Month: March 2006

don’t take your love to town

Rudy Huxtable
your iconic chipmunk cheeks
cannot be outgrown

For some reason, while I was falling asleep last night I kept thinking about Rudy Huxtable. I’m only three years older than Ms. Pulliam and yet I feel this fierce protection for Rudy and all of her endeavors. The idea of Rudy in grown-up movies is possibly more disturbing than the idea of Natalie Portman in grown-up movies. It’s kind of weird how famous people stop aging in your mind – much like the cousins you don’t see a lot. They just sort of max out at 8-years-old and you can never get past it.

Anyway, I remember sitting at the TV, watching the Cosby Show credits roll and thinking how exotic it was to have a hyphen in one’s name and how lucky Rudy was to have such a fun staircase to run up and down.

But now when I think of Rudy I feel old. And that’s weird because I AM NOT THAT MUCH OLDER THAN HER. Yet, things like this totally freak me out. I guess I shouldn’t be freaked out. One cannot actually BE 8-years-old forever. But still. How can Keshia Knight-Pulliam being 26 make me feel like I’m 89? And even more importantly, what would Claire say about that picture?

messy

Right. So I added the little subscribe icons over there on the left, but it looks messy. Please ignore the muss while I figure out how to get that clean, crisp, pleasing blog look. Oh, who am I kidding? Might as well model the blog design after my living room. After a while you get used to the clutter. Or it makes one of your eyes twitch. Either way.

bang crash

bouncing off the walls
pinball game with arms and legs
ding ding ding ding ding

The best part about being hugely pregnant and spontaneously dizzy? Momentum. It’s not really that you WANT to crash into every wall in the house, you just can’t stop yourself. And, happily, watching mommy barrel headlong into every door frame keeps your child way more entertained than Dora does.

Off goes the TV! Let’s watch Mommy try to make it to the kitchen!

Maybe I should pitch this to Fox.

Investing in my nemesis

contamination
extra e coli worth it
well, it better be

We’ve started Newman: butt-munching, ear-infected, allergy prone, Benadryl denying, bane of my existence and dog of the year, on a raw diet.

This diet costs approximately a lot. It costs so much "a lot" that when we went to the pet store last night in an effort to either find a voodoo spell to cure the dog, or at least something that works better than his current diet of prescription, specially processed corn meal wrapped in hundred dollar bills, we were embraced into the world of Behind the Counter. (I didn’t even know pet stores had Behind the Counter. This is like where the Dom is kept at the liquor store, or the canary diamond tennis bracelets at the jewelry store.) Swank!

As we were escorted Behind the Counter we were greeted with a sales spiel one might receive when contemplating the purchase of a Jag-oo-ar or maybe a really nice leather couch. There was no pressure, only Facts and Benefits. There were no price tags (other than a small, handwritten price sheet attached to the refrigerator containing the dietary delights). There was Serious Scientific Evidence and Real Life Testimonials.

After doing the math we figured that A) we’re already spending assloads of money on the current prescription food we feed Newman, and this food is not really working to alleviate his allergies or ear infections. B) If the raw diet actually works, we’ll save money in the long run by not having to spend an extra couple of hundred dollars every month or so on taking him to the vet, which never really helps to alleviate the allergies or ear infections. C) It’s cheaper than taking him in for doggie acupuncture, which I kid you not, is next on list of "what the hell, nothing else works, why not try it?" even though it will probably not help alleviate the allergies or ear infections.

So we’re doing the raw diet. He gets one patty of combined chicken and turkey every day. This patty also includes bones and entrails and a variety of fruits and veggies. It’s supposed to mimic what the dog would get if he ate a rabbit and the rabbit’s tummy was full of stuff freshly eaten from your organic backyard garden. Or something like that.

We’re also mixing the patties with some raw kibble so that he will not have immediate and inconvenient bowel explosions all over my rug, as is apparently possible when switching your dog to raw after a whole lifetime of regular dog food.

Want to know the real reason I know this food is so swank? We got the first three weeks of food for free. And buy one get one free coupons for the few weeks after that. See? They wean you into accepting the price. All while your dog is being addicted to the raw crack that is most likely ground up with the meat and entrails.

This better work, dammit. For something that just lays on the couch and licks its butt all day, this is an investment beyond words. This is like sending your hamster to Harvard and expecting real academic results. I feel like I need a reality show to document this.

Lessons in Purple

teaching dinosaur
I had some of those in school
they reused lunch foil

Barney. They say you either love him or hate him. I can’t really say either. He’s not my favorite, with the simpering smile and condescending tone. Yet… I have to say his songs are catchy. And they teach things.

The wee one loves to sing the "Clean up" song, and for that I’m grateful. We sing the "Look Both Ways When You Cross The Street" song together, too. And, of course, who couldn’t love, "F-I-R-E… T-R-U-C-K!"

