Category Archives: Strudel

Five-and-a-Half Stories About Being Five-and-a-Half

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Hiccups

Strudel’s dad was hiccuping strenuously, as he does.

“What are hiccups FOR,” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said, only half-listening, and making a grocery list.

“I think they are the FRIENDS OF COUGHS,” she declared, and then fell over laughing.

Uncomfortable

I was trying to work and Strudel was in the hallway, parading around front of the full-length mirror that hangs there, just outside the door of my room. I glanced over and saw that she was pulling her pants down and trying to catch a glimpse of herself. Her underwear was bunched up and completely up her butt in the most atomic wedgie that ever detonated.

“MOM is this how you wear your underwear?” she yelled.

“WHAT,” I said.

“This is how you wear your underwear, up your butt!!” she screamed.

“Okay, first of all, they are thongs, and…never mind.”

“This is really uncomfortable, Mom. You are DOING IT WRONG.”

Loose Tooth

“I HAVE TWO LOOSE TOOTHS!!”

Love Letter

“Mom, I am going to write you a note while you are making dinner, okay?”

“Okay!”

A few minutes later I was handed a tiny folded piece of paper. Delighted, I opened it and read it aloud:

“Do…you…know…what…CHICKEN BUTT.”

I looked at her and the excited frozen anticipation on her face cracked into hilarity. Strudel was destroyed and fell onto the floor, kicking her feet and screaming with laughter.

Wow, not just an insult comic, but a PROP insult comic. The grandparents would be so proud. Later I got another note that read, “A bird poopd on yor hed.”

NEHAW

Orientation

Tomorrow Strudel starts kindergarten. She is starting at a completely different school than I thought she was two weeks ago, because this is the year Seattle decided that you should actually, you know, attend the school in your neighborhood, and not choose to bus your kid way the fuck across town. Information on the website lead me to believe that my girls would be grandfathered into Franny’s school for the fourth grade. I was half right.

I got a notice from the transportation department that said Franny’s bus stop would be in front of our old place. She did not need the bus there because it was walkable even in the worst weather, but she would certainly need it from our new house. I called them to see if they could shift it to our new address. I knew they had our new address, which I had diligently sent notice about, because the transportation notice saying the bus stop was 40 blocks south of our new house was sent to the new address.

“Ohh,” said the woman when I finally got her on the line. “Yes, there’s been some kind of mistake. Your older daughter can stay in her old school, but your kindergartener must start school in your new district.”

“Is there no way to keep them together?” I asked.

“Well, you could apply for an exception for your kindergartener for next year,” she said.

“Oh. Well, my older daughter will be on to middle school by then.”

So we learned we had a new school for both girls, and yes, they would send the cheese on over for them to ride. Except I had to drive my kindergartener on the first day, but the older one HAD to be at the bus stop, or it would mess up the bus driver’s headcounts, okay? Okay.

I called the school itself, now that they were placed.

“Can you tell me their teachers’ names?” I asked.

“Oh, let’s see…you have a kindergartener!”

“I do.”

“Can you come to orientation today? It’s at 3:15 to 4.”

So I went to orientation, which completely overflowed the library. There were three kindergartens and three teachers standing in a clump, and one was pregnant. Please please please let her not get the pregnant one, to whom she will get all attached and sad when a harried, indifferent sub comes in in the spring.

The teachers were introduced and Strudel’s teacher looked thin, happy, and well-rested, so not pregnant at all. The librarian and music teachers seem cool as fuck, and there is a heavy emphasis on English Language Learner education, which is good, because Strudel is fluent in Feral Snarl and less so in the art of gentlewomanly behavior and speech. The principal talked at us.

“Wow! We are really excited this year! This is the largest enrollment our school has ever seen!” He said some more things, but what I got out of that was, now that you cannot choose where your child goes, you are stuck here, ha ha!

Tomorrow is it, and I can go back to working from home without having to dump a bucket of ice water over fisticuffs by 10 a.m. Also, there will be running and continued stuffing of animal parts into other animals, etc. Woot!

