wander in and ruin everything
NATURAL-BORN KILLERS
Here is a movie/TV thing I hate: the ease with which people get knocked out and regain consciousness. First of all, it is not all that easy to hit somebody so hard that they pass out. (Not that I have much experience with interpersonal violence, but thanks to clumsiness and mosh pits, I am fairly familiar with blows to the head.) In soap operas, tiny little women are forever hitting giant men on the head with smallish crystal vases, and the men are instantly crumpled to floor where they lie motionless for hours. In reality the bad guy would be hurt, but he would most likely still be able to choke the life out of our plucky little heroine.
Also, being hit hard enough to lose consciousness is a big deal. You don’t just leap up after that and keep fighting. And you know what you REALLY don’t do? You do not regain consciousness by sitting up like Dracula in his coffin, all abs and no hands, in the background of the shot. I believe this was the final straw that made me turn off The Bourne Identity, when one of the assassins does this very thing. Jason Voorhees the indestructible serial killer might be allowed to sit up like that; an ordinary mortal, no matter how tough or CIA-trained, is not.
UNNATURAL PARENTING
With the days (slowly) getting nicer, Nora and I have been leaving early so we have more time to dawdle to school. There are baby geese on the river, dandelions to pick and scatter, and a school playground on which to go ape until the first bell. Another parent and I have been taking turns supervising the playground and making sure the kids get in on time. This is great as it means I am only late to work every other day or so. (Do you know how hard it is to leave the playground and go to the boring old office? Really hard.)
Sometimes this other parent and I will get to chatting and we both end up hanging out until school starts, which is fine. I have noticed that she tends to gather everyone up and say goodbye at the playground entrance, and leave the kids to walk together to the school door, which is also fine. They are in second grade, they are in a big pack, they can handle getting themselves fifty yards without me watching. However, it means that on those days I do not actually witness Nora going into the school. And, anxiety being what it is, it also means that on those days I check the attendance portion of the “parent portal” website (the thing that lets you look at your kid’s grades and stuff), under the crazy-lady theory that no news is good news.
Wow, it is really embarrassing to admit that.
COMPLETELY NATURAL BAD-ASS
Nora: Take a picture of me.
Me: Here, at the doctor’s office?*
Nora: Yeah.
Me: Okay. [gets out iPhone] Usually you hate pictures.
Nora: Usually. But today I am wearing my very favorite clothes. I look cool.
Baby-butch haircut (recently made even spikier). Tony Hawk t-shirt. Cargo shorts. Skateboard shoes. Cool-kid smirk, nonchalant legs and feet, confidence for days. I like that kid.
*Just the yearly checkup, plus the plotting of her tiny little crowded-in-the-left-hand-corner growth chart. Someone has to be in the 7th percentile, I suppose.
THE NATURAL WORLD
I slept rather poorly last night, and it is all the fault of orbit. The full or nearly-full moon was shining right through my bedroom skylight and bathing me in moonlight (serious moonlight). Will I become a full-fledged lunatic now, after soaking in moonshine for seven fitful hours?
You would never know it by our current weather report, but in the last few weeks Chicago has actually been experiencing a touch of spring, and we finally got a chance to use our newly acquired backyard firepit. Here is where we discovered that Nora would be the most valuable member of a Neolithic tribe, as she was obsessed with finding sticks, poking the logs, and generally tending the fire. There have been many requests for more fires, usually at impossible times, like ten minutes before her bedtime or in the middle of a windstorm. (The roof! The roof! The roof could very well be set on fire!)
Seeing Nora’s love of fire fueled discussion of camping, which we have never done as a family and which I have never done at all. I would be game to try it, although I am still very afraid of axe murderers. Anyway, Nora suggested that we camp near a river, so we can “catch fish and survive.” Uh, Nora? We were thinking of something just a tiny bit less hard-core than that. We were thinking we’d have a cooler. With beer and hot dogs.
She is mentally fashioning her t-shirt into a fish-catching net and I am mentally handing out wet wipes and bug spray. I suspect we may have different camping philosophies.
—mimi smartypants unleashed the mechanical frog!