after I finally caved to the expensive little discs. I think that was 2001 or so. I still have tapes and  still use ’em. Suck on it.

I didn’t get a blog until everyone and their grandma had a blog. I didn’t get a cell phone until I simply couldn’t resist any longer (and because those little elves that make technology made an MP3 player phone, so I could jump on two technologies at once). Hell, we just got a T.V. And I still refuse to even look at, let alone have an account on, myspace. I’m feeling foolish and pointless twittering.

And now I find out that, right about the time I start compressing ginormous URLs into TinyURLs, Bit.ly surpasses TinyURL in popularity. Even the New York Times knows I’m a dinosaur.

Now kids, tell me about this texting thing you’re always doing… (Not in my class, though. Oooooh that pisses me off. It’s bad enough that you never speak with each other between classes or on breaks anymore. But you’d better get your ass out of my classroom when you’re tempted to text. You’re adults. This is a meeting. Leave if you need to take a call or text, but don’t let me catch you using your damned technology while I’m lecturing, or while you’re supposed to be doing work. It’s time to read so we can all discuss what you’re read, not an excuse to type “what R U doing?” to your friends who are in better classes.)

Okay, let’s get six or seven things straight.

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Lady in the magenta cotton cardigan, black leggings, white T-shirt, and black Chucks? The 80s are over. Please get a new wardrobe.

People at Target who branched out from wine in a box to sangria in a box? Nice idea, and I would totally go for it, but the so-called natural flavors within are supposed to be fruit juice, not whatever nasty chemical concoction gave me the terrible hangover this morning. Your ideas suck and your sucky wine sucks you suckers.

Cats? Knock it off. That’s not funny.

Trader Joe’s? Kudos on the vegan products, dudes. LOVE the vegan jell-o. Heaven. Totally forgot how good gelled fruit mushiness could be. But I’m totally let down by the fake beef strip thingamabobbers. Stir fried that beef-less stuff with veggies. Gagged on the texture and picked it all out. Can’t anyone make fake meat that actually tastes and feels like the flesh of a muscle-y critter? No, of course not. Thanks for trying, I guess.

Small person who lives in my house and eats my food and more than necessary pokes me in the eye? Please top the bedtime bullshit. Sure it’s understandable for your age that after a move you’re all topsy-turvy. But see, I have less patience at the end of the day. Try out your nonsense at the beginning of the day and we’ll all get on better. I swear.

Have I taught you people nothing?!

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This morning’s blog stats note that someone found Naptime Writing by Googling “crutches make me nauseous.”

People, people, people. Or, really, person, person, person. Nauseous means making others sick. The smell of vomit is nauseous. When you smell it, you are nauseated. Or it nauseates you. Saying crutches make you nauseous means that using crutches makes you look so disgusting that people retch when they see you.

Is that true? Damn, I thought I looked a bit schlumpy on crutches, but I didn’t worry that people were hurling the contents of their stomachs into trashcans and gutters just watching me crutch by. That’s some serious problem you’vt there, Google reader.

Also, please read all my other grammatical posts. I’m guessing you put apostrophes all over the f—ing place.And you need help.

You know you do.

(btw, don’t turn to Strunk or White. Those f—ers don’t know their that from their which…love this piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education by linguist Geoffrey Pullum.)

Rantlets; little rants of the day (v)

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We’re back for another installment of “everybody bugs the crap out of me.”

It’s been a while….

Hey, toy makers? Yeah, you. The ones outsourcing to China and making crappy toys.  Would it kill you to put nipples on your dolls? I know some of Middle America likes their dolls without groinal distinguishers, and without any openings except those that can be crammed shut with a pacifier, but could you please put nipples on your stinking dolls? You don’t have to build separate sets…boy babies and girl babies all have nipples. All humans do. We’re mammals. We feed our young with milk. We have nipples whether the formula companies let you admit it or not, and whether we have weird post-delivery black hairs around them or not. My kid wants a doll, and I want him to have another doll. But all your dolls drink and wet and cry without nipples. i mean, I’d drink and wet myself and cry if I had no nipples, too, but that’s a little traumatic and advanced for a three-year-old, don’t you think?

And can you put nipples on all the mammal toys, while you’re at it? Peanut wants to know where a deer’s nipples are. We’ve seen elephant nipples (armpit) and horse nipples (belly) but we have no idea where deer nay-nays are. Help a frustrated stay-at-home basketcase out, please! i don’t want to have to take him to the library and teach him where the encyclopedias are. That’s *so* 80s.