Following Orders

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Sometimes I ask Franny if I can post things, like her hula hoop video. Now that she is 9, I am very mindful of the fact that soon other little cretins friends will be on the internet, looking for evidence that their classmates are mortal and fallible. Of course I will not tell you the naughty things she does and says. She is always perfect, casual, talented, and good-looking.

So she’s not embarrassed yet.

FRANNY: “MOM TAKE A PICTURE OF US AND PUT IT ON THE INTERNET AND TELL EVERYONE WE ARE JUST HEADS AND THAT WE ARE YOUR PET HEADS OK.”

Okay.

Strudel, however, is still young enough to make a couple of mistakes.

Posession Is 9/10ths of the Law

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“Mom, I don’t want this shirt, the tag is itchy.”

“Uhh, okay,” I said, looking at a recipe and only half paying attention. Franny handed it over. “Hey, this is MY SHIRT.”

“I thought you gave it to me,” she said.

“What? NO. This is my tank top.”

“It was in my drawer,” Franny said. “Anyway, you can have it back because the tag is itchy.”

“Okay. WAIT, NOOO I can have it back because it’s MINE, not because the tag is itchy!”

“Uhh-huh,” Franny said.

“MINE! MINE! NOT ITCHY!”

“Jeez, Mom,” she said, backing out.

Goddommot.

I have a Strudel laying in bed whimpering because her GI said to try wheat again this summer and it is “summer” oh boy. I’m thinking the girls are not ready for wheat yet. The return of wheat played out kind of strangely here. I will tell you about it very soon.  I want to go out and buy wine but it is pouring.

Dear Tenacity Jones

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Yesterday Franny recited a poem about mashed potatoes in front of her class. The children were given a couple of weeks to memorize their poems, which Franny did right away, and then sort of forgot about it for a week or so, then refreshed before she went in. Strudel listened attentively and was a good audience during her sister’s practice sessions, and when Franny returned home triumphantly and announced that everything had gone splendidly, Strudel jumped in and said the poem front to back without batting an eye. Strudel has a knack for memorizing things casually as Franny grapples with learning them, then spewing them out at inopportune moments.

“YES YES you have it,” snapped Franny, cutting Strudel in the middle of the final verse of the poem.

Strudel also finds other little fissures to thrust her tiny irritation tentacles into. Franny has low moments while doing math at times. Math facts sort of slide around and get mixed up. There is a particular deer in the headlights stare that Franny gets when what she knows leaves her and her mind is a blank.

I used to get the same look on my face. I was the last child to complete the timed tests that we had to take OVER and OVER and OVER until we passed. And by last, I mean weeks after all the other children had finished. My face burned with shame every afternoon as the teacher quietly timed me while everyone else did their silent reading.

Finally, it clicked one day. I had memorized the answers in their correct order. I did not even need to look at the problems. I had learned something, but probably not what I was supposed to have learned. I am fond of saying I did not really learn how to do math until I was 27. True facts.

Franny often lays her head down on her paper and taps her pencil while she takes a break from her math homework.

“A number times zero is always ZERO,” Strudel will say cheerfully into the anguished, frustrated silence. Franny sighs.

Strudel is deviling everyone at the moment. She is a huge fan of YOU ALWAYS and YOU NEVER and she will shiv a bitch if we cut her apples the wrong way.

I tried addressing the behavior and providing negative consequences, and the kid can hang on. I think her middle name should be “Tenacity,” which would be a totally awesome Pilgrim virtue name, don’t you think? I’d take Tenacity over Prudence any day.

One morning this week I woke up and it came to me–the thing I had not tried. It was time for a good old fashioned ignoring. Now when she flips her shit she is completely dead to the tribe. If she has anything remotely constructive to say regarding how she feels I acknowledge her, but otherwise she is shunned. No reaction, no need to continue the performance.

