hodie's new school

so, after 4 fine years at MLC hodie will be going transferring to our neighborhood school Bridlemile in the fall. we decided this for a host of reasons, and we're pretty excited about it, although i must admit i'll sort of miss the bragging rights associated with being the parent of an MLC childling.

turns out though, that the academtic rating on this neighborhood school is actually better than MLC (which is a magnet) and more than one of the parents i met today had actually pulled their kid out of montessori/private school and applied for transfer into Bridlemile since it's such a good school. sweet!

so, sacrificing nothing in terms of quality of education, we are gaining the following:

1) neighborhood kids & activities. the nature of the magnet is that the kids come from all quadrants of the town and usually don't live near one another. nice for a varied demographic, not nice for playdates.

2) more "authentic" school experience. as much as i loved the touchy feel-y child centered education model for her when she was a kindergartener, the older she gets, the more structure i think she needs. not to mention the concept of grades (which they don't do at MLC) and a less insular social model. moreover they are getting ready to stick her class into 2 years of split grade, which we did not love the last time we did it.

3) SCHOOL BUS! WOOT! i have been driving her back and forth to school for 4 years. i'm tired.

so, on the whole, we're happy! and today was the open house for the school so they could come over and meet their new teacher. i thought after being so used to MLC, the least i could do was let hodie have one day to look around the new school and meet her new teacher so it wasn't completely overwhelming come fall.

and so i sat in my sub-adult sized chair in the library while she went off to meet her new teacher. i spoke with a whole new set of highly-entitled snarky parents (not leaving them behind apparently), and waited for her to come back and give me her impressions.

they had the whole experience set up to try and ease the kids into the transition. one step in this process was each of the outgoing 4th graders from Miss Good's class wrote a letter to an incoming member. you know, give them a little inside scoop, some insight into the 4th grade experience. well, what follows was the letter for hodie. (spelling and tense errors are those of the author and reproduced faithfully)

June 6th, 2008

Dear New 4th grader,

HI! My name is (not actually going to post the name). I'm 10 years olf and I was in Miss Good's class. I don't know how I did it but all I now is that it was torchure with Miss Good.

When I found out I was in Miss Good's class I was freaking out!!! I didn't kno what it would be like. I heard so much thinks about her like "she is the worst teacher ever!" or "She is SO Mean!!" And alot more.

Just to be nice I'm going to give you some tips on how to survive Miss Good's class. One is do NOT I repet do NOT turn in eney thing late!! She hats that. The second one is if you arnt paying attention she will get MAD!!! And the last one is never LIE!! If you do sometimes she knows it. Thank you for reading this note.

Sincerely, (not actually going to post the name)

bwahahahahahahaha. ahem. not exactly the most reassuring note. one must consider the source i suppose, but hodie is now totally paranoid that her new teacher is a tyrant with a lie detector embedded in her head. so, that's awesome.

can't wait til fall!!

Hodie Hilarity

So,

the child has been after me to let her get a pet. i have been opposed to this because generally i am not in favor of:

cleaning up poop
small rodents in my house
creatures without advanced limbic systems in cages
pet based aromas

all of which tend to accompany the pets she is suggesting she become the owner of. i have encouraged her to make friends with the pencils who have all manner of pets furry and reptile, swimmers and scamperers alike. she views this suggestions with skepticism.

then, apparently inspired, yesterday she said the following: mom, what i really want is something other than a pet. how about instead of a HAM-ster, i get a SIS-ter!!

because a sibling really is the ultimate pet

hodie sez:

if you are what you eat, it's better to be a potato than spaghetti. because potatoes are still kinda cute but spaghetti is not. plus it's totally not huggable but a potato pretty much is.

unassailable logic, that.

My Kid, She's funny

Current mood: amused

so hodie and i were talking about my tattoo next week

and she was all... "i know why they dont let kids get tattoos"
(me)"cause they'd get something stupid?"
(she) "well yeah, that, but also cause they are like the worst pain ever"

(me) "i've had worse pain..."

(she)"what kind? i mean besides emotional"

hahahahahahaha
she knows me so well

The Hunger Inside Me

is being caused by my ovaries. My toublesome, pesty ovaries.


It is not being caused by the need for actual food. Because I had some. Ok, I had a lot. Since waking up this morning I have eaten the following:

2 Black Cherry and Almond Clif Bars
3 handfuls of Chocolate Covered Pistachios
2-4 handfuls of Trader Joes Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips
1 6" Spicy Italian Sub
1 small bag Sour Cream n' Onion Lays
3-7 Wild Fruit Savers

And the morning ain't over yet. Jesus.

Plus also, that other hunger I am too much of a lady to mention here. The one in my pants.


Later:
Green Tea Frappucino
Nuts
Goldfish crackers


Someone may need to tackle me to stop this madness...

I fall down alot...

Certainly a lot more than any other adult I know anyway. I guess if I reflect on the matter at any length, I can say I'm not the most coordinated person I know, and its true my balance cannot be said to be the best around, but still. There's something so profoundly shocking and embarrassing about falling down when you are a full-grown adult. It rivals the aching that goes along with it for the next 3 or 4 days.

Life lesson #45387: Just because you hook your finger into someone's belt loop doesn't mean they aren't going to keep walking away.

Right.

The patients in my clinic

Are extra-strength hilarious.

A little old lady I was testing this morning told me "You look like one of those ladies on tv. You know, the ones who sell things?" I can honestly say no one has ever compared me to a QVC lady before, but I think it was about damn time.

Then, just now, I was checking some guy's insurance benefits and told him he'd be eligible again in 2008 and he looked at me and said "Well, when in aught-eight will that be?"



Aught-Eight?


That is augh-some.

If you are reaching for YOUR laptop rather than mine in this situation...

