03/06/2002

My god, am I a dumbass. I totally meant to link to this yesterday, but completely forgot.

I have my own stalker! With a graphic and everything! That Nance just cracks me up – and you don’t get to see how funny she is, ’cause YOU don’t have the password! Nyah, nyah, nyah!

Last night, as I was preparing dinner and the spud was reading a magazine at the table (while Dr. Phil was on Oprah talking to a mother and her 14 year-old daughter – the 14 year-old daughter is not only dating, but has a steady boyfriend):

Me: Luckily, WE won’t have that problem, because YOU are not allowed to date until you’re sixteen.

Spud: (nodding) I know. (How she knows this, I have no idea, because I don’t think I’ve ever told her before) Thirteen is too young to be dating!

Me: That’s right. But I bet some of your friends are already dating, aren’t they?

Spud: Yes. Becca dates. She only likes boys who are CUTE, though.

That’s a big ol’ "duh" statement right there, isn’t it? The kicker was that she said it in an obviously disapproving tone. I had no idea what to say – "Well, of COURSE you’re only going to date someone you think is cute!"? Then I’m anti-ugly. I ended up just nodding and smiling.

On the TMS discussion list I belong to, we were recently talking about how if you know someone online, but don’t know what they look like, you automatically assume they’re good-looking, skinny, smart, and way WAY cooler than you are. Which got me to thinking about how I’m slightly embarrassed about the fact that I read best-sellers and mysteries, and nothing at all in the way of Grate Lit-tra-tyurre (TM Nicole). You’ll never find me belonging to a book club, where everyone gets together and discusses the book they all just read, because I want to read the book, enjoy it while I’m reading it, and then move on to another good book. Some books move me, and I wish that some books would never end, and I’ve been known to finish reading a book and toss it across the room in disgust.

But if I were to join a book club, someone would say "Wasn’t it just grand, the subtext in the meeting between Roland and Susan, the way his manners touched her?", and they would take a sip of wine, and I’d say "Yeah, Mayor Thorin wants to touch her all right! Heh heh heh m heh heh heh.", and I’d get my ass tossed out.

Hmm. Where was I going with this?

Oh yeah. So, thinking about my shallow, pedestrian reading tastes made me, in turn, think about when I was a Sophomore in high school, and I checked The Gulag Archipelago out from the library, because I just KNEW my sociology teacher would be mightily impressed that I was reading it. And he was – I think his eyes bugged out when he saw me hauling it around.

I only ever read about two pages of it, though.

Moving on…

So, over the weekend, Fred felt the urge to get the good catnip out of the cupboard and sprinkle it on the stairs for the cats.

After ten or fifteen minutes of rubbing and purring and getting high, they eventually scattered, and Miz Poo collapsed on the rug in front of the front door in a drugged-out heap.

Someone once upon a time wrote an entry about how fun it is to scare the hell out of her kid (in a fun, popping-out-of-nowhere way, not a waving-a-gun-around way). Fred agrees with this train of thought, and he takes every opportunity he can to startle the hell out of the spud and make her scream. Last night, he hid in her bathroom and waited for her to come out of her room (she comes and says goodnight to us every night at 9). When she came to the door of the bedroom, she said goodnight to me and asked where he was. I told her he was downstairs and would be back up in a minute.

She turned away, and he was standing directly behind her. From the bed, I saw her lift straight up AT LEAST 6 inches off the floor as she saw him, much in the way a startled cat will just jump straight up into the air without moving any muscles. My god, I was laughing so hard I cried. I wish like hell I’d been filming it, because I’ve never seen anyone lift up that completely.

Ah. Scaring the kid – good times!

 

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