don't call the cop a motherfucker
GIVE ME YOUR ALL YOUR CLOTHES AND NO ONE GETS HURT
I saw the perfect coat on some El chick last night. I am extremely picky about outerwear and her coat was amazing. I wanted to take it and run. I have been all over the internet fumblingly trying to Google its various qualities but no luck yet.
Her very cool boots were also very coveted by me. Basically I just wanted to skin this girl and wear her pelt. Is that so wrong?
This week I have had a sudden upswing in shallow vapid interests, spending more time than usual thinking about clothing and skin care and shoes. Most people would say, “It's about time,” since I tend to look like I teleported to the present day from Mid-1990s Small Liberal Arts College. Not that there's anything wrong with that (right?), but I am feeling restless for new clothes. Unfortunately this will mean shopping. It really would be easier just to hold down CoolTrainGirl and strip off all her clothing, even though it would make a scene. I am liable to make a scene while shopping as well, since it only takes about thirty minutes in a store before I have to squelch my desire to scream AHHHHH SO MUCH FUCKING STUFF, profess my newfound anarchism, and go live in a cave. And now we have come full circle right back “to Mid-1990s Small Liberal Arts College,” as long as you substitute “dorm room full of ashtrays and candles and Cure CDs” for “cave.”
THRILL-A-MUNDO
On one of her last days of winter break, Nora went to some hullabaloo at Navy Pier that was like an indoor amusement park, all sized for kids, and she went in her first bouncy castle and on her first rides that were not just a fake vehicle bolted to a circular track. I have not yet stopped hearing about the fun, the awesomeness, or how, on the little bitty rollercoaster, Nora was “screaming with joy.” That is an exact quote from Nora, by the way. She had to let me know that she screamed. With joy. Mechanical Engineer Nora has also explained to me how some of the rides work, in her somewhat garbled way. I guess now we just sit back and wait for the obligatory Six-Flags-With-The-Physics-Class field trip in high school. She will be the radically eXtreme nerd screaming (with joy) about centripetal force.
THEOLOGY-A-MUNDO
Last night while Nora played garde manger to my chef de cuisine and while she chopped up a red pepper (yeah, I let her use a sharp knife—we are MONTESSORI DAREDEVILS) we had the following touchy conversation out of the clear blue sky:
Nora: Dead people live on in us, right?
Me [taken by surprise]: Oh, you mean because we remember them? Right.
Nora: But dead people don't really live, like inside you. Like a tapeworm.* That would be crazy!
Me: It sure would!
Nora: Some people believe in God, though.
Me: Yup.
Nora: And they say that the dead people go live with God.
Me: Uh-huh. That's what some people say.
Nora: Is that true?
Me: Well, no one knows for sure. People believe different things.
Nora: Do you think it's true?
Me [mental sigh]: No, I don't. It doesn't make sense to me, so I don't believe it. I think dead is dead, and then the alive people do the remembering.
[pause]
Me: But you can learn about both—the God idea and the no-God idea—and then someday you can make up your own mind. [to myself: Yeah sure, after I just SHIT ALL OVER THE GOD IDEA GOOD ONE SMARTYPANTS]
Nora: I don't think God is real. But I will think about it more when I am five.
Me: Good plan.
*We are very interested in tapeworms around here. I keep emphasizing how rare tapeworm infestation is in this country, as a kind of veiled plea for CAN WE STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS PLEASE, but Nora still brings up tapeworms a lot. I sort of explained (simplistically) how a tapeworm eats the host's food before it can be properly digested, thus resulting in severe illness and malnutrition. However, it is clear from the way that Nora giggles throughout my dire pronouncements that she thinks of a tapeworm as a sort of lovable prankster, a little friend who snatches that last cupcake before you get a chance to eat it.
AND FINALLY SOME ART
This whole entry is a bit of an excuse to post Nora's latest drawing, titled “Cat Family.”
I love how the middle cat is a bit squashed and skeptical and the biggest cat's tail is rather Expressionistically long. Or maybe it is an escaped tapeworm?
—mimi smartypants is parasite-free.