Category Archives: Strudel

NO BUTT TOUCHING

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I dozed off this morning after my alarm. Do you know what that gets you? That gets you in the middle squished like a sardine where the very flexible man will TOUCH YOUR BUTT. D:

Last night Strudel had the Kindergarten Singalong. She started off dancing like an elephant.

Then there was some singing. And some nose picking, at the top of the risers, in front of everyone. I get to have the kindergartner mining for magic nose goblins. I stage momed her and made the motion of STOP PICKING YOUR NOSE DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE EVEN but it probably just looked like a bee flew into my nostril.

At Burgermaster we discovered that it would be better if it was called “Lambmaster” and that some people cannot pronounce the word “synonym.”

As far as my DNA news goes, it’s new news. My sister did the swabbing to see our maternal ancestry and told me yesterday. She showed me a bunch of cool stuff on her phone while we were out, and I will get a copy of the paperwork soon. Woot.

Kicked in the Chuckhole/15-Feb Dream

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DIG DIG DIG! There will be a GARDEN. I made the hole in the middle, which winds and is crooked. I live my life like a spider on LSD. HIGH KICKS. Beans are coming. I am also planting lemon cucumbers.

I went out last night, four course prix fixe, yum yum. It was blasting outside with wind and rain but my hair made it.

I don’t understand why people get dressed to the hilt and then use a bunch of perfume. I don’t like anything else I can taste while I’m eating. Also, I think most people smell pretty good on their own. That said, I like perfume…sometimes.

I mentioned this on the Twittergraph, but I jumped and ordered chicks. They will be here the 24th. The post office will call me. COOL AS HELL to get livestock ringaling. When I was a kid we lived in the middle of nowhere several times but didn’t really have animals. Too bad, it would have been the perfect opportunity for homesteading.

Yesterday I got my Valentines some trinkets to wear and left them at the places at the dinner table. Strudel came home teary, with hers broken.

“Her enemy yanked on it and snapped it,” Franny explained. Strudel has a bugbear of a boy in her class who is always doing things to her.

“Did you talk to him about it and tell him you were upset?” I asked.

“Yes,” Strudel said.

“Did he get into trouble?”

“No, the teacher just told us to sit down,” she said. I remember this type of injustice.

“Well, tell him he can’t ruin your things and you would like him to give you five dollars to replace it.”

Strudel looked away from me, out the window, thinking.

“I’m going to tell his mother,” she said.

“Yeaaah, that’s it, kid. Be polite but firm, ok?”

I dreamt that my breasts has edges on them like the corners of my eyes with things in them that looked like tear ducts. There were worms that I was pulling out of them! Someone told me this was normal. I think I’ve been looking at too much Frida Kahlo lately.

Whatcha Gonna Do When You Get Out Jail

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On Thursday I talked to SeaFed, Franny’s father. This is the closest I will come to doing any kind of intervention, and it’s for my kid and not really having anything to do with the person who has a problem. I laid out what I knew, which added up to me not feeling comfortable with Franny being unsupervised over at my mother’s house.

It’s always awful talking to him. I always feel like I have ten seconds to make my pitch before he rings the gong. Of course we would rather chew our respective legs off than have a conversation anyway, so there is the knowledge that if one of us calls the other for A Talk it is some serious motherfucking shit.

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t tell your mom you said anything, I will just be delicate when I bring it up.”

“Don’t be DELICATE,” I said. “You didn’t hear this on craigslist, you heard it from ME. Shout it from the rooftops! Something is wrong right now! I don’t want to see Franny in a car crash or left alone. That is all I care about.”

“Alright, fine, no unsupervised visits for now. I’ll speak to your sister Friday.”

I have no idea if he did or did not. I heard from my sister a bit via text today, but she was so anxious over the last few days about making waves with my mom I don’t want to get up her butt.

One thing that got to me a bit was that SeaFed was so apologetic about my mother, and it wasn’t even that, exactly. I just wanted to say, I don’t know her anymore, even. All I care about is Franny. Which I pretty much did say, I think.

How much does it suck to get a person who basically hates you on your side? I wonder if he thinks about when we were divorcing and he asked her for an analysis of his habits with alcohol for the court and she wrote that she thought he was an out-of-control alcoholic. He did not see that coming, did he? BACKFIRE.

