Franny had the day off on her birthday, coincidentally, and the girls woke up and IMMEDIATELY started bickering, so it was time for Enforced Death March. Franny was shocked at the notion that we could walk all the way to Gasworks, but it really only took about an hour.
Lego girl head earring birthday present that I picked up at Brickcon.
Franny and her Auntie Morgan.
BEE BOOP BEE BOOP APPLESAUCE DISPENSING DEVICE
So. Things are going pretty well. Franny had her birthday and things have been fairly patched up around here…UNTIL. On Sunday Franny went out to practice devotional WASPishness with her father’s side of the family (tennis lessons) and I let Strudel watch a movie on her own, upstairs.
I heard some tiny elephant stamplings and didn’t think much of it, since Strudel does not have much of an attention span for TV and movies. I thought maybe she was taking breaks and coming back for more. What she WAS doing was breaking into the mints I bought Franny as part of her birthday present, and bolted about half of them in the time it takes to say, “Why did I not just buy a purse dog?”
Franny came home from rich white people church and went to her mints, and was very disappointed. She showed me the evidence and I tried to decide how to administer consequences. Strudel copped to doing it and I said, “Don’t steal from anyone. It makes people SAD AND ANGRY TO BE STOLEN FROM, right Franny?” Franny nodded slowly and I could see the wheels turning.
Tonight at dinner Strudel told us that the two youngest boys in her preschool class are looting her lunch for fruit every day. “They steal my BANANA every DAY!” she finished.
“And HOW does that FEEL?” I said, for what felt like the 50th time this week. “Did you feel SAD and ANGRY?” She nodded forlornly. “Well, that is how your sister felt when you stole her mints yesterday.” Again, the LOOK. Ohhhh.
Presumably if this trend continues a gang of wild weasels will come and nibble these fruit gafflers’ ears off, and then the weasels will be run down by an express bus, and so on.
IT IS IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO KNOW THAT I AM THE FIRST HIT ON GOOGLE FOR “FUCK YEAH CAPS LOCK!!!” Monkey chow out.
Yesterday I was trying to encourage Franny to learn her times tables, since pretty much every child who enters into the elementary part of her previous private school exits without math facts, I have discovered. Now she has multiplication homework and it was hard for me to tell her that she just needs to KNOW this shit, and that there is no way of getting around it short of creating a pictorial representation of six groups of five apples or whatever, causing every problem to take 5,000 years.
I thought we could knock out the zeros and ones quickly. Strudel sat nearby, coloring, and listening to the lesson I was giving. I showed Franny a quick 2 and 3 times chart I had drawn up and told her to memorize it tonight, then reviewed ones and zeroes again.
“Okay, you have five hearts,” I said, drawing them on some paper. “You take this group of five one time, how many do you have?” We were doing the same thing earlier with four groups of six hearts, so she could visualize what is happening. Franny looked uncertain.
“Five,” she said finally.
Zero’s a little odd, right? If you’re going to take no groups, then what’s the point? Fucking stay home or whatever. Don’t talk to me about algebra, either. Just don’t.
“So, you take ZERO groups of any number, and how many do you have?”
Franny looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought.
“None!” Strudel blurted.
I think this is going to be easier for Strudel.
So, that’s happening.
Also, Franny is getting into her sneaky-stealy stage, which I hate. Yesterday she snuck into my room when she thought I was sleeping to take some chocolate off my dresser. I was actually half awake and told her so, and told her I heard the floor creaking and heard her crinkling the plastic bag they were contained in. She told me that she was coming in to see if I was awake to give me a hug.
I kind of blew it off at the time, though I was annoyed. I did not actually see the chocolate in her hand. If a child is going to lie to your face like that, yelling at them or punishing them isn’t really going to help. When I was her age, the most important thing was to never, EVER admit that I had done something, even when I was basically caught in the act. Why do children do these things and then lie desperately so as to appear innocent? They have no concept it makes things worse in the long run.
Earlier last summer we had a problem with candy and anything sweet going missing, after which I found an empty bag of chocolate chips in Franny’s bed, an empty wrapper that contained P.’s missing cookies and a few melted chocolate chips. I also found an empty tube of homeopathic medicine in her closet. She did not admit that she had taken the things even though I found them in her bed.
We had a talk about taking things that do not belong to you. We talked about trust and little things, like don’t eat sugar in your bed and expect your teeth to stay in your head. I reminded her she was welcome to take her own money and buy small treats at the store after dinner, and we often have dessert around.
