finslippy

We'll be rich! RICH!

Scott and I just got back from our tour of the local public elementary school, which Henry will be attending next year. You've probably heard me bitch about this before, but Henry just missed the cut-off date for kindergarten, which in New Jersey is October 1st. Henry's birthday is the 7th of October. Could they let us in anyway? They could not. Damn their rules!

I agree with the millions upon trillions of people who love telling us how this was for the best, but what they fail to take into consideration is that preschool is not free; nay, each month many many dollars are torn from our hands as we weep and fall onto the ground, rending our garments.

But next year! Oh, next year, my friends, it's public-school time for our boy. Thus, the tour. We asked questions and pretended to care about the answers, but really, as long as the school isn't in flames we'll send him there. Ha ha! Ideally it should be more than just not on fire. We have standards! Fortunately for everyone the school was both not on fire and also pretty great. The principal walked us around for over an hour, answering our questions, which went like this:

"So it's free, you say?"
"Really? Free?"
"How much is tuition? Come on, seriously."
"Don't bring me down with your 'local taxes' talk. What will we do with all that extra money?"
"Can you provide us with recipes for meals that aren't beans? Now that we're all rich?"
"I mean, not that I don't like beans. But enough already, am I right?"
"Can you tell us more about the free part?"

Beyond its freeness, there are many other attributes to the school. I think Henry will enjoy himself there. And we will enjoy him being there, as we wallow in our newfound riches.

There's a new Wonderland post up today. And now: lunch! So long, suckers!

Six is easier, right? Don't tell me it's not.

Dear Five and a few months:

I love you, but you're too much. Can you tone it down a little?

Curious,
Your Mother
---
Dear Mom,

I can smell it down a little. In my butt. I can butt it down a buttle.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Buttle! Butt smell! My butt smells, get it? Like there's a nose on it? Get it? Did you hear that?

Nose butt. Butt nose. Fart fart nose butt smell stink.

Love,
Five and a few months
---
Dear Five and a few months,

I think you lost track of my original request. If you'll recall, I asked you to tone it—
---
Hey Mom! Hey!

TRANSFORMERS! TRAAAANS-FORM-ERRRRRS! Pshhhew pshhhew phssshew! Why don't transformers have butts? Butts that smell? Ha ha ha transformer butts. Know what? I have a new Transformer that I just now made up, and you know what? Do you know what? Know what? His name is Butt-tron! No, wait, FARTRONIC.

Ha ha ha haahaaaaaaaaaaaiiiighhhhaaaahahahaha—

Love,
Five and a few months
----
Dear Five, etc.:

I don't know how you managed to interrupt me while I was writing a letter, but it appears you have the power to do so. You have many powers. Including the power to drive me up a wall. And yet you can be so charming! Truly, you are an enigma.

Cautiously,
Your mother
---
Dear mom:

So you love me, but sometimes I make you annoyed? That's complicated.

Love,
Five and a few months.
---
Dear Five-ish:

See? Like that! All of a sudden you're all thoughtful and calm, like that! Okay! Now maybe we can talk about—
---
Hey Mom!

Remember that time we went to the pool with the sprinkler ? And that boy was there? Remember that boy? That boy whose shorts were blue, he kind of looked like Tyler, in my class, who I like but I'm not friends with or, like, not best friends , because he plays Power Rangers and I don't play Power Rangers, I only play Star Wars at school with my other friends, well, sometimes Tyler plays Star Wars but still he's not really my friend, and you know what? The, uh, the boy, not Tyler but the, uh, the other boy, the boy from the uh, the pool, remember that pool? Well he told me he had this kind of… toy, I can't remember what it's … called, but I think it's like Legos, but not really the same…I don't know. So he has it at his house and could we go there, maybe?

Could we go there now? I think we should go there now.
Five and a few months.
---
Dear son:

We cannot go there now, because I am going to bed. Wake me when Six shows up.

Love,
Mom

Pop quiz!

If your child can have y, can he have y+1? Y+1 with a cookie? With two cookies? Why not? Why is Y okay but Y+1 not okay? Providing supporting arguments for your answers on a separate sheet of paper, if necessary.

