Me: “Hey, you know, lately when Daddy’s home you’ve been pretty mean to me. When you tell me not to look at you and not to touch you it hurts my feelings.”

Frannie: “I’m a Baby Cat!” I hate this game sometimes; I have to make my voice all high and scratchy, like I’m Daniel Kitten’s mother from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Me: “So will you be nicer to me when Daddy’s home? We both love you very much.”

Frannie: “Mommy Cat?”

Me: “Yes, Baby Cat.”

Frannie: “I’m hungry!”

Me: “There’s some cat food in the cat dish upstairs.”

Frannie: (angrily) “MAAAOW!”

Point for SJ, but the match is clearly tied.

In Other News

The Interview: Went very well. There was no flatulence, hand-licking, or ass-scratching (for instance), and I give myself major props for that.

Now I’m all extra-double-stupid because I’m thinking maybe I don’t want a job. I believe I won’t have to make that decision, however, since I just found out another contender is this woman in my program with ten years experience teaching ESL classes. It’s a writing center job with an emphasis on tutoring, so I don’t know where that puts me.

I can’t just coast by on my GIANT THROBBING WRITING and my Large American Breasts all the time, you know.

The baby is having PROBLEMS, which means that EVERYONE is having problems. And alas, alas, she’s too big to be abandoned anywhere, because she knows her name and my name and how many teeth she has. And she’s usually clean, so people will think she’s awwwl wost instead of an ol gutter punk toddler.

Gutter Punk Toddler: “Heyyy, man. Spare some change for a ya-pop?” But she would spend it on those vending machines that sell those tiny Homies.

All right. So the real story is that she is talking in her sleep–very disconcerting. The child got into bed with us the other night, and I was sleeping so heavily that I didn’t know it until she spoke, loudly and in a rather deep voice.

“GIVE ME MY YA-POP.”

Mr. Husband and I bolted upright and looked at each other.

“What was that?” I said.

“I think it was some kind of demon,” he replied.

“GIVE ME MY YA-POP,” Frannie repeated. I could see her eyes rolling around under her tiny eyelids. Ugh, call a priest.

“I think she wants her lollypop,” I said, waiting for her to start spitting fire or some such thing.

She quieted down a while after that…I think she only intoned her mantra another three times or so. That really is a child’s mantra–chanting about sugar.

This morning it was, “Pick me up!” And right after Mr. Husband got up for work and was walking across the room.

“Pick me up! Pick me up, Daddy!” About twelve more times, and sound asleep to boot.

The kind of creepy thing about it, besides the fact that it comes from OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE, when you are sleeping lightly, is the fact that her words are so eerily clear. She’s two and a half and is a bit of a mushmouth as they all are, but I understand her. But when she talks in the middle of the night, she sounds like she’s eight or something.

As I came upstairs to do some writing, she was giggling like Beavis, a fairly common occurance nowadays. I thought we would sleep better if I moved her into our NICE QUIET room where there are “no giants” (her words). Truly I smoke the crack.

BEE-YOU-TEE-FULL Princess SJ with a crown fashioned from Toobers N Zots. The newest thing from Tokyo, you know.

I always think that digitization makes everyone look queer. But I guess I look pretty queer anyway. No one with pink hair should wear turquoise. Overkill, SJ, overkill.

Frannie and I were munching our oatmeal with extra raisins.

“Look!” she said. “A bug! A bug!” A small fly was sitting on the wall above the table.

“Yep, a fly,” I said.

“He’s looking for food,” she told me.

“Really? What kind of food?”

“Um, fly food.” She looked at him for a minute while she chewed. “I need more oatmeal!”

“You still have half a bowlful,” I said.

The fly moved an inch to the left.

“That fly is happy!” she yelled.

“How can you tell?”

“He’s smiling!”

Sometimes I feel like I’m missing something in the world. I never see smiling flies anymore. The world just isn’t the same after puberty.

I got my nails did on Saturday, courtesy of my awesome friend who had a two-fer gift certificate. I wanted something done with those gems that they set in, or perhaps some airbrushing, but the place was too classy for a sleazehound like me.

It was all fluffy pillows, and “let me bring you some more water,” and delightfully-scented air. And now I have nails that match my hair, because nail polish of any other color will absorb my hair color. So I went for the fuscia in the first place. I felt like I didn’t belong there, like I had to keep reminding myself to use my indoor voice.

The lady did hook me up, though. She busted out the sparkles and painted half of my nails diagonally with it. Now I feel like I have little professional figure skaters on each finger, just like the trashy glitter rags that they wear. In no other profession are you allowed to look like a whore who fell into a wood chipper, while wearing Hooters tights. Type faster, girls! Triple lutz!

Anyway, I think I can keep up on them now. But I told my friend that next time I have to get something sparkly implanted, or get some kitties airbrushed on. I am diving into a big pool of sleaze and I can’t stop. I now have hoop earrings that are so large they brush my shoulders. When I go out I chew gum and wear lipstick that also matches my hair.