And I feel compelled to tell you the reason this letter is so utterly dull is because I really have nothing to tell you of any real importance. I was sick for a week and a half which is long for me. I suppose I could tell you that SeaFed tried to claim Franny on his taxes, despite not paying a dime in child support or for any of her insurance or upkeep beyond feeding her and clothing her on her brief visits to his far-away house. How we laughed. I am looking into buying a new desktop. I am going to Los Campisinos next week. Work is eating me LESS, which means my powers of evil are growing and returning. Soon orcs will be spewing out of my ears again and I will drive hobbits before me and hear the lamentations of their women &etc.

Hope you are well and xoxoxo,

SJ

I, Asshole and Her Pathetic Little Life

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Saturday and Saturday means DONCE CLASS. Hear the chup chup chup of the helicopter blades as they swoop over the group of five-year-olds, most of whom are there to have a good time if given half a chance. I hung out for the first class, and now I help her undress, pop her things into her cubby, and watch her run down the stairs and into the studio where she prances and thumps to her heart’s content, something she is not allowed to do at home, because SHUSH the neighbors.

Other parents stay there all the time, every time, hovering, watching, hanging on, coaching, making self-effacing remarks about their daughters’ abilities, and they make me want to vomit.

The pre-ballets come out before Strudel goes into pre-modern. The pre-ballets are strawberry pinkies compared to the pre-modern black leotards, which are more jaunty beret in a smoky club.

“Hurry up,” one mother urged her pinkie. “You have art class to go to next!”

The pre-modern parents are not any better. Don’t let the black leotards fool you.

“OH,” one mother cooed at her daughter as she came out of the studio in front of Strudel at the end. “I saw how you were moving your arms. You looked SO PRETTY OUT THERE. You look SO PRETTY sweetheart.”

My child is the only one with a pixie cut and no bun without five million clippies and headbands and DONCE sweaters and DONCE leg warmers even though it is 60 degrees. My child has a hole in her tights. Oops.

“Well,” I say, as she comes out of the studio at the end. “Did you have fun?”

“Yes,” Strudel says. High fives all around.

I walk to the library and get coffee and run other errands, and when there is about 15 minutes left I come out in front of the studio and watch her caper around through the large window, watching her hold a noodle or a scarf, pretending she is a dog or a flower. She loves her teacher with eccentric hair and a funny accent, which is a prerequisite for DONCE teachers. Strudel looks happy and at the end she gets a gluten-free scone from the coffee shop across the street.

I think we will stick with it.

Confidential to Bobbie: I will begin duplicating videos here on my Flickr page, which is public. If I embed something I did not make, I will try to remember to put the URL.

Such Things I Do Just To Make Myself More Attractive to You

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How are you? Yeah? Mmm hmm. See how I am acting interested, but I am just waiting for the follow up story on your rash? No? I can’t help you. Go down the hall and make a sharp left.

Franny is learning about the Holocaust. She is reading a book about some little child who fled Germany, and on Thursday she is hearing a Holocaust survivor speak. She didn’t really get the whole thing, why people were running here and there. Over their oatmeal I told them about LAMPS MADE FROM HUMAN SKIN and sewing pregnant women shut and whatnot. We talked about tattoos and armbands.There’s your context.

“…then they all formed together to make one super-robot, and the Jews flew to the moon. And that’s why your sister has a hairy butt,” I finished.

“Hum,” Franny said. “Ugh.”

“So be nice to this lady on Thursday, because she has probably seen some crazy shit and if you are quiet she might tell you,” I said.

In other news, apparently Ruby and I are going to the school auction this year! She was supposed to go out of town, and she is my only date I will go with, but her plans changed, so voila. Now I can wear my ridiculous-assed silver zebra shoes I got when I was in Canadia last month. Things are a lot better than when I was still running it. Now I can just show up and eat. Ruby is a former chair and makes a good date. Snark powers activate! Shape of: Bree Van de Camp.