Last summer she also nicked one of her stepmother’s empty cigarette boxes and brought it to my house, as proof that her stepmother was secretly smoking. Franny was going through a Nancy Drew/spying thing, and her stepmother got in the crossfire of that. So I knew she was taking things from there as well.
So jumping back to later that day of the chocolate incident, after school, Franny was struggling with her math and Strudel cracked her head on the table pretty hard.
Strudel is going through that somewhat hilario four-and-a-half thing where this explosion will hit and she will rocket out of her chair ass over teakettle and hurt herself. It can happen right in front of me and I will be left going “WTF just happened here?” Of course, it is not funny that she gets hurt, but it looks like she gets struck by a bolt of invisible magical lightning. This happens to other fours as well, I know.
So I held Strudel and popped her on the counter and went to fetch the homeopathic arnica pellets out of the cabinet where the vitamins are. Say what you will about homeopathy, but I learned from a friend a long time ago that if you give children the magical arnica pellets and some hugs they will not cry for ten minutes. Alright!
I had just stocked up on arnica and allium for the winter, remembered putting the tubes up there, and had used the arnica a little since buying it, after which I put it back in the cabinet. They were both gone.
I thought for a moment about what to do. I knew Franny had taken the last tube of arnica, and I knew she knew it is not remotely possible to overdose on the pellets, which have a sugar base. I made a big show of looking through the cabinet, under and around teacups and bottles of vitamins and such. “Where could they be? I just bought TWO new ones and now they are gone.”
Franny began acting nervous at the table, even awkward, and claimed stomach trouble and went upstairs and slammed herself into the bathroom, where she stayed for a very long time. After that she spent the rest of her time before dinner in her bed. I was upset, and quiet, lost in thought.
If I accuse her of this stuff she will deny it again, and has apparently learned to hide the evidence better. I took things when I was a kid, and my stepfather used to go MENTAL (shocker) and threaten to lock things up or ground me forever. I don’t know. I am still sorting it out. I don’t like living with a child who is stealing, but I know a lot of them do it. Sometimes it feels like every step is a chance to pull them closer or start pushing them away.
Me: What are you doing with this bacon grease?
P: I dunno. You want to cook with it or something?
Me: NO! I am vegemetarian now, remember.
P: Yeaaaah.
Me: Well? Can you cover this stuff up so it does not become DUSTY GREASE at least? SHUT THE LID.
P: We can save it and rub it on the foundation in case there is a flood or something.
Me: …
P: Heh heh.
Me: JUST CLEAN IT.
VERY FUNNY, P.
This parable, which is not a parable at all, is an illustration of how we never fight about anything important anymore, but only about insignificant shit. Because we are both FIGHTERS, for now and for always. At times we fight about if we are actually fighting. The girls don’t even blink. It’s nice that it doesn’t really count anymore. Sometimes I wish we would have gotten to this stage without breaking up, but that’s life.
The chickens are molting like whoa. Death Ray is nothing but some blondey fluff right now. I can really see new feathers on her.
Today I wandered all over Wallingford running errands. Did you see that they are remodeling the QFC? When I first moved here it was still Food Giant. I hope they keep the Wallingford sign that QFC transmogrified it into.
The roses are having their last hurrah. I really like this time of year before the heat goes on, the summer flowers are having one last push, and you can put in fall flowers. I put mums in the front beds this year, and I am just going to leave them there instead of treating them like annuals. My pansies are in place as well, and they will last through the winter, which is an awesome thing about Seattle. Who can complain about year-round flowers? ASSHOLES, that’s who.
Today P. is decorating practice cupcakes for Franny’s birthday. This is her golden birthday so she gets gold cake. I will post the results later. I am trying to decide what kind of gold presents to get her. Strudel is VERY ANGRY because her golden birthday isn’t until she is twelve.
There are more pics on AssFlickr if you are desirous of more rubbernecking.
Today P. decreed it was berry-picking day, and he is sort of like a human Farmer’s Almanac that someone drew porno comix on part of and another part got some fish sauce on it, while part of it is torn out and replaced it with a stack of free recipes they give out at the grocery store. But if you can find the right page, you’re golden.
We were out for about an hour and got enough for two pies and a mess of jam. He is laying in supplies for the long, hard, 45-degree winter that we will have here in the middle of the city with a store within two blocks.
