mimi smartypants
Seriously, though: what's with the penguins?

hit hard by potato blight

Nora's new word is “splendid.” How was your day, Nora? It was SPLENDID! What do you want to drink? Some soy milk would be SPLENDID! Mommy, do you remember the Superfriends where Mr. Mxyzptlk turned Superman into a little kid? Wasn't it SPLENDID? No. No it wasn't, Nora. In fact it was exceedingly lame.

Although on one hand I am getting a little tired of “splendid,” on the other it is sort of delightfully splendidly archaic. And it is nicely and straightforwardly from the Latin. And here is the splendid toadfish. And a submarine that was “splendidly audacious.”

I am not looking so splendid at the moment. There is a deodorant shadow on my skirt, which is confusing as the only deodorant around is on my armpits, a goodly distance from the skirt, although both skirt and “invisible solid” (not so invisible now!) rode around in my gym bag this morning so maybe something happened there. That's the other thing! I am normally a nighttime exerciser but today I went to the gym before work for my little 2-mile treadmill run, and at the front desk they hand out disposable razors as a courtesy. It is no longer summer and I don’t need to shave my under-tights legs at the gym, but FREE IS FREE, right? Oh, you better believe it is. This razor was ridiculous, it really pushed the limits of “disposable” and butted up right against “handcrafted.” As we learn from the fragmented diaries of explorer George Vancouver, the Skokomish people used jute to tie a clamshell to a twig and scraped their legs with the homemade “rayzre” or “raizeur.” And I bet they got razor rash all over their shins just like I did, and then they all died of smallpox.

(Note: I made the clamshell bit up. The smallpox was pretty damn real though!)

Oh, and I have a huge bruise on my forehead for the most differently-abled reason ever: I was picking up various items from the floor of our dining room and when I very quickly bent at the waist to get something that was right up against the wall, I somehow neglected to account for the windowsill, which meant that I basically slammed my own forehead right into it. Nora saw the whole thing and she said OH! and I said FUH…FUH-OW, THAT HURT, because I am showing remarkable progress on Operation Clean Up My Language, at least until that third beer. Later, Nora and I had this conversation:

Nora: Is your head still hurt?
Me: It's a bruise, but it's getting better. Thank you for asking.
Nora: Mommy, I have to tell you something. It looked really funny when you hit your head.
Me: Oh.
Nora: But I didn't laugh, because that wouldn't be nice.
Me: Well, thanks for that.
Nora: It looked funny, but I didn't laugh. I just laughed in my brain!

I BET THERE'S NO HALLMARK CARD FOR IT EITHER

On the way home I sat behind a young girl who was texting and texting on her phone. I don't know exactly how or why it caught my attention, but somehow I looked up and the words HAVING YR BABY IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT, DAWG were on her screen. I never did catch the babydaddy's replies because she answered them too fast, but there was also something about I LUV U 2 BUT IM SAD U DON'T WANT ME TO HAVE IT and MY MOM WOULD HELP and I THINK IT'S A BOY DON'T U LUV UR SON???? By this point I was all like WOW ZOMG UNBELEEVABLE and was actively trying to read the incoming and outgoing text messages without making it look like I was doing so. I mean, holy crap. TXT MSG NOT BEST MEDIUM FOR ABORTION TALK OKTHNXBYE.

—mimi smartypants defends to the death your right to say it.