As an “interesting” side note, I can trace that 2008 auction post I linked as The Last Time I Was Sane in 2008. I think I was still faking it for a while, though. Can you see the cracks? Or just a sailboat? I am glad 2008 is over. You know something? I hardly remember it. 2008, I mean. I know some stuff happened because there are pictures. It’s a good thing I have a goddam diary. Do you have faith in me, since I have proven I can endure? I am on the QT and not making weeping vagina noises here.

Last night I dreamt that some bad dudes were out to get me and Strudel. They developed a plane that was completely agile and almost soundless. There was a demonstration in the town square, which was the town square from Back to the Future, complete with broken clock tower.

The plane was bobbing around and it destroyed a tree. This was the demo. I hid Strudel in a house nearby, and one of the guys found me and was like “BRING THE PLANE HERE.” Really, a plane? You are in front of me, could you not just kill me, like, manually?

All I could think in the dream was “This is why we cannot have nice things!”

I have a portrait of the Lusitania on my back and when I flex it CRASHES.

Lie Strudel Lie

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“Mom, why do you tell me to ‘lie down’ and you say that you ‘lay stuff down’?” Strudel asked, while she was putting her boots on. I launched into a brief explanation of lie and lay as I was putting my laptop into my bag.

“Strudel, you mean you DON’T know the difference between the transitive and the intransitive? What ARE they teaching you at that school?” She shook her head slowly.

Suddenly, P. shouted from another part of the house: “GIVE HER A BREAK, SHE USES THE SUBJUNCTIVE CORRECTLY!”

Fool Me Once

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Yesterday SeaFed’s third child was decanted at some sort of modern medical institution. For those playing along at home, only one of those children is mine. For reasons of her own, Franny is in a bit of a funk about gaining a new sibling, and I will confess to you that the gleeful ebullience in the voicemail he left me yesterday made me slightly nauseated. This was followed by a picture of the new baby in my email which has the same giant pumpkin head as the other child. Is it less a case of Tiny Vagina, and more a case of what the medical community refers to as “casaba cabeza.”

I am dying to know if they still have lice, but not enough to, like, ask. You know? I guess I will find out when Franny comes back on Monday.

So things were a little wacky over here last night, and both of my girls ended up falling asleep in my bed while I stayed up and watched new Big Love. My girls are still fairly small and Franny is about as thin as a sheet of paper right now, so I slid in beside them with Strudel in the middle.

Of course Strudel spent half the night kicking me and the other half crowding me, with a little intermittant blanket hogging thrown in for variety. Feet up in my ribcage reminded me of being pregnant with her, when her primary occupations were kicking, drinking her own pee, and killing off the competition.

Finally, around 4:30, Strudel crept over to Franny’s side of the bed, which was immediately deemed COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. Sometimes Franny reminds me how much bullshit I put up with unquestioningly, and then I remember that Franny is a lot of the reason I learned how to put up with booshit. Twist.

“STRUDEL,” Franny stage-hissed. “MOVE OVER.” “STRU. DEL. MOOOOVE!”

Of course Strudel could sleep through a café full of Northface jacket-wearing Seattleites fighting over the last vegan, gluten-free, sustainably-sourced croissant in the pastry case.

“OW!” Strudel said finally, half-asleep.

“OUT FRANNY,” I said. Franny sniffled and stumped off to her own bed and Strudel oozed back over to my side of the bed, where she stayed until my alarm went off at six, leaving Nietzsche at least half of my queen-sized bed.

And no one learned ANYTHING.

In Other News

This fucking guy is cracking me up today. Do stick around for the comments section. I posted that I thought it was satire, and I want to believe, I do. Speaking of no one learned anything, all this young hombre is going to conclude from this little crusade is that The Internet is Mean. which, well, duh.

Don’t Trust Anyone over Five

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Strudel has been talking, talking, talking since she got home.

“Abby says that monsters are REAL,” Strudel said.

“No, come on,” I said. “Monsters aren’t real.”

“How do you know?”

“I went to school for a long time and I learned it.”

“But Abby says–”

“Okay, you, I have a master’s degree, and Abby has a preschool education. Who are you going to believe?”

“Abby.”