A huge thanks to FYM for pointing me to passiveaggressivenotes.com even though they have expanded their repertoire to include blatantly aggressive notes that are not even a little passive.
Exactly the procrastination I was looking for today. Yay!
Some faves include
the shoeless child
the effective note
grandma’s horror
and proper urinal etiquette.
He took 45 minutes to place each of these on his cloud cake with homemade raspberry cream cheese frosting…
Lucky boy
Oh, how you’re loved.
Peanut’s birthday party was this weekend, and he had a good time. He taught one of his friends, the only close friend he’s made in school, how to bowl. He held her hand while they watched her bowl bounce off the bumpers and slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y down the lane.
Spouse’s brother flew into town and Peanut gave his uncle the biggest, sweetest, most sincere hug I’ve ever seen him give a non-parent.
And when the party didn’t go as Peanut had planned, and presents had to be opened at home, he lost it in the way only a tired, overstimulated four-year old can.
So a good time was had by all.
But the most touching moment in the weekend came at the preschool potluck that night. After two hours of play and great food, a professional puppet show (one-man show of seriously high quality) enraptured all 40+ kids and parents who came. The intro, a classic slapstick comedic lead-in by one puppet, had the kids roaring. Peanut got into it and was laughing along with everyone else. Until the main show: a four puppet version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Peanut is a sensitive dude from whom we generally keep such stories because the threat of danger does not suit him well. Empathetic, eager to please, very keyed to structure and rules, he also does not like stories about misbehavior. So when the puppet boy played a trick on his puppet dad and pretended there was a wolf, Peanut was visibly upset. The other kids laughed and egged on the boy puppet, but our son was amazed that anyone would willfully trick someone else. He repeatedly shook his head and mouthed “no.”
And when the real (not at all real friendly looking puppet) wolf arrived, Peanut was terrified.
I moved to the door so he could see me; he glanced over every ten seconds and I repeatedly signed that it was okay. He screamed in terror when the wolf chased the boy and when the wolf chased the lamb. Genuine terror. Finally, he couldn’t take it any more and came to sit with me, which was much better for both of us. His heart was pounding through his shirt and he was shaking. I held him tightly and told him we could leave if he wanted, that the show was pretend, and that I knew everything would work out in the end of the story. And it did. And the awesome puppeteer came out after the show and demonstrated how all the puppets worked, revealing the stagecraft and dropping my child’s blood pressure significantly.
It was so sweet to watch him laugh at his first puppet show. And so moving to see him just terrified of a story (he gets freaked out at books, too, and articulates his fears gorgeously, but this was just too much for him). It was gratifying to be there, to know in advance that he might be distressed, to offer support if he needed it, and to give it to him when he finally could take no more. And it helped him immeasurably when I told him that he never has to stay listening if something scares him or makes him sad. There is no rule about listening when your feelings get too big; you can always leave or sit with Mom or find a friend to hold hands with.
No nightmares that night, for the first time in a long time. I thought we’d be up with him all night, but he went to sleep easily and slept as hard as he ever has.
It was a long, good not-quite birthday. Happy new year, little guy.
Did you know that, if, in a fit of rage, you type ihatemyhusband.com into the URL box thingie up top there, you get a squatter site that links to Russian brides? That is just six kinds of wrong.
And seriously? Nobody has claimed and developed these sites?
apathy.com
futility.com
whythehellbother.com
myhusbandbugsme.com
Iwanttothrottlemyhusband.com
mykidisdrivingmecrazy.com
mykidsaredrivingmecrazy.com
shootmenow.com
But these URLs forward as follows…
failure.com to a scientific and engineering firm
despondence.com is a clearinghouse for mental health ads
no surprise….
depression.com is owned by a Big Pharma company selling their bottled happiness. So why don’t they buy mykidsaredrivingmecrazy.com and iwanttoothrottlemyhusband.com ?
Seems to me it’s significantly less terrible to slip with a “You’re killing me” at a small person if they don’t yet know what “kill” means.
Precocious is as precocious does. And as precocious procreates. Damnit.
On a day when I leave the car parked at the M.D.’s and walk three blocks to the grocery store, then forget about the distance and buy four bags packed with heavy stuff (I’m talking juice and pineapple and canned soup, y’all), and it starts pouring rain, and the shopping cart refuses to cross the imaginary boundary the store established for “jerks” like me, and the small person with me and the small person growing in me both turn out to be woefully weak in the bicep department and kind of fail to earn their keep; then I get home to find the plumber blocking the driveway and the whole freaking county parked along my street and I have to park two blocks away and hope the groceries I unloaded in front of the house aren’t stolen, and I find when I get to them that they’re probably only there because the paper bags are shredding in the rain; well it’s on that day that I am really grateful that I don’t live in an impoverished nation where I would have to carry water several miles every day and boil it to prevent parasites.