I was just thinking that maybe there should be a Barney for the young-ish adult, hipster set. Barney could have a handlebar moustache and some aviator glasses. He could sing about "Truck-er Hats Are So Last Year" and "Par-is Hilton Is Not A Role Model." Or maybe, "Break up, break up, it’s not nice to use your phone…" or "Look both ways when you cut off a pregnant lady with your rental car and she flips you off." (That one needs a little lyrical help, but you get the idea.)

He would wear "vintage" t-shirts that say things like "dikfore" and "fo schizzle" and he would wander around SXSW venues talking loudly on his cell phone about facial hair maintenance and masking coffee breath.

I, personally, would like to suggest that Barney (for kids or hipsters, I don’t care) create a song much like the "F-I-R-E… T-R-U-C-K" song, that instead spells out "D-O-U-G… H-N-U-T-S." I know it doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily, and it could confuse people briefly ("Doug  Huh-nuts?") but then they would get it and we could all sing about sugary confection together.

Maybe I should go poll the SXSW crowds and see what they think.

[taps playing]

porcelain heaven
not a SXSW band
it’s where our fish lives

First of all, can I state how tired I am of antibiotics? First the dog has to take them because his ears are festering holes of slime and decay. Then I have to take them and they give me a foul, white furry tongue, for which I have to take OTHER medicine to fix (FYI: oral thrush blows). THEN the wee one is on them for an ear infection (but with much less festering than the dog’s, thankfully). NOW, NOW the EFFING FISH are on antibiotics because of fin rot, which means they look like little Pirates of the Caribbean skeleton fish swimming around.

Our house has become the Lair of the Antibiotic Beast. We cannot be rid of it. Maybe there is a sacrificial Druid ceremony I can look up that will cure us of the curse of the weird and funky germs that plague us.

Anyway, the blue fish has succumbed to either the antibiotics, or the fin rot, or possibly being nibbled on by frogs when he was just kind of chillin’ on the floor of the aquarium figuring out whether to live or not. He’s officially dead, though. And this is now officially a Teaching Moment.

The wee one isn’t really attached to the fish. He likes them and all, he’s just not all that into them (there’s a joke here somewhere, but I’m too lazy to figure out). So when I pointed out the upside down, partially eaten carcass of the Fancy Blue Guppy, he wasn’t that disturbed. Until the D-E-A-D word was uttered. Then I had his attention.

For some reason the wee one has been asking a lot of questions about death and dying and heaven and things like that. I think it has something to do with the Jesus talk at preschool, either that or it’s a Star Wars thing. I’m not sure. I’ve been doing my best to give him honest answers. But saying things like, "Some people believe we go to Heaven when we die, and others believe we are turned into another person or animal, and still others believe our spirits can stay on earth," etc. isn’t really helping. For now I’m sticking with the heaven thing.

As I, uh, fished out the dead fish the wee one asked if the fish was going to Fish Heaven and whether or not Fish Heaven is in Texas. I told him, in fact, fish heaven IS in Texas, and the express train to get there is directly through our toilet – convenient, eh?

There was some confusion from my explanation, though, and now the wee one thinks the toilet is Fish Heaven. I can’t wait for that to come up at preschool.
"Anybody know what heaven is?"
"It’s our potty and it’s in Texas!"
That should go over extremely well.

We’re still working through a lot of dead fish and religion-based questions, but there isn’t a lot of grief, so that’s good. I think. And I also think we can stop the fish antibiotics now.

Thank-you Fish Jesus for the mercy you bestow.

Nerves Gone Wild!

big boobs! lots of drinks!
drinks of Ozarka, that is
a pregnant spring break

Remember when Spring Break was something you looked forward to? I was never a big party gal, but I still liked a week off to gallivant around with my friends.

Now Spring Break means no preschool, no dance class, no t-ball, no friends in town (they’re all on vacation), and the friends that are in town can’t play because their older siblings are home from school and too old to join a playdate with three-year-olds.

Now Spring Break means going a little crazy and not in a fun way. Spring Break is no longer hott. It’s just hot. And manic. And grumpy. And full of too much TV and empty playgrounds and SXSW envy (though I did get to go to the Interactive/Film Exhibition a few days ago and that was swell).

Yet the wee one and I soldier on. We play with the trains at the Big Box Bookstore, we make banana milkshakes, we watch Wallace & Gromit over and over (though The Wrong Trousers is making the wee one cry because he feels so sad for Gromit. I think we may have to retire this DVD for a while), and we make endless and pointless phone calls to aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas and daddy at work. We play t-ball in the backyard, we talk about making cookies but we don’t because mommy is too lazy to clean the kitchen afterwards, and we watch more TV.

It’s not a bad time, just not a stimulating time. I mean how can I compare to the Zoo Guy who came to preschool last week with snakes and a hedgehog? I am so out-cooled by school it’s embarrassing.

Anyway, I miss old Spring Break. But new Spring Break isn’t as bad as I claim. At least my bare breasts won’t show up on any DVDs in the next few months. And that is something I can be proud of. (That sounds like an "Objective" part of a resume, doesn’t it? "I strive to never have my breasts show up on a DVD… and to be able to write great copy.")