If a nonsense phrase is sung repeatedly at X intervals, and the listener will go insane after a certain number of minutes, how many minutes prior to that point should the nonsense-phrase-singing be halted? Keeping in mind that maybe the nonsense-phrase-singing is fun to the singer and anyway it's keeping him out of your hair? And how do you stop the singing, anyway? Here's some graph paper for you.

Can your child have some candy during the movie? If you don't want to discuss it now, when do you want to discuss it? When can you have the candy discussion? If you're going to have that discussion in an hour, why can't you have it now? Why is an hour better than now? What time is it now? Is it almost time for that discussion? Why are you running away?

If you enjoy an activity and know your child would also enjoy it, your child will refuse to participate in it or discuss it, ever, for eternity. Explain the logic of this statement.

EXTRA CREDIT: Your child is finally back at school, and now you miss him. Make sense of that one, if you can.

Conversation during snack time.

Sofia: Henry, guess what? We're all animals! Who talk!
Henry: What?
Sofia: And Henry! Did you know? Before we were people, we were apes!
Henry: What?
Sofia: And you know what? Before we were apes, we were fish!
Henry: WHAT?
Sofia: Before we were fish, we were…hmm.
Me: Goo. We were primordial goo.
Henry: We were goo!?
Henry and Sofia throw themselves to the ground laughing for a minute or two.
Henry: Do we remember being apes?
Me: No, that was a long, long time ago. Before even I was born.
Sofia: How does fish turn into apes?
Henry: Did God make the goo or the fish? Or what?
Me: Let's have more cookies!

Four more days.

Posting will be light this week, as we're enjoying our winter break. By "enjoying" I mean "trying not to kill each other during" and by "our" I mean "Henry's." We didn't read the school calendar, because we don't cotton to your Western linear notions of time units, and also because we forgot there was a calendar, with, like, information on it. It totally slipped our minds there was such a thing as winter break. I think we were pretending it didn't exist, hoping that if we just continued to drop him off at school the squirrels would entertain him all day. Somewhere deep in our hearts we knew about winter break; I mean, there was one last year, so we must have known. Was there one last year? Why yes, it seems there was. We have no excuse.

And now here I am with Henry, and no plans to speak of. I tried turning today's supermarket trip into a Super Secret Spy Mission, but my son rolled his eyes at me. Rolled his eyes. He's five! Who told him he could do that? Last year he would have believed just about anything was an adventure if I used enough! Exclamation! Points! To describe it! That was last year. Now I have a five-year-old, and he's too sophisticated for me. If anyone knows of any actual real-life spies who require an assistant for the week, please contact me.

Back to work!

First of all, I am featured in the March issue of Good Housekeeping, so if you're coming from there, hello, and welcome! Here is the unedited version of the post featured in the magazine. It is longer, more rambling, and employs some of your milder curse words.

In case you're thinking of it, dear readers, I want to assure you that you don't need to send me hate mail. I already received one this morning, and it was a doozy. She covered all the (insane) bases. (The insane bases, in case you're wondering, are 1) first 2) triangle, 3) Sokar, Egyptian Lord of the Mysterious Region, and 4) ham sandwich. Never play baseball with a crazy person. This is my Public Service Announcement for the day.) So I'm good! Thanks, though.

In other news, I have a Wonderland post up today. On circumcision! Apparently I am courting controversy these days. Next week I will write about puppies and rainbows. And how they both should be outlawed.

Here I am!

I went to California for the weekend to honor a boy named Hank Mason, an incandescent being composed of spun sugar and baby Jesus, who completed his first year of sharing our earthly realm. In honor of his birthday, he learned to hover inches above the ground while granting beatific smiles to his adoring followers.

He's a good kid, is what I'm saying. I also saw some other people. They were much larger, and more resistant to me holding them and kissing their necks. Nonetheless, I had fun.

