electric boogaloo

Today started before 6:30. So no cohesive post. List! List!

1. Why can’t my spam filter – which is mostly excellent – learn that emails with the subject VIaARGA are never interesting to me? I mean, obviously I want to buy lots of viagra from as many people who email me as possible, but seriously. These people can’t even spell the name of the product. How do I know that I could trust them to deliver my viagra in a timely manner?

2. Bento! Have you people heard of bento boxes? My friend Kristina – who bakes her own bread and totally has her shit together – pointed me to this site, and now I keep having daydreams about a day when I might put together a beautiful lunch for Kevin to take to work. One with hearts in the mashed potatoes and little flower-shaped carrots so he’ll know that I love him and also that he should call 911 immediately and have his wife sent to the hospital for urgent brain scans, seeing as his typical lunch is a turkey sandwich and a slim jim from the gas station down the street from where he works. The mathematically perfectly exact opposite of Bento.

From the About Bento section…
“It is said that when you eat a bento lunch prepared by a loved one, the preparer’s feelings for you are transmitted through the food “

Reading this, I felt guilty realizing that the special and magical message that Kevin receives while eating his lunch in his truck, in the Race Trac parking lot is, “I hope I outlive you, you worthless piece of crap.”

But I do love him. So very much that I sigh wistfully and wish that I had the kind of inner peace that these women have, these Bento women who know how to plan their day so that they have 20 minutes available for the Bento making.

4. The other day ladybug sent me a link to these slightly creepy pillows for babies like Graham who must have someone touching them or they will not sleep. During those early months… all 9 or 10 of them, these would have been super useful. Of course, if the gloworm didn’t convince him I was right there with him, I’m not sure fake hands would have helped much either.

5. But wouldn’t it be kind of cool to get like fifteen or twenty of the hand pillows and line them up on your couch? Like throw pillows, but more sexual harrassmenty.

6. Kevin and I used to work for Americore as reading tutors. There was this one kid named Ivan who was a perfect example of everything our schools do wrong, promoting when they shouldn’t promote, holding back when they shouldn’t hold back, accomodating his limitations and yet – not. It’s hard to explain. But the biggest problem Ivan had was that he was in sixth grade and he was entirely illiterate. Ivan worked hard though, and after a month he knew the alphabet. By the end of the year, he and I were writing stories together. We’d take turns: A sentence by him, a sentence by me.

Ivan wrote all of his words phonetically, how he would say them. A lisser rud on his skirbir. What? He’d read it to me, “A lizar rode on his skirbir.”

Oh, a lizard rode his skateboard! Got it.

The lisser rud his skirbir al the way to hes permit.

Permit. Apartment.

For years, Kevin and I used the word “permit” to refer to our apartment because even though we love all the beautiful children, we are assholes on a very fundamental level who have nothing better to do than to go through our lives making fun of immigrant children.

Somewhere we have a photo Kevin took of the sign in front of our place in Atlanta that said PERMIT PARKING ONLY. Oh man! Get it? In front of an apartment? Hahaha that kid totally couldn’t read!

Good stuff.

All this to say that last night when Nicolaus wrote the word “TACO BOX” on the aquadoodle, I was confused. Taco Box? WTF? No, sweetie, it’s pronounced, Taco Bueno. Or Jack in the Box. Sadly, there is no Taco Box even though oh my god! A place where I could get two muchacos for 99 cents would be like the most amazing and perfect fast food restaurant ever to exist!

He lost me for a minute there while I fantasized about this magical paradise.

Then he clarified: “NOOOOOO. Tacco box. Like you take to go fishing.”

Oh. Tackle box. I didn’t correct him, because I know my kid and he does not respond well to any sort of correction. Like I mentioned a year and a half ago that most people have arms, and he hasn’t drawn one of the little bastards since.

7. But the exciting thing is, he’s writing! Words! Mostly backwards, but still. Taco box. Black Staln. (Kids are so silly. Stalin wasn’t Black!) It’s neat to see him work so hard at something that involves a lot of screwing up along the way. A few weeks ago he was throwing the pen across the room and bursting into tears because his letters looked wobbly. So for me the biggest thrill is seeing him chill out a little, not be quite so hard on himself. You’re goddamned three years old. Of course your letters are wobbly. Writing is hard, dude. Why do you think so many authors are alcoholics?

8. Another way to look at it is that writing is so easy that a drunk can do it. But whatever.

9. He still doesn’t want to talk about the alphabet. Or work on reading really.

10. As we ease toward the holiday shopping season, I’d like to remind all family members that we live in a tiny, cluttered house. And that for the last four days the boys have played with NOTHING other than a mylar balloon.

11. What in the fucking fuck??

12. The first part of this entry was written while Graham fed himself breakfast. At his insistance. The second part of this entry was written while he was in a bath (to clarify: wireless laptop mom, not negligant whore mom), which he demanded because he thinks he must be bathed following all 29 meals each day. The next part was written perched on Nicolaus’ bed while Graham pulled all of the books off of his shelf, while yelling “BUH! BUHH!”

Does that mean book, maybe? Or does it mean Get off your butt mama!

The last part – this part – was written during a hilariously dramatic fight over the toy piano. Nicolaus threw himself on the floor, “Ohhh!! Graham just knocked me down! And said Nicolaus! I’m the piano player! And you aren’t. And you can’t EVER PLAY the piano AGAIN. And that really made me upset.”

13. Do you think maybe parenting might be so easy a drunk person could do it? Because really. I haven’t had a drink in over two years and I’m starting to think that might be my problem.