Seems to me that clearing out the anti-gay-rights politicians who get caught in gay sex scandals (yup, another) and the anti-family-planning politicians who have affairs in which they’re clearly using contraception and the “clear-out corruption” politicians who pad their coffers with bribery and graft and nepotism, that maybe there will be six people left in office. By coincidence, it seems, they’d be women.
When a state refuses to raise taxes or cut corporate welfare and decides to cut its education budget so severely that it will be last in the nation and doesn’t see how that compromises its future economic and social health, why then that state needs a wake up call. Can’t get something for nothing, California. And as soon as you stop counting the departments in which Berkeley tops all other schools in the nation, that’s when the whole state will fall into the toilet. So don’t protest on campus, people. Protest in Sacramento *in* lawmakers’ offices.
Doc: Everything seems fine. Any concerns?
Me: No, but talk to me in a couple of weeks and I’ll be ready to complain.
Doc: Done. Want me to check to see how dilated you are?
Me: Any reason other than curiosity? Cuz I’m good skipping it.
Doc: No reason. Some people just want to know.
Me: Well, they’re welcome to take my exam for me.
Doc: Thank goodness you said that. I have a quota to fill, see. I’m like the meter maid of cervixes.
Me: Your degree-granting institution must be so proud.
Doc: They would have been, but you just knocked me out of the running for a set of steak knives.
Me: Sounds like a great prize for a surgeon. If it’s any consolation, I’m sure someone in early labor will submit willingly.
Doc: Heck, yeah. But I get my most hits on the 41-weekers who are desperate for some progress.
Me: Suckers.
Doc: Indeed. See ya next week.
Problem: two terrible evenings in a row where Peanut spends the time from nap until lullabies out of his mind with the urge to scream and cry and physically torment his parents until well after his alleged bedtime.
Solution: bogle petite syrah port. two ounces in wedding crystal.
Problem: guilt over subjecting in utero second child to that particular avoidance technique
Solution: eat an entire sleeve of ginger snaps to go with the port.
Problem: it’s been four months since I’ve had a drink and I’m a lightweight. A very bloated, itchy, kind of grouchy lightweight.
Solution: more ginger snaps.
This week’s reading succeeds in showing, rather than telling, Bolano’s intentions regarding Santa Teresa. “The Part about Fate” grows darker, more labyrinthine, misogynistic, bigoted, befuddled, surreal, and violent as we follow Fate around city, to the fight and a bar-hopping and city-encircling drive that grows increasingly menacing until he leaves with Rosa.
The section, the novel, the story of the crimes are twisted, hidden, dark, and ignored in favor of bluster and ignorant banter, which makes the characters in this section almost unbearable. As Rosa Amalfitano notes, “they seem right, they seem authentic, but they’re actually full of shit” (327). Oscar Amalfitano recognizes this, just as he clearly recognizes his own descent into madness (332). Like Seale in Detroit, Chucho and the other men Fate talks with in Mexico present their existential theories based on nothing; they mislead and confuse and cloak, which leaves both Fate and the reader more and more distanced from the city’s reality.
The sense of Fate having landed on a Martian landscape is reinforced each time he calls New York and someone who doesn’t sound quite right deflects and avoids; when his editor refuses to hear him; when the voice seems a million miles away. This section, as with the others, is well written, expertly crafted, intriguing, and intelligent. But Hobbesian in the “nasty, brutish, and short” life way, with booze and beatings and drugs and sex and talking all taking on characteristics of being dirty and dangerous and heavy handed and curtained yet cartoonish. This section’s metaphor lies in El Rey del Taco; and in the fight arena where Fate can’t find who is calling him; and on the maze-like dark streets and the closed doors and the dreams that swirl in and out of waking.
The same foreboding that clings to the end of The Part about Amalfitano lingers at the end of Fate’s section…was the black car Amalfitano spied outside waiting for Rosa? Will Fate get her out of the city? And is that imprisoned suspect Archimboldi? Bolano has a Dickensonian facility with cliffhangers.
Quote of the section, I think, is:
“The tone, he thought, was solemn and defiant, the battle hymn of a lost war sung in the dark. In the solemnity there was only desperation and death, but in the defiance there was a hint of corrosive humor, a humor that existed only in relation to itself and in dreams, no matter whether the dreams were long or short. Sonoran jazz” (308).
Your reactions?
Me: Peanut, please take off your clothes for bath.
…
M: Pea, it’s bath time. Please take off your clothes.
…
M: Peanut. You’re in the bathroom with your clothes on. What’s the deal? I’m asking you patiently. Please take off your clothes.
P: Mommy? You’re boring.
M: You mean it’s boring to hear the same words over and over.
P: Yup.
M: Well, gotta tell you, bud. It’s boring to say something over and over. Tell you what. You listen the first time, and I won’t have to say it again.
P: That’s still boring.
M: Well, you’ve got me there, buddy. Having rules and being clean and getting naked is boring.
P: No it’s not! Watch! Naked is fun.