Mr. Center of the Universe? You’ll do it because I said so, that’s why. and if you ask why again you’re going to have to sit through presentations at the American Academy of Sciences conference, because if you want to “why” me to death, you can do it with those who have mastered the purposeful “WHY,” because it would be a joy to think at that level for a while, instead of developing an answer to the questions you readily admit you could answer yourself.

Nannies at the playground? I know you have it tough, what with being paid to do what I do for free, and making me feel all gyped because I was paid exorbitant amounts to do things I didn’t like and am now being paid in blackeyes and pee-soaked laundry for tasks I like even less (if that’s possible) but would you please stop making your tiny ward give stuff to my kid? Teach sharing not the same as teaching surrender. I know you’re better than 50% of the nannies at the playground because you actually watch the kid you’re paid to watch. And that you pay attention to the kid you’re paid to pay attention to. But could you give that kid a chance to play with stuff before ripping it out of their hands and giving it to my overpriviledged kid (who needs to be taken down a peg or two by an older kid, anyway)?

Stores and restaurants…please. Before I go all Sharpie on  your ass, it’s “DVDs and CDs.” There is no apostrophe in a plural. Dinners, diners, customers, all. No apostrophe if it’s plural.  You are the strraw that just might break the deer’s back, depending on where her nay-nays are placed in relation to the hay bale.

Finally (it’s a short list because I’m out of practice, what with being all sunny and perky all the time), um, self-absorbed working dads? Stop it. Just f—ing stop it. You have no idea, and you have no right to speak, and I’m going to cram this all the way from your hole-less nethers to your pacifiered crier if you don’t just bite your lip and keep your delusions to yourself.  It is not an easy job, and if you weren’t so clearly wrapped in your own world and not in your child’s, you might see that.

Evolution, science, and ignorance

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If you have a PhD in science, you may speak about science curriculum and theories. If you have a PhD in theology, you may speak about religious curriculum and doctrine. People who fit either or both descriptions are welcome to talk with each other. If you are some schmuck without an advanced degree in science or religion, you may sit down and shut the frack up. And listen. Because you do not have the science or theological knowledge, nor the critical thinking skills, to be in this debate. Shhh. Listen.

Now Texas is joining the group of states that should be told to “feel free to flee” the Union if they insist on devaluing education and science. Mobs don’t determinine curricula; those who know what the hell they’re talking about do. In science class we teach science. In theology class we teach theology. In English class we teach English. If you want me to teach computer programming in my English classes, I will. But code ain’t in English, and science simply isn’t subject to the same principles that faith is. Whole different ball of wax.

Texas isn’t going all Kansas on us, but it’s not looking good, either…

Anger management

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A story from Morning Edition on NPR yesterday claims that venting anger is counter-productive, and that the best way to express anger, according to years of research, is to dispassionately discuss it.

Just curious: was this research done by robots? Are the psychologists involved using drugs to which I do not have access? Have the researchers involved ever had children? This line from the report makes me a little itchy in my yelling lobe: “The key is to speak out your anger without getting emotional about it. Basically, we’re not supposed to yell at anyone anymore.”

Look, if I were anything other than a shell of the person I once was, I’d enumerate reasons that this research is, aside from being counter-intuitive and repression-inducing, just dehumanizing and degrading. Especially the snide bit where they call out Moms as yellers.

But I don’t have any anger about dispassionate researchers. I reserve my passionate responses for the fight-or-flight flood that follows being kicked and hit and screamed at by a tiny irrational person.

Here’s the link to Spiegel’s article. Would that it were this easy to be gentle and logical and dispassionate all the time.

Pissing me off

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We thought we were lucky that Peanut potty learned pretty early. Started using the toilet regularly around 15 months and took himself out of diapers at 21 months. Did it all himself, the little control freak, which was great. Except since it was all self directed and all about control, when he’s mad at one of us he pees in inappropriate places.

I’ve been trying for a month to break the peeing in the cat box thing. Tried reasoning with him, tried empathy (would you like it if they peed on your toys or in your bed?) Tried making a hard and fast rule. “In this house, we pee in the toilet.” He told me, as you know, that this is not his house, and at his house he and his dog pee in the cat box all the time. Why he and his dog even have a cat box, considering the disdain they have for cats, is beyond me.

Anyway.

Today he pees in his pants. I ask him if he can tell me why. He says, “Yes. Okay. One reason I just feel like it. One reason it just easier.” We talk about that one. If it’s just easier to pee in your pants, that’s called a diaper. If you just feel like it, I feel like ignoring you and working on my book, but it doesn’t work that way. So I reiterate where we pee and why.