I have this fantasy that my sister being pissed at my mother and my ex not letting Franny go over there will be a wake up call. I would like to see complete rehab happen. Who knows what will happen, though.

This is weird, I wish it wasn’t happening. Just like a lot of life.

PRE.

DURING.

After.

Sup bangstoast. I played Munchkin most of the afternoon with this one.

Fingernails That Shine Like Juiceboxes

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Today Strudel came home early with a high fever. She said she was cold all day and her teacher said “Well, I guess you are going to have to live with it,” which sounds exactly like something I would say to Strudel if she was bitching about whatever (she is an expert complainer) but is also exactly the kind of thing that offends me when someone says that to my child. WHY did you not immediately get her a space heater and a nest made entirely of sterilized dove feathers and angel farts? And then I say, oh yes, she complains all the time. LOUDLY. In conferences her teacher said “We always know how Strudel is feeling at any given moment” which is code for “Your child is always bitching about fucking something.”

This is my fault, because when I was a kid and frustrated by something my mother would say “Oh” and when Strudel says, “They run out of apples by the time I get through the lunchline,” I say, “You know, you could politely ask if they have more apples and explain that you would really like one and they are out. Or you could bring a fruit from home.” And then her father says, “OR you could make your own lunch.”

She sighed. Too much information. I try to remember to just dole out some pity sometimes as well.

Tomorrow my friend Hovy and I are going off to get Elvis doughnuts! I am taking pics again.

Are We There Yet, Papa Smurf?

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JESUS is Christmas really next week? Fuck. I have been thinking about my friends who I love and appreciate, and I keep drawing blanks on presents. I think I will be a last-minute Lucy this year.

I’m having that thing right now where my head is just kind of hissing inside when I stop to think because I am so busy and engaged otherwise. I have been preparing a lot of offal this month–kidneys, pickling lamb tongues, and so on.

Much like my winter mania, sickness has hit the land early. Franny cannot remember anything right now, and Strudel is a little plugged up and cannot hear. Comedy ensued last night, as Franny asked me the same questions repeatedly and Strudel shouted “WHAT?” every time her sister spoke.

“Mom, what are you making for dinner?” Franny said.

“WHAT?” Strudel yelled.

“I told you, a roasted turkey breast,” I said.

“WHAT?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Jesus Mary Etc, it’s the lost dwarfs, Deafy and Forgetty.”

“Mom!” Franny protested.

“WHO lost a DOOR?” Deafy Dwarf shouted.



In Other News: Hello Goethe.

And Hello Matilda.

They huddled in the crate behind their mother, who was petite and bright eyed and looking at me critically, as cats do. No yowling or desperate clawing from this bunch like the other cats in other crates, though I wouldn’t have blamed them if they did.

“So, what happens to their mom when I take them?” I asked.

“Oh…she goes into the adult cat room. And waits for someone who wants an adult cat.”

I looked at the adult cat room, overstuffed with adult cats sleeping, playing, eating, and generally looking like a fuzzy used-car lot. I pictured the mother in there, too, after we had gone.

Hello Mere.

We are both happy AND sad, all at once. I am okay with complicated feelings.

Lesson Number Two: Don’t Get High On Your Own Supply

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“The following receipts are not a mere marrowless collection of shreds and patches, and cuttings and pastings, but a bona fide register of practical facts,–accumulated by a perseverance not to be subdued or evaporated by the igniferous terrors of a roasting fire in the dog-days,–in defiance of the odoriferous and calefacient repellents of roasting, boiling, frying, and broiling;–moreover, the author has submitted to a labour no preceding cookery-book-maker, perhaps, ever attempted to encounter, having eaten each receipt before he set it down in his book.”
–William Kitchiner, Introduction to The Cook’s Oracle.

Hey guyz what’s going on in this thread? Thank you for your kind comments on my previous post. I will tell you that I often post in a time warp. I worry about discussing things that I am still het up or uncertain about. I think it’s one part typical internet caution, but I am a pretty cautious person anyway. Sometimes I have trouble saying what I am thinking right away because my gears are grinding. I can certainly make snap decisions if forced but I would much rather say that I will sleep on it. And a lot of the time I dream about outcomes. I like to do this work while I am asleep.

