Category Archives: Franny

If I Get By, It’s Mine

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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.

Dear MF Diary, Today The Boy I Like Said Hi To Me In the Hall.

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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.

In Which We Keep Things In Perspective

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I am choking on the writing thing lately, am I not? Suddenly I have more drains on my energy and have been writing offline A LOT more. I know, I know, less fap, more rap. I hate blog excuses. It’s just this thing that is happening on the internets, you know?

If I don’t write for online for a few days I start to choke and block up, so I need to bite the bullet and give you disjointed updates that will pass for writing. Once Shauna said that the longer you go, the harder it is, and that is so true. At least my blog is like 3% better now. You can now click on my banner and it will take you home, and I got a shiny WP upgrade. Candy Mountain, bitches.

I should tell you what happened with my blog hosting that made me look like a motherfuckin 404in deadbeat. I got a bill for my yearly hosting, which I paid before the due date. Okay, cool times. I got no receipt, which I promptly forgot about. A couple of weeks after the due date, I got a late notice. Hmmm. I replied. No response. HELLO? Anyone home? Then I got a 48-hours-you suck email. HEY, I paid this, and it posted to the bank even. No reply. A couple of Sundays ago I went dark, which, thank you alert readers and emailers. A friend pulled me over onto his server and I was back up.

Days later I get a reply from my old host. “Sorry, busy, how about a free month?” Man, for serious? You cut me off like that automagically? Too little too late, I said. Refund PLZ. I am still waiting for a refund. I suspect I will be waiting forever.

My friend, with the goat essay? I am sorry to say that the contest she entered was made of fail. Instead of narrowing the entries down to a readable amount, the woman who runs the site merely threw them all up. All 60+ of them. There was no consideration or judgment of merit or anything. Who has time to read and judge that many essays? NO ONE. Of course it becomes a zerg rush of how many people each entrant knows on the internet. Far better would have been for the goat giver to form some kind of panel of judges. I have not seen a more poorly planned contest in quite some time. Would I be complaining about any of this if my friend won? No, I would not.

Franny is getting into a routine of sorts with public school. Homework is still fairly perplexing to her, but with a lot of handholding, she is getting there. There were things I absolutely hated about private school, but this school is a different world in a lot of ways. They have weird meetings where they compliment each other. Yes, that’s it. They say nice things to each other. What a fucking load of crap that is.

Franny now has two banes in her life: homework and dishwashing. I told her that if she finishes her homework and does a nice job with it well before dinnertime I will let her off the dishes hook.

Last night she was sitting at the table cranking about her subtraction homework. Carrying the one is a torture device sent from hell to torment her.

“I hate this, Mom. I HATE HOMEWORK.”

“Well,” I said, as I chopped onions, and then stopped, reconsidering.

“WHAT?”

“I was just thinking, if you lived in parts of Sudan, you would not have to go to school.”

“Really?”

“Yes, they stick an automatic weapon in your hand and you go to war killing people. If you are lucky you just end up missing some limbs.”

“…”

“How’s that homework?” I said.

“AWESOME I LOVE MATH.”

“Want to look at pictures of limbless children after dinner?”

“No thanks.”

P.S., In case you missed it, here is FYCL #8, Embarrassingly Fertile.

Stick a Fork in Meh

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This morning I took the girls on a death march waaaay up north to get oyster shells for the eggbags and library books and other odds and ends. Speaking of eggbags, mine seem to be not laying at the moment, which is a major bummer, since otherwise their major exports are poop and bocks, neither of which are in short supply. I think they are having that first molt that young chickens get around 18 months. Their combs look all deflated and sad, and they look a little patchy, feathers-wise.

On Thursday night I podcasted, which I thought was a terrible idea at first, and I went into on a trial basis to see what it was like. I realized I have some sort of block against artistic pursuits that take more than a given amount of effort to complete, and I am quick to destroy things once they are finished, and loathe to revisit old projects. Why? It can’t be just that I am that boner about the process. I am thinking about it. Now that I am on podcast #8 I enjoy it greatly and am very glad I was talked into it. Certainly there are overlapping themes between here and the podcast, but I feel like it’s become a different aspect of my personality or whatever this self-expression thing is I need to be doing.

