Category Archives: Franny

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.

If someone had left a note, this innocent man would still have his arm.

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Today Strudel has a prick on her arm. It is the prick of a tuberculosis test! That is how bad some of us have been feeling and oh christ with the coughing up of the blood and the zsd’lgksdgncg;h. Anyway, we are set to meet her kind doctor in the parking lot of her small practice tomorrow, because she doesn’t work Saturday but is coming to see Strudel’s arm, which has a bear’s head on it that she drew around the prick, making the dot into the bear’s nose. This is much improved over the girls’ old doctor who up and moved to California without leaving a note.

Franny had a funny moment around dinnertime.

“Mom.”

“Yes.”

“Can I…get dressed tomorrow?” I cocked my head at her. “I mean, I’m going to get dressed tomorrow.”

So she’s feeling better. The fun non-fever tiredness hellride part is still coming. I’m not going to tell her. I dream of being alone next week. This week almost broke me.

Tonight I made turkey noodle soup with the giant turkey I made earlier this week. Who was that crazy fucker? That was a person who would have licked herself into hot spot hell if she was a Jack Russell terrier.

Back in Plato’s Bullshit Cave Again

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It was a cabin fever kind of day. I don’t really know what to say about this winter. So far, it’s been a death by a thousand nibbles and those nibbles have been assorted vomiting and a string of colds. I thought I was finally blissfully alone and then someone else walks in with a battery of questions about how my day was and what’s new?

Today I sent Franny off at the front door as I was home with her ailing sister, who announced at bedtime tonight “I WILL BE RETURNING TO SCHOOL TOMORROW,” thank god, and Franny agreed to let the chickens out before she headed off to the bus.

“Can you manage the gate?” I said.

“Oh yes, no problem, I’ve done it.”

“Okay, bye,” I said, closing the door. “Thanks so much for taking care of the chickens for me.” What a score. I would not have to go out in the frosty cold.

Nine o’clock came and I started wondering about how they were doing out there. It had snowed, perhaps their water was icing over? I went out to check. They were shut up tight…maybe the door had just blown shut, which happens very occasionally if it is storming. No, latched tight. Somehow my kid had left the house as I was thanking her for and reminding her of the task she was immediately to do…and she forgot it, instantly. I spent the rest of the day slightly dumbfounded and made a point to ask her when she got home.

“So…let’s talk about chickens,” I said. She was at the table beginning her homework and her shoulders tensed up. “What happened?”

“I just forgot,” she said, and began crying. “I don’t know what’s WRONG with me,” she wailed. “I’m so forgetful.”

I’ve got her back on supper dish duty with the idea that she contributes to the household and learns how to clean things, which is something that takes years to be good at, I think. Some nights the table does not get cleared, some nights pots are left on the stove. For a week now she has burned my cast iron skillet because she walks off while giving it a quick dry on a burner to avoid rust. The smell has been ghastly.

Long story short, we’re deep in the domestic trenches right now. This is the daily grind of family life that is tedious to write about, much less hear about. And yet I have to tell myself as people cough and sneeze on me and forget things and spill red nail polish on my labyrinth rug I have to remember that these are all building blocks and some day there will be that perfect day where everyone will remember everything and no one will eat my birthday ice cream and no one will vomit on anyone. And on that day I am guessing we will all be DEAD.

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.

Conquering Fear and Stealing From My Own Dang Store

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Like any professional melodramist, I like to take my periods of oppression in one-month chunks. October was oppressing me. BOO! October is over! Yay! Between three birthdays that month and volunteering for the LGBT Film Festival here, and making too many plans…I was just tired.

I know November is the direst month for a lot of people since we are sliding choadfirst into the holidays, but I like it. I am making a giant Victorian Thanksgiving, a holiday that, of course, did not actually exist, so if I don’t tear space and time I will be sorely disappointed. And I am making goose, so it will be extra broken (but crazy delicious).

Since dispatches from this blog are often on an (extreme) time delay, I will tell you I have been thinking about being dumped. I realized that I never had been as an adult. Lice at 31, dumped at 32. What kind of late bloomer am I?

It finally, in my usual extremely-slow grind toward self-awareness of any kind way, made me remember getting dumped in high school. My freshman year a really nice and cute boy saw me in a play and decided I was the bomb-ass rip. I have fallen in love with people on stage, it happens. He asked me out and we hung out during the cast party. I was in a daze, coming down from that weird situation with the tres sophistique older man and happy to have a new distraction.

He was a football player. It was not okay for the cute sophomore football player to be dating the weird goth girl. Some other girls I knew as popular began smiling and saying hello in the hallway, which lasted for about a week until he called me up and broke up with me for telling people we were having sex (we were not, nor was I telling people that). Recently I thought about that feeling of being misunderstood and rejected so many years ago. It feels the same! I feel like laughing when I type that. I think I had experienced the entire range of emotions by the time I was 13. I am slightly more sophisticated now, perhaps. Sometimes.

But you know what? I would rather be repeatedly heartbroken rather than married like I was before. Cold comfort, I suppose.

In other news, I have eight weeks of cooking left, then I should have some kind of crap pile that can be formed into a cook book. I’ll be done right around Christmas. I think since I am in the home stretch with it I can allow myself to feel slightly more confident. I have experienced months of worry about failure, but I look at my cooking schedule and what I’ve done so far, and it is not that grueling for someone like me.

I’ll tell you what, though, after so many months of sieving and mincing, and cooking every single component from scratch, I have become even more of a terrifically insufferable snot. Which I will try to keep to myself, except to say, I picked up a book on the library which is all about meat, an unapologetic carnivore’s screed, if you will, and was very disappointed to see it is not indexed AT ALL, but particularly the types of “odd” meats consumed.

I dismissed it outright when the author’s recipe for rabbit called for “getting the rabbit pre-butchered in convenient little chunks.” Of course you are extolling the virtues of rabbit, and why-does-it-not-supplant-chicken-all-together-ing if you have not parted one out yourself. It’s not rocket science, but that silver membrane that adheres to the saddle…tricky. Chickens are like the Fisher-Price of butchering.

Also today I am feeling grateful that I have been watching the fallout of crazy just a few clicks away from me for a few months now. It led to one of those banal realizations. I used to accept that SeaFed was going to present me as crazy to others, as a tool of putting me in a box (all ex-wives are crazy, AMIRITE) and bringing people over to his side (“he had to move away, have you heard about his crazy ex-wife?”). C’est la vie, all that matters is how I am actually living my life, yes?

But after seeing someone else act crazy, really breaking down down their motives and behavior, and strenuously avoiding interacting with it in almost every capacity, I realized that the lie or perception becomes power, in a perverse way. This is why I get texts that say things like “I’m picking her up and this his how it is, SEE?” Missives from a person who lacks control and understanding–a desperate attempt to keep the raft stable for five minutes, to bark like you are a bigger dog.

I have not heard anything lately about his desire to move Franny to where he lives (in spite of her objections). I am hoping other people who think I am crazy talked some sense into him so he would drop the pissing match. So, sadly, my hope is that I am too crazy to mess with.

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?”