So much fun that I couldn't sit up straight or talk for the first couple of days home. Also I couldn't do anything but curse the day I chose to live on the East Coast. Why don't we all live in California? It's stupid here. Yesterday it was snowing, then sleeting, then raining. Then the temperature dropped and elves emerged from the bushes to buff the ice until all the sidewalks of the Northeast were smooth and deadly. The elves are out to kill us all, so they can live in our houses, and then sell our houses and move to California. The elves know what they're doing. Yes, I'm writing about imaginary elves. You see what New Jersey does to a person?

I'm finally alive today and my son is home from school. He left for school in a cheerful enough mood (once we wrestled with the application of the BOOTS OF DEATH and the MITTENS OF AGONY) but about an hour after he left, the school called. Is there anything more nerve-wracking than seeing your child's school on one's caller ID? No. Nothing more nerve-wracking. I am not exaggerating at all. His legs felt "wobbly," according to his teacher, and because several kids in his class have come down with the flu and they've all exhibited this mysterious symptom of leg-wobbliness, they were "concerned." Basically they wanted him out of there. I couldn't blame them. I wanted to, but I couldn't.

And now he's home. Home, and bouncing around. His wobbliness has disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived! It's a Valentine's Day miracle!

Sigh.

Just your average Tuesday.

I walked Henry to school today and walked most of the way back home before realizing that I had a wooden hanger hanging from the belt on the back of my coat.  A large, wooden hanger. 

I'm telling you this to illustrate 1) how much of a dork I am and 2) how mentally and physically worn out I still am from yesterday's shoot. I have no idea why I should be this tired, because most of my day yesterday was spent sitting around.  It was too much excitement for me, I guess. I am even more delicate than I believed.  Or my humours are out of whack. A bloodletting is in order!

So! Yesterday was the photo shoot for Wondertime, as I mentioned previously.  Present were Tim and Liz, the lovely and kind art directors from Wondertime, as well as Asger and Lloyd, the infinitely patient photographer and his charming assistant. Henry, Scott, and I were outfitted and posed and fed snacks. And we had so much fun. Draining, life-sapping fun. Here are the photos. If they don't make sense to you, well, you'll have to wait for the May issue of Wondertime to come out. Maybe you should subscribe!  That's an idea I spontaneously had right now. (Please note: I am not receiving kickbacks from Wondertime.)  (Unfortunately.)

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Here's Henry, getting notes on what his motivation should be. "You're Darth Vader, coming out of the shower." How sweet does he look here? It's kind of killing me. Of course you can't hear him whining about the unbearable weight of the light saber, and the fact that the mask was choking him TO DEATH.

"What are you doing in the bathroom, son?"
"I'M TURNING TO THE DARK SIDE, MOTHER."

Henry was amazing, actually. The mask was heavy, the light saber was heavy, the shirt was chafing him, the fog from the fog machine smelled funny, and it was hard to hear everyone's direction over the sound effects coming from the light saber, but my baby posed for longer than I ever could have anticipated. 

On the other hand, he got to play with incredibly cool light sabers. They're worlds away from the crappy telescoping plastic kind we own. It must be horrible, having us as his parents.

Scott worked until 2:30 a.m. that morning, so he could spend his day pretending to be Luke Skywalker. Did he do it for me? I like to think so.

We tried to include Charlie in a shot or two, but he was being a prima donna about it—only letting us shoot his right profile because that's his signature look, etc. He didn't make the cut. Sorry, dog.

Henry declined the use of the mask for his Ultimate Battle with Obi Wan, so Liz gave him the option of giant movie-star sunglasses and a headband. It doesn't sound like it would work, but it worked well enough. Bonus: Henry didn't throw himself to the ground in mortal agony.

"Can you be a dear and get me a glass of sparkling water? With a little lemon juice? Not a wedge of lemon, dear, I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANY LEMON, just sort of a lemon essence. Wait a minute, is this pulp? I see? That's it, you're fired."

Henry kept asking Scott, "When are you going to fall down and die?" Not for a few years, son, so meanwhile you and your Oedipal struggle best hush up.

I contemplated uploading this to Finslippy yesterday and asking, "Is this a bad sign?" Ha, ha! It's just a fog machine in my oven. DON'T PANIC.