Later I fucked off with Ruby and we watched Julie & Julia. When I was on blog break this spring, Ruby had a one-off book club/dinner party wherein we discussed the book and ate an AMAZING five-course meal that was recipes from MtaoFC. I can say, YES, braised cucumbers are incredible. And I like aspic, which, I am pretty easy sell on cute animals being shoved into molds, so that was nice. As a result, attendance at this movie was fairly compulsory for us.
It is tempting to flippantly dismiss the movie the way many people have by saying, “Well, it is half good.” This is true, but the Julia half is REALLY good. I tend to think the other half is not the actors’ faults, though the script has some explaining to do. I really think they should have gone for gold and done the Julia bio. All the other half did was reminded me what an insufferable whiny brat the author is, which Ephron’s script really downplays, especially in regards to her job.
It was fun to watch a reenactment of Julia’s relationship with her husband of many years, whom she was madly in love with. Of course there is a bunch of revisionist type history out now, saying well, no, Child wasn’t a saint, in fact she was a homophobe, and I think it’s pretty shit that Child denounced Julie, saying that she was not taking the book or the practice of cooking seriously. It’s fairly lame to make a statement like that about how one’s cookbook is used–it’s not like Julie was using it as a doorstop or something. Has anyone else cooked their way through all of MtaoFC?
BUT as I was enjoying the interaction between the onscreen Childs, Ruby leaned over and whispered, “Julie is divorcing Eric, you know?” I did not. It kind of colored the whole rest of the movie, in a way, which was no big deal. At the end the little wrap-up text rolled by saying when the Childs died and that the author lived in Queens with her husband. “Why does it say that,” I demanded. “They broke up after the movie,” she replied. Ah. Well, the first divorce is always the hardest.
Ruby always makes me laugh with her crazy ideas.
“So the back-to-school thingie is happening soon,” she said, by way of feeling out whether I was at all interested, and specifically, interested in going to the party with her.
“Wait, you want to PAY MONEY to go to an irritating party with assholes we hate?”
She started laughing.
“Hey, misery loves company,” said our other lunch companion.
“Let’s just go back to Gainsbourg that night,” I said.
I love September and am actually looking forward to it.
It is also important for you to know that my short-term memory has returned, after taking a year off.
In Other News: “There is Nothing Between Us and The Grave Except Food.”
Strudel is very fixated on the idea of death lately. I can remember being in the backseat of my grandmother’s car at her age and being struck with the realization that everyone I knew was going to die, and my grandmother was probably going to go first. My eyes filled up with tears at the thought.
Strudel wants to talk about it a fair amount now, and I sense she is looking for some kind of hedge to get us out of it. “What if I do this or that? Do we have to die then?” She looks for assurances that I will be very old when I die, and I tell her yes, yes. This is a more worthwhile lie than Santa.
“Would you rather die, or become a tree?” Strudel asked me, as she was putting one of her puzzles together on the floor of my room.
“I would rather become a tree.” I replied.
“Me too, but I am going to be Stoic.”
“What does “stoic” mean to you?” I said.
I recalled I had used the term earlier while we were berrypicking and her father was whining about getting small blackberry slivers in his hands. “How do you stop that from happening?” he said. “You just have to be stoic about it,” I said.
“I don’t know what it means!” Strudel said. “Some day we will all be below the ground, and no one will know where you are, or where to find you, and you could be under a sidewalk and people would not know.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I will never NOT love you, but when you are dead I can not call you.” she concluded.
Franny was tired and in a snit after her summer camp today and looking how I feel pretty much every day after work. Sometimes I lose it and lay on the couch and eat Chinese food, but most nights I have to smile while I hear that I paid so my kid could have a bad day and that she did not bring enough money to go on the outing, which meant that she had to put it back in her bag, which was rifled, and the money was stolen. Some days she gets shoved, or someone says something mean to her and she cries.
It made me think of a story an old friend told me once about how he got cut and was bleeding everywhere and did not notice, but his sister saw the wound a little later and the dried blood. They were both amazed: how could he not notice? I used to feel like Franny did, every day. When do you stop noticing the bleeding?
Strudel was in better shape but seems to have forgotten how to eat. Seriously. I presented her with a slice of pizza tonight and she turned it on its end and tried to shove it into her mouth toppings-side up. I thought children were supposed to have the whole spacial/3-D understanding of how the world works by the time they are at least a year old, but it’s like she regressed. She also smacks loudly with her mouth open and wipes her fingers in her hair, leaving her napkin untouched. Who are you and what planet do you come from that you do not know what to do with pizza?