Later, I walk in the bathroom and find a dustpan on the floor, full of a supsicious yellow liquid. It’s near the cat box, so either they got pissed at his piss and chose a new target, or he just tried a little something new.

M: Peanut?
P: [running in] What?
M: Can you tell me a little about what this is in the dustpan?
P: And on the floor.
M: [biting tongue] And on floor…
P: Yes. I pee, pee, pee in dustpan. And on floor.
M: Hmmm. You know peeing on the floor makes me frustrated bcause it’s slippery and dangerous and stinky and germy. And you know we only pee in potty. Mommy pees in potty. Daddy pees in potty. Can you tell me why you did this?
P: Yes. One reason I pee on floor in sweeper I just want to. One reason [and he looks me dead in the eye for this one] I just no like your rules.

We talk about why there are rules. Tile floors with urine on them are slippery. People fall and get hurt. Also pee is germy and we don’t want to get sick.

Also, and this is just for you who can read—I’m really f—ing tired of this. My cousin says floating targets will make the toilet more appealing. My aunt says move the cat box (and now, apparently, the dust pan). Our pediatrician says blue food dye in the water so he can make it green.

I say there are a few rules you don’t get to not like. Seat belts. Teeth brushing. No hitting, biting, kicking, scratching, pinching, or hurting anything that breathes. And seriously? Seriously. Seriously. There’s only one place to pee.

At Daddy’s office. Is it Take Your Daughter to Work Day? I’ve been asking that for three years and it has never been take your daughter to work day. He has long, curly hair and wears pink shoes. Please take him to work.

Pouring your heart out through nasal passages

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I had a really clever post lined up at dinnertime, but once toy cleanup and bath and jammies and teeth and light show and stories and songs and all that jazz wound up I drew a blank.

And in my mentally weakened state, I’m pondering this deep bit of uselessness:   can we compost snot?

If you toss used tissues, they end up in a landfill. Bad. If you flush used tissues it uses valuable water and expensive waste treatment. Bad. If you flush used tissues only when there is other, less savory solid matter in the toilet, too, the sewage treatment involves straining out the wood pulp and the mucus and the white blood cells and the microbes to make pure biosolids, which are composted.

So if the water treament facility composts my kid’s snot, can’t I?

And there you are, ladies and gentlemen. No bottom to the housing market, but the bottom of my intellectual development. The lowest I’ve sunk in my brain dead tenure as a stay-at-home idiot. I could have been a contender. I had game in all twenty of my previous careers. I was a fundamentally bright person.

Now I’m contemplating disposal methods for green Kleenex. Summa cum laude.

Bookworm raises my hackles

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Today was the first day in four years that I played bookworm. I won’t link to it here because it’s addictive and I don’t want to be a pusher.

But here’s the thing. That game has more made up words than any round of Scrabble from my childhood. And I know…we used to spend our turns at grandma’s reading the entire dictionary for the letters we had. I learned “xat” and “firn” while reading the unabridged. Our turns took so long that we all played Rummy as a side game while the other cheaters “thought” about their letters with a dictionary.

Anyway, I play bookworm to win, despite the fact that no matter how many points you get they pretend you’re the king of all lexicography, making up titles to stroke the ego of even the lest compitent player. After my thesis was submitted I played a marathon game that netted more than a million points and I went online to find out how awesome I was in the bookworm geek community. Turns out there’s no hierarchy or bragging rights because every point you get earns you a new title. And all of the six or seven people who cared were all bragging about a couple hundred thousand points. Pedestrian.

Tonight, in hour three of play, I worked my way to the word “Tuesday.” Took a lot of playing just the right side of the board, because I had to wait and wait and wait for a “y”. Well, bookworm says Tuesday is not a word. It, does, however, accept the following:
trad
quate
waly
caff
seis
jee (come on, seriously, it’s gee.)
shott (come on, seriously, even chott is pushing it)
lang (seriously? I get the whole British thing, but not the ancient Scots)

but it won’t accept Tuesday (or shrove. Or Narnia or Jedi, but I get those. Purists. I gotcha.)

Look, it took me almost an hour to get Tuesday. I took a lot of sucky four letter words along that right three columns just to get that word. I wish I could say I’m totally boycotting your game, you maker-up-ers of words.

Unfortunately, I have to go. I got “baroque” last round, and I’m working on hellion just to see if you accept it.