How is Franny doing? Franny is adjusting to the terrors and delights of public school reasonably well. Now that she is out of the shadow of her old rival in her small private school she is back to wanting her hair pink and seems more like what I think of as herself. Her rival was one of the most unpleasant children I have ever met in my life and to Franny’s horror insisted on copying Franny and having purple hair, which never looked as nice as Franny’s. Franny seemed slightly defeated in her last year in private school and I think this move was good and necessary.

I am sad that Franny’s spelling and math facts mastery at this point are atrocious, which is what I had come to anticipate from the school, based on the experience of parents there with older children. I think fourth grade was a good leap to make because we are not quite knocking on the door of middle school yet and there is time to catch up. A major challenge has been homework Mondays through Thursdays. Franny does not know what to do with most of her dittos, and seems to have the most trouble with math or with any questions that ask her to think or exercise reading comprehension. I see a lot of myself in her; at her age I completely lacked patience for analysis or math. That said, she still needs to learn how to do it, and she is.

Pictures up later–I am busted tired with a nasty head cold and walked too far today. Hope your Saturday is treating you right.

The Scarlet L

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JESUS CHRIST I am freaked. I was leaving the house this morning when I noticed my head was a little itchy, so I scratched it, and something was there. I pulled it out, and it was a LOUSE. It looked all clearish, too clear, really, but it had that louse shape. Do you remember last winter when I had lice? When one more thing could not possibly go wrong and then it did and it was LICE? Looking back on those posts I realized I only wrote two about lice, when in reality I used to lay in bed and say OMG I HAVE LICE I WISH I WAS DEAD. Okay, not that bad. But it sucked until I found out about the Listerine thing.

I need a slap or a pat, people. Can you have a one louse on your head and it is a coincidence? All I can think of is that I have been pulling out old sweaters from last winter, but someone told me the eggs die in about a week. P. checked my head quickly before I left and saw nothing else, and I checked him, and he checked Strudel. Franny is off at her dad’s for one last hurrah before school starts. CAN THERE BE JUST ONE? Am I the luckiest person because I caught the one? It looked too clear, could it have been something else??

All I can think of is the pain and the burning and the wasted money on the drugstore stuff and I lost so much hair due to those little useless combs and the PICKING, my god. I got to be a pro at pulling them off Franny. I don’t think I told you I went to a job interview with lice, because I had to. It was four hours and six people. I found my first full-grown louse on my head THAT morning, and I think my hair was even all pulled up professionally and shit. When I got out of the interview I got a phone call saying that Franny’s grandmother (my mother-in-law of 8 years) had died so between the interview from hell and her death I actually FORGOT I had them for a couple of days. Well, it might have been denial also.

I was looking at pictures of lice on wikipedia and it made me ill. I was queasy also after P. checked my head and I left. It’s not the SHAME really, it’s the hours of work and laundry. And school is about to start. Also I must confess that part of me wants to call SeaFed and part of me wants to let Franny be a vector. I have considered this–if I call him and tell him she has it, she will come back with it still anyway. Might as well let her spread it around. Oh yes I did.

P.S. If anyone has any big food blogs that are vegetarian-recipe-oriented with kind of a weeknight minimal fuss spin, I would love to get my mitts on them. I love tofu and seitan, but am not so big on the whole It Are Shaped Like a Meat But It Are Not a Meat. I don’t need a food dildo. Assume I know nothing, even if it is like the most popular blog ever. Also I am loving Tastespotting lately, which is not veggie. Thanks!

ETA: I will leave comments open for about a week as I always do, then I will make a round up of sites. I don’t think I was clear enough the first time–I am NOT going vegan, and I, personally, am almost physically incapable of enjoying food that does not contain butter or cheese or the tears of clubbed baby seals. I am going to continue to use dairy and my chickens’ eggs. HOWEVER, I’m sure that someone will find this useful. So thanks.