This all led up to World War 3 here, in which Franny decided to smack her sister and I caught her. I got the full watery-eye treatment, the sad, imploring, “You NEVER believe me!” Yes, because I SEE you hitting her. She was cranking up into a little pre-teen tanty when I told her that she needed to get in the shower. “I HATE THE SHOWER!” she wailed. “MY LIFE IS HORRIBLE.” Oh, cry me a RIVER. Your life is summer camp and time with me and her sister on the evenings and weekends, and horse camp FFS when she goes back to her dad’s house next month. The only thing horrible about her life is that I caught her in the act.
Tomorrow we are flying out of the country, which I am slightly nervous about because of a recent chain of events. We can let the viewer decide…well, whatever they want.
I have passports and birth certificate, of course. What I do not have is signed permission letter from her father. Of course there is a history and a backstory here, and, holy cow, it makes me realize that SeaFed has been married for like three whole years already. BOY was I histrionic in that episode. You can practically feel the heat coming off the screen. But you know what? I would call the cops all over again. That shit is not any less illegal today. So we have that under our belts.
We also have me saying “no” to him three times in the past week or so about stupid shit, like a tax law that he didn’t look up and yet demanded some unowed moneys from me anyway. I can sense from afar that he is in a temper, or at least less of a stupor, than usual.
So me trying two weeks out to get a signed travel permission letter? Not going to happen. Emails go ignored. Dates go conveniently forgotten. Half-assed attempts are made to schedule a notary meeting several miles and a ferry ride from my house in the middle of a workday. “Thanks for your efforts anyway,” I finally texted him sarcasmically.
But I am going, and I think we have a fine shot. We have all the documents and the same last name. The letter would have been icing on the cake. And we are going to have a fantastic weekend in a hotel that is more like an apartment with a pool and fine friends. I will throw pics up and travelogue all about it when I return. MONKEYCHOW OUT.
Strudel boogies AND ets peas.
OH YES it is time for girl drink drunk. Cheers, Zmobie.
“Why is it Father’s Day, Dad?” Strudel said.
“Because your father’s a motherfucker,” I said, so only P. could hear.
“WHAT?” Strudel said. She hates being left out.
“Look, in the street, is that Xmas Steve?”
“NO MOM, he’s on his boat drinking sock beer in the summer!”
“UP TOP,” I said to P., and got my five.
I almost had to kill him this morning because I caught him RUNNING UP THE STAIRS with this bucket of dry ice from the grocery order and he ALMOST TRIPPED. I don’t know what would have happened, exactly, if he would have spilled it on himself, but if I had to take his ass to the emergency room I would have been HELLA PISSED.
FROOTY!
In Other News: Eggbags for Sale, Ten Cents a Pail
So, I am putting a little line out there now. The cute chooks I got when I was on hiatus yon these two months are now halfway grown and need new homes. This was my plan all along, to have some spring chicken raising funtimes and then move them up and out. Here we go! Write a blog! Tell a friend! Say it was horrible!
Fifteen per or all three for forty. You pick up and bring crates/boxes. Hatched March 29.
Saffron is a very elegant and sexy Easter Egger who will lay pink, blue, or green eggs. Dunno yet. She seems smart, like most EEs I have known.
Aloha is a Silver Wyandotte, and so named because the girls thought I was saying Hawaiiandotte. Of course. She will lay brown eggs and is VERY OMG PRITTY.
My favorite, who I will be sorry to let go, is Rose the Giant Blue Cochin. She is pretty mellow and has the cochin waddle and the fuzzy feet, so probably not ideal for a super wet run. She is extra sweet like Marty McFly was last year. I love this breed.
Anyway, drop me a line if you’re interested. If I don’t hear anything for a month or so I will move on to Backyard Chickens.
So, Strudel finished school! Now she is ready to apprentice with the village tailor. Ha ha, don’t I wish. We went to lunch at the Rocking Wok, which changed my favorite dish, the honeydew beef. It was still good, but not as delishus as before. It used to have little crispy basil leaves in it, and now has minced peppers.
We went for ice cream and a walk around the neighborhood after. She surprised me by ordering the lavender honey ice cream instead of a more kidalicious flavor like chocolate.
I have also decided to emerge into the amazing year 2003 and actually use my flickr bucket instead of spamming my blog all the damn time. YEAH five years from now I might even have a Bookface.
Going out with Ruby tonight. Apparently she is going to snap pix of musicians and then we are going to drink Not Absinthe.