For our anniversary, Mr. Husband is getting a tattoo of, what else? my name. And he is getting a shiny new pair of aviator glasses. Nasty! I am trying to talk him into a mullet but he is not having it.

Help! I feel a perm coming on! I am turning into Debi Mazar! Intervention, please!

Well, off to line the inside of my eyelids, hee hee hee.

A lot, as it turns out. My cool friend Manuel came over the other day and snapped some shots. I will link them.

Baby chicks in the broody box. The one on the left will lay blue or green eggs when she grows up, because she’s an Aracauna (Easter Egg Hen). They should be ready for the outdoors in five weeks.

The chickens’ beloved abode, Chook’s Respite. I built it myself! Last spring! Me modern woman with hammer! Me bend many nails. Mr. Husband say: “You waste my supplies! Grr!”

Phoebe in her boudoir. Lay faster, dammit! Phoebe is a Silkie and broods a lot. Worthless. Sitting on eggs that will never hatch, for we have no rooster.

This is a Silkie/Aracauna mutt. She is very skittish but we managed to catch her. She lays eggs that are the color of light jade. You may also note that I am wearing a black bra under my thin shirt. I am a walking faux pas!

Chooks flee as Frannie pops some corn.

Thanks, Manuel!

So I have this crazy, crazy neighbor. He’s an old guy, and he’s from China. When we first moved into this house a couple of years ago, it was summer, and his yard was so beautiful. There were all these weird white planters everywhere filled with every kind of flower that does well in the Pacific Northwest.

Once we were settled in and I started doing some gardening, I went to the fence and took a closer look. The planters are styrofoam containers, and I swear there are hundreds of them.

The other neighbor told me he has a pet store in Chinatown. The local free weekly, The Stranger, voted it one of Seattle’s creepiest places last year, without even setting foot inside it. The other neighbor refers to his yard as, “ugh, a jungle, a mess,” and told me she was putting a fence up around her upstairs deck, which she did. It looks weird, suspended up there and blocking everything out, but I guess if my deck was up above his yard I would do the same.

I figured out that the planters were originally containers for fish, or for the water plants he sells. I thought it was pretty ingenious at first…until the containers started breaking down. Now I have little stryofoam pills in my backyard that my chickens pick at. To make matters worse, he used a bunch of loose styrofoam pills that were probably packing material to mulch his plants. They blew around everywhere and generally look terrible. Who mulches with styrofoam?

I can count the conversations I have had with him on one hand. When I am out gardening in the summer, he is at work. Once he gave me some seeds for Chinese vegetables that are rare here. I still have them, I have no idea what they would grow into. I am waiting til I have a garden.

Sometimes we discuss my chickens. “Ah,” he says, whenever he sees my remaining Silkie, “Chinese chicken.” Apparently, before we moved in, he had twenty chickens and a peacock. The peacock said “HALP HALP” all day as they are wont to do, and so he put it in his basement. “All its feathers fell out, then it died,” he said.

The twenty chickens were confiscated by Animal Control, because the local legal limit is three. “They turned me in,” he said, vaguely gesturing around to other houses nearby.

I’m still not sure why he left China. He says he had twenty acres there, and kept monkeys, that he had to buy 100 pounds of bananas a week for. He kept chickens, but they kept getting eaten by giant lizards that would come in the fence thin, and would be too full and fat to get out again.

Currently he has a pair of mourning doves that live in a cage on the other side of his house. I know this because I have to sneak around his property sometimes when my chooks bust out of the joint. They always go to his yard first.

When I go over there, I find the doves, mysterious plates of glass, large drums that hold koi or pond plants, and rusty, unidentifiable tools. And lots of styrofoam. And hidden chickens, excitedly pecking at styrofoam pills, rusty nails, and wire bits.

I went to Chinatown to have lunch the other day with my friend and he suggested we pop into my neighbors’ pet store, since I’d never been. As we walked in, a chime sounded and a little box shouted “Hello, and welcome!” in a recorded woman’s voice.

My neighbor was scuttling around, helping a customer select fish. I have never seen a pet store like his. It had that heavy ocean smell, and was floor-to-ceiling with merchandise. It was more like a pet bazaar than than a pet store. Among the albino frogs, crabs, lobsters, and those scary bubble-headed goldfish, was a lone cockatiel that I thought looked sort of nervous.

“Hello,” my neighbor gave me a little nod and went back to speaking Chinese with his customer. We left soon after and the little door box shouted at us again. “Goodbye, thank you for coming!”

Once I told him I had a tree stump to remove in my yard. “Oh, very bad,” he said. “Evil spirits live in stumps. You should dig out.” Now I think of him everytime I step over an old stump.

I can’t help but think of the frivolous at a time like this, the things that you think about when you don’t want to think about the Giant Head of Tom Ridge polluting your screen at seven-thirty in the a.m.