If You’re So Very Entertaining, Why Are You On Your Own Tonight?

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So. It is established that Seattle cannot really handle anything above or below 65F. Winter brings OMFGBBQpocalypse if there is a half-inch of snow on the ground, causing school to be slammed shut and workplaces and bridges to close. (It should be noted that when I was working for barely above minimum this fall and winter, those workplaces did NOT close, not once.)

A couple of days ago it was over 100. Most houses have no air conditioning, which, fine, I can hang. I can make cereal for dinner and cheese and cracker and be cross and drink Mexican beer for a couple of days during the wave.

What cannot handle the heat is my stuffs. My router melted! I called Qwest to tell them and ask them if they would disown me if I used a non-Ma Bell model and they tried to troubleshoot me.

Them: Have you tried plugging it into another phone jack?
Me: It is melted!
Them: Have you tried cycling your modem by unplugging it and…
Me: IT HAS WAVES IN IT FROM MELTING AND IS TOTALLY WARPED!
Them: Oh.

Also, I had one of my favorite things, a big chunk of cocoa butter type moisturizer from Lush in my shower and it melted right down the side. It was not even in the sun.

Looks like I am offline this weekend. I might even have to GO OUTSIDE, UGH. Last night I spent about an hour trying to make dialup work, but no dice. It was kind of soothing hear the modem try to dial in though. NOSTALGIA. When I first started blogging, I used to click “connect” and then wander off and grow a beard and stuff. I also used to write all my posts in Word and copypasta them into the blogwindow, hit send, and get out again as if it was some kind of blogograph service. I almost pooped myself the first time I typed a post directly into the window, OMG.

Franny is off to her dad’s for two weeks, and she is hella pissed. I figure it’s good for her to have some not getting her way in her life. I think of myself as an advocate for her, generally–someone who can help her navigate the seas of WTF. Sometimes I say “Verily that sucks darling” about her traumas and sometimes I give her the little pep talk. She gets frustrated with SeaFed because he comes from the Jolly-but-dismissive school.

Lately she is having nightmares that I am dying and that she goes to an orphanage because her dad doesn’t want her. She has been worried about this lately because she knows she will be whisked away from our house and P. and Strudel if I died. I am the bridge.

I put on my gypsy lady rings and played Dream Interpreter.

I told her it’s normal to dream about losing the people we care about most. I told her about a dream I had about her where I lost her and panicked. Also I told her that last time her stepmom spawned she felt all left out and I wondered if her brain is worried about the new baby.

“See how it’s better to expose these things to light,” I said.

“What does that mean?” she said.

“Does it seem less scary now that we’ve talked about it?”

“Yes,” she said.

I have changes afoot–what else is new? I will fill you in in a few days. I am so feeling the Smiths today. HOBO LIKES SONGS ABOUT BEING BURIED ALIVE. Here’s to a new chapter.

Let’s Blow This Fire-trap, Eh?

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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.

OOH Bitch That Ain’t Fair Give That Horsie Back His Hair

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Hey. Heeeeey. Sexy man on my vending machine. Baby, I like the way you eat that potato chip. I can see all the way back there. Kind of wish I had a dick to cram in there, but I could probably find something else in a pinch. Man, do you still have your tonsils? That’s pretty hot. I have mine in a jar at MAH CRIB. Yes, for reals. Do I look like the type of person who would just say I have my tonsils in a jar at MAH CRIB if that was untrue? That hurts, baby.

Yes, I know snacking is an important personal decision, or at least that’s that the sign next to your sexy head says. I still don’t want to pay two bone for a bag of peanuts with a weird sweet coating. You know, when I squint my eyes, you look kind of like my geometry teacher. Sort of like that, or one of my aunts. I really like your ethnic ambiguity. Feeling included is making me want to eat potato chips. Also not feeling like anyone else is excluded. That is making me want salty snacks as well. You sort of look like the dude version of a Bratz doll. What kind of accent would you have? HEY, you’re not a digital composite, are you? I think you might be.

That’s okay, I’m open-minded.

