lazy cartoon cats
CHATTER CHATTER CHATTER
I lurk at a lot of forums and messageboards, but I don't post much at any of them. On the political or “issue”-oriented forums, I will sometimes start to state my opinion, especially if people are being dumbfucks, and then I usually think OH FORGET IT because, well, people are being dumbfucks. On the chattier forums, I will sometimes start to make an observation or tell a story, and then my thoughts will unravel all over the little “post reply” box, with many digressions and stupid jokes, and I will realize that instead of boring this “room” full of nice people who are here for conversation, I should instead bore the nice people who read my diary thing. No word-count restriction here! Unfortunately!
There are a few sites that I visit solely for the entertainment value, such as the very special cauldron of sprouted mungbeans known as mothering.com. It is almost too easy to snark on this place, so I usually try to refrain. Really, if someone wants to live in a yurt with her free-range Indigo Child it is none of my vegan faux-beeswax. But it is sometimes SO HARD to resist trolling on the various threads devoted to issues of child development. I think you could post almost any outrageous anecdote and ask “is this normal” and you would get 800 hippies tripping over their Birkenstocks to assure you that it is. Actual paraphrased thread topics: I still breastfeed my 4-year-old, is that normal? My 6-year-old poops in his pants, is it normal? My 11-year-old can't read, is she normal? Oh sure, absolutely! Children develop at their own pace! Let go and let Gaia!
Well fuck no, it's not normal. Some of the late-bloomer things that get posted about are probably no big deal, and the by-the-book parents who fret over every milestone are equally annoying. On the other hand, let's get off the crunchy-granola internet and do a little comparison shopping. Statistically, NOT NORMAL. I guess everyone has their own Freakout Areas but good god, if shitty underpants were still an issue in the school-age years my kid and I would both be in a long-term psychiatric care facility.
Like I said though, I usually don't speak up. Except here. And inside my head. Speaking of inside my head, here is another reason to be grateful that my running monologue is strictly internal: this morning I saw a khaki'd and polo-shirted Standard Issue White Dude, but with this totally loose, funky, high-stepping kind of walk, and I thought, “Damn, that pimp be strollin'.” And then I sort of giggled to myself. And then he “strolled” closer and I noticed that he actually had a rather severe neurological disorder that accounted for the pimp-like movements. Oh. Sorry.
NATURAL HISTORY
This weekend we took Nora to the Field Museum and oh! Why didn't we think of this sooner? Besides the predictable dinosaur-bone ecstasy, the Field also has thousands upon thousands of stuffed dead animals and skeletons to satisfy my amateur taxidermist. Plus light-up push-button displays of the insides of animals, which led to my favorite Nora quote of the day: “Hooray, the digestive system!” That same exhibit had drawers you could open to see replicas of the end product of the various digestive systems. Is there any more perfect museum display for a five-year-old? Buttons to push, the insides of animals, AND realistic plaster poop! Perfection.
The other day Nora was having a rather unusually manic moment (thank you, Diego-branded yogurt, for your many delicious sugar grams), giggling about poop, and running around saying, “I poop on the wall! I poop on the radiator! I poop in the fish tank!” Now, I probably should have shut this down immediately, but somehow I could not resist laughing. I mean, pooping in the fish tank? Classic!
Eventually, however, one wants the poop-hilarity to end. (Note to self: add this to The Collected Rejected Essay-Opening Sentences notebook.) Nora would much rather have A Plan than to just be told to knock it off, so together we came up with a hand-signal that means “no more poop talk”—you describe two parabolas in the air with your finger, to approximate ass cheeks, and then you X them out. The kid appreciated the secret-code-ness as well as the fact that the signal could be employed by either party, although it is rather unlikely that SHE will need to tell ME to quit talking about poop. At least not until I am elderly and demented and shouting obscenities in the nursing home.
—mimi smartypants is halfway there.