I WILL NEVER LEARN: PART 287

Friday, October 24, 2008

We are going on a cruise tomorrow. The Pacific is calm - we are packed - the house is clean (because you can't leave a dirty house - I'm not sure why, there is no logical reason).

Because I am raising nerdettes, I figured, what better thing to do than go to the library and let the girls check out some books of their choosing to read on vacation?

Becca selected the almanac. Need I say more. The kid is reading the almanac. She has already explained to me in great detail some things about weather, crops, and insects that I'm not sure I have ever heard. I'm concerned for both of us.

Sarah loves horses. So she borrowed "National Velvet" and "The Black Stallion." And she started reading "The Black Stallion" first.

It would be one thing if I had never read this book nor saw the movie. But I have done both, several times.

The book is about a boy who is on an ocean liner that sinks and he and a horse aboard are the only survivors and they wash up on a deserted island and have to fend for themselves and pretty much go native.

Child sleeping in our bed for a good part of the week afraid of cruise ship sinking. And I will never learn...

NERDETTES

Thursday, October 23, 2008

We are raising girl nerds. Nerdettes? Nerdlets? Hm.

We have an 11 year old who is not into texting, school dances, makeup, incessant phone calls, tube tops, or computer games. She has an iPod she never uses. Instead she makes lanyard bracelets and watches Olympic skaters on YouTube.

We have a 6 year old who isn't into dolls, play dates, My Little Pony, or tea party. OK she will do any physical activity on earth - scooter, skates, gymnastics, running, throw herself off the couch, whatever. But actually she would rather look through our toy microscope at different dead things from the yard, and read the encyclopedia.

I invented this system called TV tickets. It bugged me that they were watching what I thought was too much TV - so now they each get TV tickets - they can spend them all watching a movie or they can spread them out during the week for a TV show here and there -and when they're out of tickets, they have to wait till Sunday to get more. Once the kids watched "The Sound of Music" and it's so bloody long they used all their tickets- and then no more TV that week.

First of all - they spent all their tickets watching a Julie Andrews musical - NERDY.

Second of all - the TV ticket thing sucked the impulsive fun right out of the activity, and made them all but forget about the television. They don't even really ask for it anymore.

So now I have effectively removed these kids from pop culture. TV, phone, iPod, Internet - either severely limited or not interesting to them. AND we live in suburban San Diego - where there is such cultural uniformity I can't even use haircuts to tell the moms apart. I feel like we are just candlemaking away from being Amish or something.

I worry that they are going to be out of touch. And yet - I like the nerdettes. They are learning about the world - the actual world, not Hannah Montana's world. The world that has hot lava in the middle and frozen ponds for ice skating on the top. I have no idea whether I'm doing the right thing or not. We'll know in 20 years.

ONE THING IS FOR SURE: FRECKLES IS DEAD

Sunday, October 19, 2008

We have hermit crabs. Wow - looking at that sentence, it looks like I am confessing to some STD. But actually we have PET crabs.

At first, Becca got a crab for Hanukkah. The aptly named Scooter - this crab is like the Jesse Owens of hermit crabs. He has nearly busted out of the enclosure a few times -we had to resecure the cage. He found a way to climb up glass aquarium walls. Not bad for an animal with a brain the size of a pin head.

Then we got a book on crabs and discovered they are very social and like to be around other crabs -they're more active when there are a group of them. I'm not sure what we were expecting from poor Scooter, considering he was practically doing backflips already.

So we got 2 more crabs.

Diesel - who was about the same size as Scooter. Scooter seems to understand when he's being handled and just kind of crawls over your skin. Diesel likes to HOLD ON. I suppose you could call it holding on. He once pinched me so hard that the girls were crying in fear watching it and I saw stars. Bastard.

And then there's Freckles. Freckles was a small crab and he was very entertaining when we got him - he loved to eat bananas, we would just sit and watch him pick off pieces of banana for a half hour at a shot. He was pretty shy while being handled, but probably because he was a small and more fragile crab. He liked to change shells - actually he had a bit of a complex, he could never quite decide between two shells in particular and would change back and forth a couple times a night.