IN OTHER NEWS: Could I Please Have a Look at the Lyrics?

On Saturday I went to the Symphony. I had heard the Seattle Symphony was like totes casual, like we just need to keep it real and hear some damn music, there’s no time for peacocking. FALSE. Seattleites are lazy as hell with disgusting personal habits. I dressed up, but MY BADS it was Final Fantasy, so there were people there in costumes. Can people not contain their appalling personal problems for one night? No, they cannot. Bonus: I discovered that not only are they still manufacturing tuxedo-print shirts, a wall of unholy neckbeards wearing them can sashay toward you as you are innocently on your way to the bathroom. The composer was there with a giant fish and there was a huge screen behind the musicians. It was still pretty cool though, when you closed your eyes.

I am going to a wedding this weekend (not mine FTW) and Hazel is coming and sleeping at my house. I am her date. I didn’t see her for months and now twice in a summer. It’s amazing what a difference having a little extra money and not working constantly and odd hours makes. Also I am getting close to fleeing the country with my shiny new passport for a weekend with Franny. How happy I am to be traveling with her again so soon. She is back from her dad’s now after a two-week sojourn so I will probably be writing more now. I was sort of at loose ends without the routine she makes for me.

The conversation recap from breakfast was Franny recounting sacking up and asking her stepmother why she is not allowed to say “butt” when she’s there. Of course the butt-deprivation resulted in an acapella duet to butts and vulvas, and how awesome they are. It would be an overstatement to say I enjoy this. Let’s say I feel benignly toward this. Strudel is struggling with this as well. She wants to use the proper names for her body parts, and in her summer program these words are known as “bathroom words.” On one hand, I don’t like to hear the proper names for things referred to this way, on the other hand, Feral Dwarf, do you have to talk about your VULVA constantly? Do we need to hear that it likes the quesadillas? Does it need 27 sonnets and an epic? Why can’t my children rebel by aspiring to get an MBA?

So what we are working on now is APPROPRIATENESS. Yes, yes, my very existence is ironical now. I think Strudel is probably going to grow up to be one of those menstrual blood artists or something. I will come to her openings.

Things I cannot stop with today: 1. Shakira’s new single, She-Wolf, GOD HELP ME. LOOK at this PREVIEW. She is a Hooters girl up to her NECK and is in a cage. SO MUCH AWESOME. 2. The last Girl Talk album. 3. Seattle has awesome hiphop, even if people are slobs. 4. Also Tony’s Bitch Track.

Hobo & Poodle & Asshole Go to Portland

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HEY FUCKERS For a week now I have been trying to think of a way to tell you what happened when I was in Portland in a way that is PG-13 or lower and will not be used against me in court. I cannot. You will have to look at the pictures in my set and try to piece it together yourself. Suffice it to say that THAT happened and Franny’s former teacher and my friend, Hazel, was a fabulous hostess.

I can tell you one thing: Franny was in fine form. I realized recently that I am going through a thing where I am in love with Franny right now. She is becoming so freaking hilarious at times I get disabled with laughter and cannot move. I am not saying I am some kind of comedic genius, but I have decided that I am going to teach her everything I know about being funny. That will be an awkward twenty minutes.

YES YOU DO want to hear something shallow about me and Franny, and that thing is that when she was a wee parasite my biggest fear was that she would turn out to be some fugly stick terror (keep it classy, twenty-one-year-old self), which is ridiculous because SeaFed was handsome and my genes get drunk sometimes but mostly sit quietly and get overwritten. And now that she is so pretty I feel like I need to give her more.

I act like I have one ounce of control over any of this, but I will not allow her to be The Pretty One. Franny and Strudel were playing Nancy Drool the other day (Caroline Keene I will drive a stake through your hateful undead heart) and Franny asked Strudel if she wanted to be “The Pretty One” or “The Funny One,” because you bet your fucksocks Franny was going to be Nancy.
Can girls be the pretty one AND the funny one? Unsurprisingly, I guess, encouraging this is my hobby now, since Franny shows such an aptitude for it. I prefer this to my mother’s program, which was a major in Disordered Eating (Breakout Session: There Is Nothing Worse Than Being Fat: T/T?) with a minor in “Good Luck With That One, Kid.” (Seminar: Walk It Off, Pussy).