My point is, she died the day I posted it, Sunday. Usually I like to tell you what’s happening so you know, and I’ve already processed it, but it was really fresh. So, even more so than usual, I was appreciative of your comments.

Hey, speaking of crazy, disorganized babbling, my winter mania has kicked in. I don’t know if it will last, but I am going with it. I am the only person I know who loses weight in the winter, and gains weight in the summer (MMMM fruit and cheese and wine and pie). Is it okay to go with something like this if it results in a positive outcome? I hope so. The pattern’s held for at least ten years now, but skipped last year for some reason–I suspect that working downtown exposed me to too much light, ha ha. I just have to be careful to get enough sleep. The nice thing is I have the energy to get a fuckton done. Such as…

Cleaning up after the cocaine bear visits!! Just kidding. I am purging my house of fleas. The fellow at the pet supply told me there was something about this summer that made it the worst for fleas ever. I bought a giant bag of diatomaceous earth and have been treating my whole house for the last couple of days. I am hoping one big push will get the fleas out. I was using the really quality stuff that you put on your pet’s neck and near the end, it seemed not to be working.

So Monday and yesterday I pulled apart the girls’ rooms–cleaned all bedding and stuffed animals, dusted the rooms, and now I am moving on to main rooms. I have “dusted” myself into my bedroom currently and when I get hungry I will have to vacuum my way out.

I have 27 more “official” Victorian recipes to cook, as in, they are printed out on the December calendar on the fridge. But I find myself scribbling more things onto it daily, so I reckon I will end up with about 40 more recipes by December 25th. I am trying to make that my absolute cut off date, with the week between Xmas and New Year’s totally clear. HA HA. I can feel the lie as it issues out of my fingers. I’m sure I will be tweaking stuff that week, in addition to closing shop for new articles at The Queen’s Scullery. I put a new banner up there yesterday, and I am kind of in love with it, though I am a total Photoshop flâneuse.

I am diving into the research portion of things and it is all getting very tangled. I am attempting to give as many recipes as possible their due credit. I have turned again to Katheryn Hughes’s biography of Isabella Beeton as a jumping-off point for where Beeton gaffled her recipes from. Hughes is causing me actual physical pain by scoffing at my beloved William Kitchiner, saying that Beeton never even credited him, which is patently false, AHEM: “Indian Curry Powder, founded on Dr. Kitchiner’s recipe.” Hughes claims he was not ever a medical doctor at all (okay, yes, his educational background in Scotland is rather hazy). Apparently his writing style, all full of IMPERATIVE EXCLAMS!!, something that may be familiar to readers of this screed and a habit that further endears Kitchiner to me, is unacceptable to Hughes:

Given Kitchiner’s off-putting emphases (there are few sentences that are not spattered with italics or capitals), it is grimly pleasurable to learn that he died at the age of forty-nine, having failed in his boast to demonstrate that good diet prolonged life beyond its usual span.

Fiddle faddle to you, Ms. Hughes. I believe his biographers’ hunch that he was poisoned.

There are further problems. Another of Beeton’s major sources stole HIS work from a French chef. It feels a little bizarre to be testing and tweaking every recipe I am including in the book–kind of the antithesis of what the Victorians were up to with their borrowing, modifying, and editing. There is one thing Hughes and I agree on. Beeton was not a woman who saw the business end of a kitchen knife or tammy too often. I look at recipes now and am like NOPE. This is not going to work at all.


Chicken Croquettes in a nice Béchamel.

Frying in duck fat.

I went to school conferences yesterday and the word was about what I expected. Strudel participates in the school-wide writer’s workshop program. For most kindergartners this means drawing pictures, but she is writing and insisting on reading things like Lemony Snicket. We argue about the literary merits of The Magic Treehouse series (barf).

It turns out she wrote a story about cooking with me and eating. “I LOVE EATING MY MOMS VICKTORYAN FUD.” There is a drawing of us sitting at the table, with flowers and plates. I am the same size as Strudel but I have pink hair. I really hope the girls, when they consider their childhoods, can forgive the bad parts in favor of the parts where we cooked together, and there was good hot food on the table, and the feeling of snug domesticity and beautiful surroundings that I always wanted as a kid.

