Safety Dance
As Samantha becomes more and more mobile, I find myself NOT seized with pride and admiration for how much my girl has grown and how adorably proud she is as she peeks her head over the coffee table as she (oh my God), pulls up to a near-stand on it, oh no. Instead, I am literally — no, LITERALLY — thinking, there must, SURELY THERE MUST, be a way that I can delay this? I’m not ready for her to be bonking her head and landing face first into the kitchen tile, and I am MOST DEFINITELY not ready for her to be pulling the baby gate down from in front of the fireplace and pulling it on top of her like some kind of miniature Steven Seagal in a harrowing cruise ship scene. I actually considered, for a good hour or two, mind you, that if *I* stopped walking, she would forget that she’s descended from homo erectus, and perhaps consider reverting to homo crawldownus, at least for a little while longer.
Because Jesus, the head bonking! The tears as she decides, out of fracking NOWHERE, that no, actually, instead of sitting, she’d like to lounge on her back with a nice cup of water. Oh, is that her tub of Legos behind her? Well, FUCK, that HURTS, what the HELL? Woe! Wailing! Confusion! Oh, and if you were thinking of turning around to, say, pick up the dog dishes before she pours Sunny’s water all OVAH her head, THINK AGAIN. Because in the .02 seconds it will take you to do THAT, she’ll have tangled her torso in your laptop cord and is bleating confusedly while somehow — SOMEHOW — simultaneously bringing the power strip (THE ONE THAT YOU HID) to her wee little mouth, oh my FUCK.
It’s a circus. A freakin’ circus and she’s only ONE TINY PERSON. And it’s going to get WORSE oh my God, when she starts Frankensteining around this place like a tiny DRUNK-ASS BABY and I have a headache just thinking about it.
She’s also STILL at the point where she is SO FREAKING BUSY that she can’t wind down at the end of the night, no matter how tired she is, and oh, fret not, her GENIUS PARENTS are contributing to such madness. For every night, we have been saying “Night-night!” and having her wave goodbye as she heads into bed. It is very EXCITING to wave night-night, apparently, and she can’t turn it off, so for the first fifteen minutes of crib time, she just lays there like a pickle, staring at her waving arm thinking, “What the … this is so STUPID. Why am I doing this?” (I don’t have a good answer, kid) and she can’t turn it off! She waves all night! She wakes herself up fucking WAVING, PEOPLE. EVERY FEW HOURS WITH THE WAVING. And then once she’s waving, she might as well be trying to pull up, because why not? She ain’t got SHIT TO DO but lay there and maybe sleep, but she’s too BUSY FOR THAT SHIT, YO. LET ME PULL UP ON THIS HERE CRIB AND SHOW YOU MAH SKILLZ.
OH MY GOD.
Ahem. Sorry. It’s just that it’s been a little exhausting around these parts lately, but in a good way. I mean, she is SO FUN and FUNNY and lights up like a freakin’ menorah when I walk into the room, assuming she let me leave it in the first place. But MAN, I do believe we have entered the phase of childhood where I can kiss goodbye the idea of ever pooping alone again.
In other news, we finally caved and bought a Wii for Christmas. Yeah, I know, vacuum cleaner, I KNOW, we suck, I KNOW. It was an IMPULSE BUY and I spent the better part of the weekend playing tennis with my Mii, and you know, I wasn’t good at tennis when my parents made me take lessons THEN, and I’m not good at tennis NOW, even when it’s fake tennis, with no running involved. And perhaps MORE pathetic is that I am SORE from non-running tennis and also, a little boxing, and am feeling like maybe I burned a few extra calories … no? No. Whatever.
So! A few other things, in brief:
– I *think* I found a solution and format for the book club, and will be posting something either later this week or just after Christmas. I’m also sloooowly e-mailing all of you back, but don’t panic yet if you don’t have one, because, you know, it’s Christmas, my kid is a freakin’ TRANWRECK and there are an assload of you and also, I sort of suck.
What Jennie and I have been thinking is that we’ll keep it simple and fun and easy for people to be a part of — people can contribute/talk as much as they want to, but the official-like stuff, I’d like to keep relatively easy. Who the hell wants to be a part of something that sucks up all of your time and isn’t fun, because it’s a fracking JOB? No one.
So we were thinking we’d require that everyone be a part of book chats no more than five nights a week, for, say, an HOUR at most. Does that work for everyone?
(I KID I KID OH MY GOD.)
– I continue to be fascinated by TigerGate, and sort of, well, sickened, because again, no matter what she knew, did she REALLY think 12 mistresses? Really? And WHAT, pray tell, did Rachel Uchitel have on the guy that no one else had to earn a bigger payout than Elin will probably get at the end of their marriage? (Damn you, Florida, and your fucking no-fault laws. DAMN YOU! *shakes fist*) I WONDER.
– Ding dong. Brittany Murphy. Whaaa? Sad, yes. Surprising? No. Come on. The woman was a LOLLIPOP ON A STICK and clearly … troubled. Ahem. And yes, I find it fascinating how people become deified in death. First Michael Jackson, now Brittany Murphy. Oddly, this ties into an entire topic that I think about far too much than is healthy, which is the way people handle tragedy on Twitter, and by “people” I don’t mean the people suffering the tragedy, I mean the creepy hangers-on who use someone else’s tragedy to somehow further their own agenda and turn it into some kind of creepy CAMPAIGN. Some things don’t need a Twibbon, is all I’m saying. And if something, God forbid, happens to me or someone I love? I will fucking RIP YOUR THROATS OUT if you start a Twibbon campaign.
– I am disappointed in our government right now, on about a thousand levels. DISAPPOINTED. You know what I wish sometimes? I wish Obama was a little like George W. Bush. No no, not THAT way. I mean in the way that Bush and his cronies just bullied the SHIT out of people to get shit done. For chrissake, the man passed the PATRIOT ACT, one of the biggest travesties in our nation’s history. THE PATRIOT ACT. All of these douchebags referring to Obama as a socialist and is behaving like a dictator? OH HO HO HO, sometimes I wish he would actually ACT LIKE ONE, since he’s being accused of it and all. (I KID KIND OF) At least we wouldn’t be dicking around in this pile of SHIT and getting our asses handed to us by a bunch of manipulative right-wing pundits who know their way around rhetoric so that people who don’t actually believe that our nation is being DESTROYED by health care reform and that Obama is related to HITLER are SOMEHOW BELIEVING IT.
SHUT UP. (I wanted the public option. So sue me.)
– Lately, the word “swollen” has been creeping me out. My mind goes to unsavory things. It’s right up there with ENGORGED.
Happy Monday! Week ‘O Christmas. HAHAHAHAHA, oh God.
*Men Without Hats
27 comments December 20th, 2009