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

nimble as goats

THE THINGS YOU FIND AND THE THINGS YOU CAN'T

My glasses are driving me crazy, because they are all LOOSE and constantly sliding down my nose and making me look like a freaky owl person. I do own a spectacle repair kit, one of those tubes with itty bitty screws and itty bitty screwdriver, but unconsciously I must not want to own it because I can never find the damn thing. I could walk across the river (on a bridge, not like Jesus) and pop into the spectacle shop, but there is so much snow and I only get so much lunch time, which I usually work though anyway, and based on past experience I know that the spectacle shop employees have a whole lot of paper-shuffling and standing-around-picking-their-noses to do before they can manage to attend to me and my baggy saggy spectacles.

While I was digging around in a drawer looking for the repair kit I found a “Flavored Lube Sampler” that I did not remember owning. MYSTERY LUBE! It is four little packets in different flavors: BBQ, Sour Cream & Onion, Wasabi, and Bacon Cheeseburger. (Okay, that's a joke, they are normal “fruit” flavors.) LT reminded me that he had thrown the lube sampler in my Christmas stocking after getting it as a freebie-with-purchase from the cute lesbian working at the Cute Lesbian-owned sex store, and then I did remember, because we did the stockings as a family and I recall telling Nora that those brightly colored single-use packets were “bath beads.” I am still kind of naively confused about the purpose of flavored lube, because it seems to me that the situation that could require “flavor” is not the same situation that could require “lube,” but it is entirely possible that I am missing something. Oh well, maybe we can give away the little “bath beads” to trick-or-treaters or something.

SOME KIND OF WAR? TAKING PLACE IN THE STARS?

I went out drinking last Saturday and Nora's consolation prize for me not being there at tuck-in time was getting to watch Star Wars, which she had been wanting to do for a while. Which Star Wars? you ask. Uh, the first one? Which is really the fourth? Or something like that. You know I don't give a shit about Star Wars.

For once I didn't even dither like a ninny about the violence or age-appropriateness or anything. Nora has not proven to be a particularly sensitive kid. And five seems plenty old enough for some whiz-bang space-cowboy swashbuckling. Predictably, Nora is now a fan. She has colored an empty gift-wrap tube red (for her ghetto lightsaber) and has big plans to be Darth Vader next Halloween. Oh, you didn't think she'd identify with the GOOD side of the Force, did you? Of course not.

Speaking of good vs. evil, here is her drawing of Superman battling a crocodile. CRIKEY, SUPERMAN! IT'S A BIG ONE!

If I may brag for a moment, I think it is kind of fantastic that she gave the crocodile a proper slitty reptilian eye. Clearly Nora is ADVANCED or even GIFTED. I have decided to send her to summer camp in 15th-century Florence where she can apprentice with Masaccio. The camp t-shirts doublets say “LET'S FRESCO!” Cute!

—mimi smartypants is an azeotropic mixture.