So now you know what’s banging around in my head. Don’t we all feel better now? WE WILL NOW OPEN THE FLOOR FOR QUESTIONS.

The life aquatic with Franny Zissou.

Mundane Nags From Clammy Climates

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CHILDREN, MAN. Are you feeling me? I’m about to go positively Bombeckian on your ass.

Nietzsche is still leaving me occasional piles of existentialism around the living room. I am trying to take care of her, since she is very old and sick now, but still very sweet. Her purr box works and she still sits in my lap while I read when I lift her up. Most mornings I carry her down to where her litter box is and she goes. Some mornings nature calls before I get up and the stink waves come into my room and wake me up. I tried having a litter box upstairs, but it didn’t work–I was too faint of heart to be woken up every morning by the worst cat shit smell I have ever smelled. I think I would rather be woken up by a crying baby than a smell, seriously.

So I was laying in bed this morning, and I thought I smelled it. “Here it comes,” I thought. “It will only get stronger now, I might as well get up.” I put on my dealing-with-early-morning-crises robe, which is, naturally, covered in poodles. My cat sat on the edge of the kitchen, looking up at me eagerly. “FOOD HAS FOOD THYMES ARRIVED AGAIN?” I was roused by an imaginary smell. I dream of litterboxes now, I really do. I picked her up and gave her a little squeeze and she purred. “Let’s go, Lady,” I said, and carried her downstairs, setting her near her box, which I keep as tidy as a country club sand trap now.

The children were getting dressed in their rooms, miraculously not squabbling through their doorways and across the hall. I was downstairs anyway, so I popped into the downstairs bathroom. Holding my pee on waking up from anywhere between 5 minutes and two hours is not something that ever occurred to me would happen until I spawned. It is relatively rare now that the girls are older–that was more of a baby thing, really. It cannot be just me who does that, right? Please?

Since this is a split level, everything is pretty much mirrored on both levels, and it is rare for me to use the downstairs loo. I inhabit the upstairs, which is close to the kitchen, important for emergency ramen fits. I can look outside my bedroom window and see the weather, and the naked janky pear tree, and what my neighbors are up to. They are disappointingly respectable, even Moon Pants.

So of course I usually use the upstairs bathroom that connects to my room, which makes it the Better Bathroom, somehow, in the children’s minds. I keep it cleaner because guests are more likely to use it. I remember as a child, wanting to be in my mother’s bathroom, but why? My bathroom is even almost the same ghastly color scheme–a peachy pink Formica with gold faucets and fixtures. Both were probably built at the same time, on opposite sides of the country. I wanted to be in there because it smelled like her; her perfumes and makeup and things were in it. Sometimes she was in it, and I would hover around below her, taking water, fragrance, or hair spray shrapnel as I noodled around on the floor.

The downstairs bathroom was a bit of a scene. No toilet paper. Still no hand towel, which I noticed last weekend and then forgot about, because Hey, it is not really MY bathroom. Someone else will notice and replace it, surely.

“Girls,” I said, looking in at them through their doorways. What a delight to be able to yell at both of them at once. “There is no toilet paper and no hand towel in your bathroom. How are you…making it in there?” Blank looks. I tried again. “What do you do in the middle of the night if you have to use the bathroom?” I asked Franny.

“I use your bathroom,” she said.

“YOU,” I said to Strudel. “What do YOU do when you poop and you wash your hands? Where do you wipe them?” I KNOW, I KNOW, a LOT of generous assumptions there, especially with the number of abandoned solitary brown trouts I find still.

“Okay, girls. Upstairs is MY bathroom. You may use it when you are upstairs. When you are down here, please use THIS bathroom. You are responsible for the toilet paper and hand towels in it.” I gave them both meaningful looks, the one that says “RIGHT NOW before you forget PLEASE.”

Strudel trudged upstairs and I pricked my ears to hear what she would do as I changed out of my robe and into some clothes for the day. I heard her walk into my bathroom and open the cabinet.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Getting toilet paper,” she said, in her sensible reasonable tone, not impolite, just patient.

“That is extra for when I run out,” I said. “Do you know where I keep the household toilet paper?” She shook her head. “It’s in the linen closet.” Blank stare. “The closet you hide from your sister in.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, and it is next to the hand towels.”