Honeymoon, 1996: My hair was stop-sign red (Pillarbox for the Bleach Geeks out there), which probably delighted the maids who picked up the white (now pink) towels every morning.

We stayed on Waikiki Beach in some giant, generic hotel.

Mr. Husband, to my sister last week: “When I met your sister, I had ten grand in the bank.” Cry me a freaking river. Where else are you going to find a hot chick who can discuss the pros and cons of Henry James and anal sex, sometimes in the same sentence? Nowhere, that’s where. Oops. TMI.

BUT I DIGRESS.

There we were, having a fabbo time: surf n turf, rental scooters, cheesy tourist traps. I stood out a bit, with my white girl skin and my hair. We went into the only tattoo/pierce parlor on the island, because I was thinking about getting a wedding set put in where no one could see it.

We were browsing around, admiring the ball gags and various items in their boutique, when we walked past a mannequin on a very high shelf, one of those scary male torsos where the paint is chipping off, revealing an even more disturbing “flesh” color underneath.

Mr. Husband has always been a bit of a stomper…he clomps around wherever he goes. He must have set off some vibrations, because I was walking behind him and the next thing I knew the mannequin attacked me. It came right down on my head and I was seeing a few stars. I held my head and went “Ow ow owwwww!” because it felt like I had gotten clipped with something metal. Mr. Husband picked the mannequin up and showed me what was causing the rising lump on my poor head…the mannequin was outfitted with a leather jock strap type-thing that had a penis cage in the front of it.

It was quite funny. We laughed, and left, and the disaffected clerk went on talking on the phone.

We came in a few days later and of course they recognized me with my red hair. I was on the table about to get stuck when the piercer says, “hey, aren’t you the girl who got bonked with the mannequin the other day?”

“Yes, and I’m so glad someone bothered to ask if I was alright!” I laughed.

Everyone has a honeymoon story, I guess. But just imagine what the penis cage looks like in use. Like a saggy whore in fishnets, no doubt.

So I do happy morning teevee girlie time maybe once a month, on a morning when it is cloudy, I am laaazy, and all I want to do is sit around and read a grown-up book. We did a little Dragontales this morning, and half of Sesame Street, before too much time had passed between Second Breakfast and Elevenses.

As I was making the third meal of the day, Frannie climbed up into her booster chair. I heard her saying happily, “They’re grrrrreat! They’re grrrrrreat!”

That’s weird, I thought. Sounds like the old Frosted Flakes tagline. I started to think about Frosted Flakes…mmm…sugary goodness. Makes the roof of your mouth hurt…sugar crashes.

Then I heard something really alarming come out of Frannie’s mouth, verbatim and eerily clear: “This program is brought to you by the Ready-to-Learn Foundation!” I snapped around. She was spewing public television station break filler. No commercials, my giant honey baked ham.

“Brought to you by ‘O’ for Basketti-O’s!!!” She banged her spoon on her glass and smiled at me.

I was just the busiest Bisy Backson I could have possibly been yesterday.

Running around, giving rides, driving lessons, to the mall, back, around downtown (twice), and then a dinner for Mr. Husband’s grandma’s birthday that I didn’t even know about until we got there. I thought we we just going for a visit.

The chickens were roundly ignored, as they are sometimes, since they had been fed on Saturday. They are so wee they can only clean out their feeder every other day anyhow. I usually visit them every day…but yesterday I didn’t think much of them.

Well, they were very hungry this morning. The minute I started to open the curtains in the back of the house they started AWK AWK AWKING. I went out to feed them and found the Big Black Hen, my best layer, in a heap on the ground and partially picked clean. The Big Black Hen raised up my newest half-grown, orphan chickens that I picked up a couple of months ago. She was at the top of the pecking order.

I hate this. They’re just stupid birdbrain livestock, but that is part of what makes them so endearing. Before the fence was finished last summer one got ripped up by an esaped dog…it was the same sinking feeling.

I am the god in their little world, who giveth food and bread ends, and taketh away eggs. Pats are dispensed to the favored ones, and the ones who will sit still long enough. I always feel like I have failed them when one dies.

As I told Mr. Husband this morning, everyone’s a suspect. There are lots of crows who hang in the yard, when they catch wind of extra scraps. They seem to co-exist peacefully with the chooks, but I have seen crows turn on their own. I don’t think it’s my cats. I know that cats can lose it and get all feral, even the laziest housecats…but I saw my most “vicious” one, Hank, walk by the chickens the other day. He got about six inches away from them at their feeder and looked at them. The chickens talked about him (“awk awk, awk-aaawk”) but didn’t even move away.

I suspect it was someone else’s cat, who is actually a proficient hunter, rather than a hunter of dust bunnies like mine are. I will have to spend more time in the backyard, to establish a police presence. This goes without saying, but I hate burying animals. I mean, who doesn’t?