The photographer kept saying that he wanted to make me look "elegant," which I thought was a lovely sentiment, considering that I was wearing cinnamon buns on my head and a pom-pommed bathrobe from Target.

When the shoot was over (seven hours, my friends! SEVEN) Tim and Liz gave Henry not one, but TWO of the light sabers. Was he excited? A LITTLE BIT. I'm still amazed that we got him to sleep, or eat, or stop trying to amputate our limbs for more than two minutes.

So that's our story! Aaaand now I'm going back to bed. Wake me when the issue comes out. Thank you.

What not to make.

It was Friday night. There I was, at dinnertime. In front of me was a bunch of arugula. Instead of doing all the usual arugula-y things I do with arugula (known as "rocket" to some of you and "rucola" to others and "arugu-wha?" to a smattering), I decided to make arugula pesto. I like pesto, and I like arugula. Arugula pesto! I thought I was so smart.

After making it, I noticed that it tasted like a solvent, like it would eat straight through the countertop, should any of it spill. The arugula was especially strong. I noticed its awesome bitter powers before whirring it in the blender; post-whirring, with its fellow pesto ingredients, the bitterness had increased exponentially. Please note that I am highly tolerant of the bitter greens. And yet. Anyway, I thought maybe if I mixed it with ricotta cheese, we would be able to eat it and live. Henry, as you may know, abhors anything green (or anything non-white, for that matter) so he would have just plain ricotta cheese in his pasta, and would thus be spared. I had some whole-wheat rotini, which I thought would be okay with the diluted horror of the arugula pesto/ricotta cheese thing.

We all sat down to eat, and Scott declared the pesto delicious and me clinically insane. My husband will eat anything. He's a goat. Actually he's part goat. He once ate an entire plate of fiberglass insulation for dinner. I, on the other hand, have no goat relatives on either side, so I picked at my dinner. The ricotta cheese had just made the whole affair gritty and gloppy. The whole-wheat pasta wasn't helping it go down any easier. I had made us some kind of Green Penance Sauce on a High-Fiber Pasta of Penitence. It was scouring my insides. I might as well have gnawed on a steel-wool pad. Unfortunately, I was really hungry, and I ate more of it than I should have--the amount I should have eaten being "none."

As you may have guessed, my body revolted. Scott took Henry to bed as I lay on the couch, gasping. I marveled at the fascinating new sensations coursing through my innards. Were my intestines actually twisting around my esophagus? Because that's what it felt like. I'll never know. I took about fourteen Tums (translation: four) but it was no match for the pesto. The horrible pesto. In conclusion, I was up until 4 a.m. And I was sad. And that's my story.

But hey, things are looking up! Because tomorrow, my friends, tomorrow, Wondertime is coming to my house for a photo shoot. Perhaps you've heard about Heather Armstrong's anthology, Things I Learned About my Dad in Therapy. Well! My contribution to that is going to be reprinted in Wondertime, in their May issue. I'm ridiculously excited about both the anthology and the Wondertime publication. I don't want to give away the subject matter, but let's just say that for the photo shoot, there will be light sabers, and cinnamon buns will be affixed to the sides of my head. You can bet your sweet bippy I'll be back tomorrow to tell you all about it.

One of many getting-up-at-midnight-to-pee conversations

Henry (handing Minty Bear to Scott as he staggers to the toilet): Here, Mom. Ha. I called you Mom.
Scott: I'm your dad, in fact.
Henry: You're fat. Heh.
Scott: Uh, thanks?
Henry: I said you're fat.
Scott: Yes, I heard you.
Henry: No, you said you're fat.
Scott: What?
Me (because I can't not butt in): He thought you said "I'm fat" when you said "in fact."
Henry: Heh. You're not fat.
Scott: Well, you know, I do have a little meat on my bones.
Henry: Oh, everyone has meat on their bones.
Scott: Without meat we'd be just bones.
Henry: We'd be bones all wriggling around. We need meat to stick together.
Scott: That's right. Meat is scotch tape for people.

(New Wonderland post up today. This one is about stem cells. You will like it! At least, I think.)