So the bathroom is reprovisioned, for now, until the toilet paper is used up and someone makes off with the hand towel because they need a cape for their stuffed badger. The road to civilization is long, long, long, and really, no one cares but me up in my sparkly upstairs domain which you can see the floor in, and my shiny bathroom with the barfy fixtures that you can see your face rendered in appalling disco gold in. And sometimes I think, why should I bother, if they are happy living in relatively-minor levels of filth and chaos? Really, I am the odd one here. I don’t have an answer to that.

SnoMGBBQ Apocalypse ’10

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HOKAY so we went out of town with a voucher that I was kind of talked into and only marginally excited about, from the Place Where Sensible Thought Goes To Die, the school auction. Sure, I love swimming? And waterparks? And spending money to stay in resorts? Dear God. WHAT.

So we went for a midweek overnight to an indoor water park here. And you know, it felt great. The first night at least. It was nice to get out of town, and not to be trapped in the car with the girls for as long as it takes to go to Portland. However, what was ostensibly supposed to be a quick 90-minute jaunt somehow stretched to two-plus hours.

There was a little melodrama on the way down with Strudel (I have no idea where she gets THAT from) where she thought she was going to barf. I was worried because Frannie had the barfs earlier that week, like for real twelve times in one day barfing stomach virus keeping her out of school thingie, and I thought surely Strudel was next. We decided to press on instead of turning back. If it was a false alarm, why lose the trip? If it was not, then I figured I could sit in the hotel room with her and watch the Comedy Channel. It was a false alarm, hooray.

Day one was pretty splendid. It was WARM in the waterpark and getting colder outdoors all the time due to the impending arrival of snow.

And here it is, this morning.

Then I realized that everything I needed was right there in one ridiculously large building, and it was like what I hear about cruises–overpriced, meh food, trapped in one place. Then bedtime came. Foolishly, I decided to have some dessert fondue before bed and snapped awake at four, indigested and queasy. I snuck over to the living room area and quietly turned a light on to read my magazine for a bit and just generally be upright.

Strudel woke up shortly after me and though I got sleepy again, she could not go back to sleep. She was WIRED! She was EXCITED! She has a LOT OF TROUBLE USING AN INDOOR VOICE! Basically she could not accept that we needed about three more hours of sleep. At home if she cannot sleep, she jabbers away to herself in her room, but there was no escape in the hotel. Finally, after drifting in and out of sleep for hours, we dragged ourselves out of bed.

That morning, things started to get to me a little. I didn’t go to bed super late, but everything felt surreal, as it does when you are sleep-deprived. There was an animatronic “storytime” nightly in the lobby that Franny declared “creepy,” which is an example of a trait I love about her. It featured a byootyful Indian Princess named “Yellowfeather” and some talking trees. I seem to recall something similar happened to me once in high school, but it did not take place in a resort.

The show kicked on again in the morning as I was getting a latte and it was much worse, somehow, with no audience. Sometimes stuffed robotic raccoons (double ugh) would come to life in the corridors and begin to sing. Every surface, including the trash can rims (covered with molded-plastic cute woodland creatures), was perfectly in theme and embellished, reminding me of staying at a Disney resort years ago, where even the light switches had mouse heads on them.

I popped into a wizard-themed shop and spoke to a man with a goatee wearing a metallic-gold cape. “Is this where you can buy wolf ears?” I asked him. No, he replied, that was at a “kids camp” here.

“I used to wear them,” he offered. “But They made me stop. Sadface.”

The waterpark rules sign read, in bolded letters, “DO NOT POOP OR PEE IN THE POOL.” It was nice to be warm, and I finally got to wear my rowr rowr 60s style teal halter suit (+15 to vanity and moxie) but I was happy to get home.

IN OTHER NEWS

I am still cooking (shocker, I know). Now that my list of recipes are winding down, I have picked up more hours at work! Hooray! I am almost a useful and productive human being again.

Last night I made three ounces of candied peel from oranges, lemon, and a citron.

It’s going into this gorgeous mincemeat, which contains real meat.

We’ve been hanging out all week, since Strudel is off. SeaFed came at me with charts and graphs of why he should have Franny all week (congrats, you win the crazy-off THIS TIME, SeaFed) so she is gone and dour about it as usual.

