Random Crap: Friday Edition

Here are a couple of odds and ends stories floating around my brain from the last few days.

Jenna used her first curse word the other day, and Dan and I were impressed that she used it correctly. I had gone grocery shopping in the evening and when I returned home, I showed the girls I had bought their favorite treat du jour, Cheese Balls. (I really resist buying this for them and then I realized they are about 98% air, so a bowlful really is only about 6 grams of actual food substance.) Anyway. I held up the bag to show Jenna, who was in her pj's and moments away from brushing her teeth and going to bed. "Can I have some?" she asked.

"No. You can have some tomorrow. Go brush your teeth. It's time for bed." (See previous post about how I am the Meanest Mom People Have Ever Witnessed.)

Jenna turns on her heels and with quite a bit of vehemence says, "Dammit!!!" as she walks towards the bathroom.

Of course Dan and I told her that was not a nice word to say, but it was certainly one of our less- harsh rebuttals of behavior. Because we were desperately trying not to laugh.



Michaela lost a tooth yesterday! It is her fifth tooth out and it was a relief because it has been so loose it has impeded her eating and teeth-brushing. The Tooth Fairy came last night and brought her $2, which appears to be the going rate around here. She looks very cute with another hole in her mouth.



I finished up a dense, rich, very good book called Drop City by T.C. Boyle. My aunt recommended it and for the first 15 pages I was really struggling with his style and the content of the book. The book takes place in 1970 on a hippie commune in California. Their 'leader', who is supplying most of the cash they are living off of, gets chased off the land by the government for code violations and back taxes. They decide to head north to Alaska where the leader's uncle has some land he is no longer using. Of course they are completely ill-equipped to live in the secluded Alaskan wild, let alone survive a harsh winter there. The book follows the members of the commune, focusing on three characters there, as they adjust to communal living and the big move North. The author portrays them as real people, with needs and utterly human characteristics of selfishness, laziness, and possessiveness that clearly go against the whole "peace, love, and brotherhood, man" vibe of the commune. It becomes kind of funny as they all realize what a filthy, unsafe and boring existence they are leading which could literally kill them in Alaska.

The side effects of reading the book are twofold: 1) I have never been so glad that my husband works for The Man and we live a completely proletariat/ privileged (and sanitary) life, especially while being pregnant, and 2) I have started to refer to all men as "cool cats."

In any case, it's a very thought-provoking book and I recommend it just for the realistic portrayal of hippie life, which I was sort of obsessed with as a middle schooler, but obviously never came even close to experiencing.

Well, except in high school drama club... that was pretty hippie-ish.