So Franny has taken on a new personality all of her own doing, and that personality is Hobo. Hobo refers to (himself?) in the third person and is quite FYCL* vociferous on the subject of Cheetos, Doritos, beer, and public urination. [Sample Dialogue: “HOBO LIKES EATING CHEETOS, DORITOS, DRANKIN BEER AND PEEING INTO BOTTLES.” I dunno man.] When Hobo goes away and Franny is sweet again Poodle comes out. Poodle liek you. YOU LIEK POODLE?

Traveling alone with Franny made me remember how much I like traveling. P. and I and the girls used to all travel together in a clump just like a real family (guilt and fights over stupid inconsequential shit sold separately) and it was HELL. Traveling with P. is like traveling with a Jack Russell on meth. You could practically see his face pressed up against the window by the time we got to Sodo, clawing like an abandoned dog in a hot car. By the time we got to Tacoma? FORGET IT, it is not printable. If he was driving he would swear like Christmas Steve on a malt beverage bender. Who doesn’t like driving, I ask you? Oh. Now I know.

Plans for Fuck Off England Day? Yes, I have some. I bought some books at the OG Powell’s in Portland. I have been reading the “biography” of Betty Crocker, which is a funny thing, since she is a fabricated brand, of course. The book contains a selection of letters of the thousands that were written to “Betty” during wartime and beyond. On one hand it marries stuff I enjoy, American history, domestical history of Ladees, and insanely awesome marketing schemes. On the other, it is sad to read these desperate letters to a corporation: “How can I cook a meal to keep my husband?”

IN CONCLUSION, it is making me want to make an orange chiffon cake, the recipe for which was apparently kept under lock and key for twenty years until the originator sold it to General Mills. I also found a recipe I copied down for Any Fruit Cobbler from Fanny Farmer last summer when I was on vacation. I am remembering through the vacation haze of sangria and I FOUND THESE PILLS AND I EATED THEM that the cobbler was pretty dope. I’ll tell you what, Ima find some any fruit and bung it in.

I am reading other books right now…women and Islam (The Caged Virgin) and Victorian Era courtesans. I guess I am in new mode right now. I also have new music: new Mos Def, which is SO GROOD, and Kidz in the Hall. Mr. Lif and new K-Os did not rip over to my MP3 correctly, but I am getting there. There seems to be a stampede at Pirate Bay at the moment as it changes hands.

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Speaking of Motherfuckers

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Franny took physic all weekend (yes, I am still on my Pepys jag, thanks for asking) and was feeling very happy this morning. So happy, in fact, she was in the mood to tell stories. Sometimes when Strudel is super tired she wakes up and puts on a second pair of underwear over the pair from the day before, so she will be undressing at night and will be rocking the modern petticoats or whatever. We discovered this had been the case this morning as I was chucking her into the shower, and I reminded her to take OFF one pair before putting a new one on.

“That reminds me,” Franny said. “One day my dad was home with me and my other sister, and he let her get dressed and she put on her pants and THEN her underwear, so it was on the outside!”

“WHAT?” P. said from downstairs, incredulous. Franny repeated it. “Nooo,” P. said. “For how long?”

“He didn’t notice until the middle of the afternoon!” Franny said. “I decided I was going to let him notice himself.”

I was laughing so hard at this point and P. still looked skeptical.

“He still has kitties running around in his head, Mom.”

“Ohh,” I said, “that is TOTALLY a SeaFed story. I believe it,” I said.

Later I was still kind of giggling about it and Franny walked by and said “LOOOOL underpants story. I’m going to tell that again in like two months.”

In Related News

Franny’s stepmom is pregnant again! I was subjected to the subsequent mental images brought about by the phrase “We have been TRYING for a long time” AUGGH but I held it together and congratulated. I am very excited. That is all.