I took Strudel to the library and when she came home she made a “book puzzle.”

I hope the snow melts a bit. There is a goose downtown with my name on it for tomorrow, and I don’t know if I can get down there!! Happy Fangsgiving, I’ll be back with pictures, triumphs, and FAILURE.

You Now Understand Sarcasm. Go You! Level Up!

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Strudel saw the ice cream, and she was determined to do something about it. She already had several strikes against her: copious backchatting, had written hers AND her sister’s names on the stairwell wall near the entryway, ate something mysterious due to goofing around (“I don’t know what it was, it just fell into my mouth when I was laying down!” [??? !!!]), extra servings of whining for everyone. So, dig if you will THAT picture.

“Can I have some of that ice cream after dinner?” she asked, like the adorable cherub she is not.

“No,” I said.

“WHY?”

I am tired of WHY. I am tired of the entitled, hostile edge it has. Shields up, engage torpedoes, it says.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I said, thinking quickly. “You give me reasons why I said ‘no.’ If you guess right in three tries, you get a high five!”

She was quiet for a moment, mulling this over. And then she started guessing.

“Is it because I had a treat earlier?” she asked.

“Mmm, keep guessing.”

“Is it because I wrote on the wall?”

“Those are very good guesses,” I said. “HIGH FIVE!”

“Hmmmph,” Strudel said.

***************

“Get ready for bed,” P. said.

“DAD I need to get a DRINK of WATER,” she said.

“FATHA I am not done being difficult yet!” I said, in my melodramatic British Jane Eyre boarding school melodramz voice.

“Fatha, I have not completely destroyed your life yet,” he said.

“Are you guys SARCASSING ME?”

In Other News

Things I have made this weekend not from this century: fried oysters, apple tourte, a good short crust, Brown Gravy, leg of lamb filled with forcemeat, and four pounds of sausage. I am about halfway there. Tomorrow is ALMOND DAY, OMG ALMOND DAY. I cannot wait for this month to be over, and not because of the cooking. I just need to get over this October hump (not yet over the October humpING).

Nietzsche is kind of falling apart. I woke up to poop and pee in various places in the house, and a few spots of vomit. She’s under veterinary supervision, of course, but she’s 15 and her kidneys are going, and there’s the whole hypothyroid thing that she’s being treated for, so I know we’re coming to the end soon.

She is one of the only things I have from before I was married a zillion years ago. I feel like she’s some relic from the past, in which I envision some more undiluted or Platonic version of myself. Before I was all dented and dinged and made peace with the dents and dings, and now wait for more dents and dings, before I got slapped with labels like mother, “divorcee” (hee hee, cannot type that without laughing), “could have been,” before I was fired from jobs, ruined friendships, before I realized that family is not synonymous with “forever.”

My tiny little black ball of fur and energy was all potential then, too. We were both dumb kids together. Before her misguided declawing that I let my stupid roommate pressure me into, before HER dents and dings and moves through several states and before she lost all her little kitty homies one after the other to death and divorce, before I betrayed her by squeezing out two little feral hoodlums to make her life a living hell by pulling her tail and putting bonnets on her and the biggest crime of all, interrupting her sixteen hours of sleep a day.

I think her death’s going to be the end of some big chapter in my life, layered and crossfiled with all the other chapters. The worst part is, I think I’m going to have to write the end of it.

Cooking By The Book

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I seem to be segueing into some kind of early fall hermity thing. I LIKE IT, BY JOVE. It’s keeping me out of trouble and writing, which is always good. Posts here are going to be kind of kid-heavy for the next little while, I think. I hate to be all cats-and-crystals about things, but I am pretty far into my own head…and at the same time nothing is happening. It’s like the Fat Head of John Travolta in an infinity mirror on some kind of film loop. It doesn’t make sense, and at the same time nothing’s happening. I am reading and writing a lot, and the postcard summary is that I’m Happy and Keeping Busy. I will let you know if I am doing something, or, you know, leave the house to go somewhere besides the grocery store.

Franny asked me to dye her hair, like for real, for real Oprah-Winfrey-whole-segment for real. She cleaned bathrooms for a few weeks in a row to earn the moneys. Are you sure, I asked her. She was really pissed when she was 5 and her father took her in to get her hair bleached to be a flower girl at the wedding of a cousin she barely sees. Is it okay to demand that a human prop in your wedding risk scalp blisters? I will let you decide, gentle reader.

