Sunday, September 27, 2009

Topics of Conversation

Abby made what I think was her first unprompted sentence the other day, an important developmental milestone. It was "Bees . . . attack . . . you."

Evangeline has been smiling socially for about 3 weeks now. I'd forgotten how devastatingly cute toothless grins are.

Sometimes I feel like a mean wife. Like when I ask Regis, "What do you want for dinner? White chili, salad and sausages, tacos, stir-fry, or omelettes?" and he says "How about stir-fry?" and I say "Let's have tacos." And now you know what's on our menu for this week.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Stop Drop and Roll

My current music crush is "I'm On Fire" by Bruce Springsteen. I feel like that should be funny, for some reason--I really never thought of myself as a Springsteen fan. But the song is nice and sultry-sounding. And guess what? I just got it for free!

Amazon.com is giving away a free MP3 download to a million people, one of which could be you. How exciting. I found out about it here. Go find your own song.

Update: Hilariously, Regis misheard me when he called to chat on his way home, and listened in some confusion as I explained what I'd gotten and that I thought he should get one too. This was only cleared up after he arrived home and I clarified, between giggles, that Amazon is not giving out free thongs.

Looked out the window and what did I see?

Children are funny.

Today as I was cleaning out the linen cupboard (a lofty title for the closet where we shove our 9,765,354 blankets) I pulled out a gray plaid blanket, which holds no particular associations for me, and continued through the pile. Abby snatched up the blanket and started to drag it towards the living room. She paused partway, and dropped it to free her hands so she could say "Pop! Pop!" and do the motions for "Popcorn Popping," one of her favorite songs. I obliged her with the song while returning the blanket to the pile. She ran to the living room and bent down, smacking the carpet while saying "Ugguhguh!" which is what she says when she doesn't know the words for what she wants.

For a while, all this triggered in me was a vague irritation, since Ugguhguh is usually said in a whiny voice. It was several moments before I made the connection. About two months ago, Abby and I had an impromptu picnic on the living room floor, the menu of which had only one item: popcorn. We'd sat on that very gray blanket. Once the lightbulb went on, I asked Abby if popcorn was what she wanted. I'm so glad she's not old enough to say "DUH!"

So we had another enjoyable popcorn picnic, and I mused on two important points: these little moments of fun with just the two of us are apparently meaningful and memorable for Abby--and we have too many blankets.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Grrrr

I love to read books. Fiction books, and mysteries in particular are my favorites.

I HATE reading books in which the main character or characters are stupid.

For example, there is a series in which the protagonist, Sebastian St. Cyr, is supposed to be this brilliant detective. His lover, an actress, is also supposed to be clever. Despite the author's continual harping on the facts that Sebastian has strange eyes, that his "father" has never liked him, and that his mother was notoriously promiscuous, the detective and his honey somehow don't realize (presumably until the last book, which I haven't read) that Sebastian is a bastard child, which forces them to part because Kat turns out to be the child of his "father." This would be tragic, if I wasn't so disgusted with their stupidity that I didn't care what happened to either of them anymore. The real tragedy is that I can't bring myself to finish the series, which leaves me feeling slightly guilty.

I've always liked The Scarlet Pimpernel, although recently I've noticed how cheesy parts of it are. I guess a lot of things I like are cheesy, like nachos. But right now I'm reading El Dorado, a further adventure of the Pimpernel, which has precipitated this rant. Armand is an idiot. The plot of this book better be darn good, because the main character is irritating the heck out of me.