Then all of a sudden, Freckles got very quiet. Not moving for a very long time - we're talking a week. Sometimes crabs go through these more quiet periods. Usually I just pick them up and put them in their water bowl or on a rock or something and this gets them going.

Picked up Freckles and he kind of slumped out of his shell. Poked him a couple times. Nothing.

Becca was in the tub. Sweetie baby. She was playing with her sharks and dolphins. I could hear her singing to them. "Oh don't eaaaat meeeee, I'm just a nice dollllphiiiin, but I'm so hunnnnngry, and I have a baby shaaaark to feeeeed." I figured this was my chance; I'll just go and get rid of the crab so that she doesn't have to be traumatized by his limp orange dead body.

So I flushed him.

The kids were rattled a bit when I told them. Was there something we could have done? Signs we ignored? Were we bad crab mommies? I assured them that sometimes these things just happen.

Then Don was doing a little research on the Internet. "You know," he said, "it could have just been molting." Here's the what he was reading:

It is surprisingly easy to mistake a molting hermit crab for a dead hermit crab, especially when they molt on the surface. A molting crab appears quite limp and lifeless and the body is often partway out of the shell.

OH MY GOSH. I killed Freckles the Crab! This is the logical assumption, right?! I killed a child's pet! Moreover, I flushed it. Can you imagine - there you are in your closet changing clothes, when a tsunami hits! Right in his moment of greatest vulnerability.

I AM a bad crab mommy.

AT LEAST THIS IS A BIT BETTER

Thursday, October 16, 2008

VACATION? OR NO VACATION?

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Just 2 weeks from today, we are scheduled to board a cruise ship out of San Diego Harbor and take it south into Baja and Mexico for a week.

Unless a HURRICANE comes and kills the vacation.

I'm reminded of Becca's 4th birthday, on which we took a tour boat out to see some whales, and it was an absolute barf fest....
http://lifeversion2.blogspot.com/2006/03/3-hour-tour-3-hour-tour.html

ANOTHER SATURDAY IN THE COLD VOID

Saturdays are kind of this weird vortex - leave for the ice rink at 10:45, get back at... 4?! Huh?

Today, Becca struck up a good conversation with Melody - Melody is the little sister of one of Sarah's good friends. Mothers like this - convenience.

They compared wiggly teeth, junk food preferences, and ice skating pranks. Good times.

CAN'T KEEP 'EM STRAIGHT

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Here is something I really do seriously have to work on. I can't keep the moms straight at the grade school. It's getting me in trouble; I can't just say "hey.... you...." forever. They know my name.

It's too late in the year to be able to legitimately ask theirs.

Still, I can't help it. I stand out! I am a good foot shorter than any of them, brunette, and well - Edelmany. Those of you who share these physical characteristics know what I am talking about.

They are Valley of the Dolls. And what really messes me up is that this year they all managed to get the same haircut! The Jennifer Aniston. It's deadly.

My hope is to attend a function where we must all wear nametags...

TRYIGG TO STAY POSITIB

(I have a cold)

Today was Yom Kippur, day of atonement. It's been a pretty good year - I have been petty, sarcastic, selfish, guilt inflicting, and rude - perhaps even within the space of a single post on this blog! - but in the scheme of things, I haven't really done any great big wrongs this year. So that's good.

Today the Dow is making me sort of mad. I suppose I really can't blame people for PANICKING and running for the hills with whatever money they can scrounge. The future is as uncertain as it always has been - but now we're thinking about it much more.

I am figuring on telling all our finance companies to save a tree and stop printing our statements for awhile. It will give me a good excuse to call them all and see if they are still in business.

Meanwhile, I am trying to love the Dow. It's hard. Really hard. So my technique is to think of something Dow that I can love. The scrubbing bubble from Dow Bathroom Cleaner. Who doesn't love the scrubbing bubble? He happily cleans off your soap scum, saving you thankless hours. I love those little guys.


(sorry too much nyquil)