Is it okay to do it now? I will let you decide that as well. I told her it would sting. We did it. Now she sort of looks like that adorable child from Lazytown. I need to snap a pic of her today. No scalp trauma, but I kept a close eye on it. It is pretty.

I am kind of bemused with the layers of weird bureaucracy at the girls’ new school. They get stamped when they leave the bus, so they do not forget their bus number. Strudel wears a badge and a wristband with all of her infos on it. They are not allowed to ask for water with their lunches; their choices are cow, chocolate cow, or soy. “What do kids who cannot have those do?” I asked. “Oh, there is a drinking fountain,” Franny told me.

I was told very sternly that they would not be let off the bus unless I was there, because Strudel is five. I was throwing on my shoes yesterday to come out and pick them up at the bus stop when they walked up to me through the yard, several minutes early.

“Whoa, you girls are home early, eh?”

“Yes,” said Franny, who usually acts as spokesdwarf. “And YOU WEREN’T THERE, so we decided to come home.”

“Okay, good call. No one cared? They did not try to hold you?”

“No,” she said. Well, okay.

Strudel had her first homework assignment this weekend. I know some people (Montessauruses) who would begin spontaneously bleeding from the ears if they heard “kindergartner with homework” but we are in lockdown now, yo. Do your time, don’t let your time do you.

“I don’t feel like doing this right now,” Strudel said. It was Sunday, and I had suggested to her for the 48th time that weekend that she might want to sit down and do her homework.

“The weekend is almost over. Just knock it out, baby,” I said. We read the instructions together. The worksheet said that the child should make a poster summarizing her summer in pictures of the activities with simple words or phrases labeling the activities. Her father suggested she make a list of all the things she remembered from this summer.

Strudel’s response was to get irritated. “THIS IS STUPID. WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS?” Franny, the occasionally-frustrated but overall lover of homework and all things school-related, looked at her incredulously from across the table, where she was at work on a drawing.

“What’s wrong with homework?” Franny said. “It’s a drawing, you like drawings.”

“I’M JUST GOING TO SCRIBBLE,” Strudel informed us.

“No, you’re not,” I said. “Do a good job. This is your schoolwork. You have to actually try, okay.”

“I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS? WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS?”

“It’s a life lesson,” I said. “You do this now, and then you get to do fun things you want to do later. Most of life is figuring out how to follow the rules so you can find joy in other places, where there are no rules, or only your own rules.”

She looked down and started drawing a picture of a large house that dominated most of the picture, possibly to get me to stop talking, since I had gone into Lecture Mode. She informed us it was her Grandpa’s house, where she had stayed for a weekend. The final cut for the poster was the house, a pool, her lost tooth, and roller skates.

The last thing to do was write the title of the poster: Strudel’s Summer.

“I HATE THIS TITLE, I THINK IT NEEDS A DIFFERENT TITLE.”

“It’s in the directions, dude, give it up.” I wrote it down on a separate piece of paper so she could copy it in her careful cursive.

“Do you think there is a high rate of suicide among teachers?” her father asked me in the kitchen a few minutes later, out of earshot.

“Yeah, these are my genes, sorry,” I said. “Chin up, though, little soldier. Only twelve more years of this.”

Later I was flipping through Alice Waters’ bio when Franny sat down next to me and said that someone besides her teacher was coming into the classroom and having “carpet circle time” with them.

“Oh?” I said. “Some kind of reading thing?”

“No, this lady asks us a bunch of questions about what we like and what our families are like, and we all have to say answers.”

“They are trying to see which of you are mental and which of you, if any, are being burned with cigarettes at home,” I told her.

“Oh,” Franny said.

“There’s really no reason a government agency needs to know any of this about you or us. I have already filled out the forms with your vital stats. All they are there for is to present information to you, hopefully educational. I would advise making answers up.”

Franny began frowning at me.

“See the inherent challenge: How quickly can I get the school to call my mother?”

“MooooooOOOM come ON,” Franny said.

“I’m serious, they want to waste your time, you waste theirs right back, okay, poodle?”