I think it's best if we just stay "friends"

My favorite part of trick or treating...

Apart from it being over that is...

The Halloween Hoodlum or The Purloined Pumpkin

Ahh family fun!

We went out to the haunted fantasy trail last night. We were treated to dry weather of moderate temperature and a waxing moon to set the spooky-ness at full blast. We got out to Wenzel Farm after dark and the whole place was lit up. Aria has expressed some trepidation about going after dark, thinking it would be too scary to take, but we all agreed it was much more fun at night.

We did the haunted castle, wandered back through the woods, and ran the pirate ship labyrinth all as usual. Managed to jump out and holler at key moments for the rewarding shrieks of my child. Good times.

Technically, this place isn't a pumpkin patch. They bring in pumpkins and scatter them around the trail, and if you want one, you can pay $4 to take one home. Considering I'd only be paying .19 cents a pound down at WinCo, I was not having any of it. Aria already had a pumpkin patch pumpkin, plus I had one left over from the pumpkin carving party I attended over the weekend. I felt like we were well stocked.

As we were winding up our visit Aria began looking around at the various pumpkin options available. We climbed the final hill up to the parking lot and I told her again I had no intention of paying $4 for a pumpkin when I already had one in the car. So my sister and I walk over to the car and get in, talking about the pictures we had taken and whether they'd turn out. I start the car and hear the pounding of little feet running toward the car. I turn around to see Aria sprinting up to the back door arms full of a gigantic pumpkin. She opened the door dumped the pumpkin in the backseat, climbed in over it and said:
"Come on let's go!" To which I replied.
"Where'd you get that pumpkin?"
"Well, you said you didn't want to pay for one."

Now, I realize that the responsible and parental thing to do would have been to lecture her sternly, make her return the pumpkin, and apologize. So, what I did instead was laugh my ass off and let her keep the spoils of her illicit pumpkin-snatching exploits.

I have a faulty moral compass.

America: FUCK YEAH!

The Best Game Idea EVER!

The only thing I know about this is its name: Super Monkey Poop Fight. Yet I stand by my claim with no more than that to go on.

Rightness, as opposed to wrongness...

BWAHAHAHAHA

Ahem

My daughter the Diplomat

I think it is a safe thing to suggest that we as humans are well served to consider the impact of our communications carefully. Sometimes in our haste to secure a particular outcome, we fail to consider the possible ramifications of our words. I know this happens to me constantly and it is a lifelong lesson for most people.

Apparently not for my eight-year-old.

Because she, she is canny in the extreme. She knows, for example, a staggering variety of curses and epithets, yet you will almost never hear one slip. She pretends to be oblivious to their existence, let alone willing to sink to their use. I know she knows them because I curse like a sailor. Just ask her, she'll tell you. And though she is ready to turn state's evidence on her loving mother in a heartbeat when it comes to the use of profanity, she continues to use the language of the sweet little child I want her to be. She does this because I will bust her ASS if she does not.

But this morning, I was treated to an entirely new level of tactical planning on the part of my child. It is one thing to operate under the halo of obedience, but this, this transcended mere self-preservation and displayed something more.

You see, she is too old to believe in the cultural mythologies I have gone to such pains to instill in her wee little head. My own mother, a powerfully crusty cynic of the most virulent stripe, was adamant in her unwillingness to entertain such notions as Santa, the Easter Bunny, or most pertinently in this case, the tooth fairy. Of course, she does believe in SASQUATCH, but that is neither here nor there.

When I became an adult and had a child of my own, I decided that the whole idea of a pantheon of benign gift-givers was a relatively desirable thing to have in your life as a little person. I knew that my own inexperience with this arena might have made me more eager to participate, but what are children for if not to compensate for one's own misspent childhood?

So I set about assuring her about Santa et al. and all was going well. The first rumblings of confusion on her part came when she was about 3 and she asked rather pointedly, why the tooth fairy wanted all these old used teeth, and why did she get different amounts of money from the tooth fairy when she was at home vs. at her father's house. I quickly explained to her that the tooth fairy was using the teeth to make crafts. And that market forces determined the value of the teeth at any given time as supply and demand were bound to fluctuate, so you could never tell just how much the tooth would be worth to the fairy on a given occasion. Way to use a childhood mythos to slip in an economics lecture.

She seemed to accept this explanation readily (which might also have been the result of the following internal dialogue: I have no idea what this crazy person is babbling about... ohh candy!)

At any rate, we haven't had any further conversations about the role or motivation of the pantheon in a while, apart from the "Sarah says Santa isnt real" to which I reply; "Sarah doesn't know everything."

Fast forward to present day. I know she knows these people do not exist. I think she KNOWS I know she knows. But we play along together because we both get something out of it: in my case it is a minor bolstering to the ever-more-quickly fading belief that my child is still innocent and fully able to enter into an alternate reality without question as to its validity aka- belief in magic. For her, well, she gets stuff. So.

So she lost a tooth last week. Wednesday to be precise. I wasn't home when this happened, and her Grandmother (the other non-crusty one) failed to mention it to me so I could act accordingly. When Aria woke up in the morning she mentioned to me that A) She had lost the tooth and B) Demand for crafts must be waaaay up so as to keep the tooth fairy from making to our house to collect her tooth.

Ahem.

So I assured her the tooth fairy would surely be around soon to get her tooth. We put the tooth in an envelope and I tried to make a mental note to take care of it that night. And then, she left for her dad's and I completely forgot.

And then this morning I rose to find this note sitting on my vanity:








BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Because you see, she realized that someone needed to be reminded that the tooth was languishing under her pillow, yet she also knew that she couldn't come out and say "Mom, hurry the hell up." or in any way imply that she KNOWS there is no tooth fairy, because she realizes if she does that, the end of the tooth fairy payments will have arrived. She instead opted for her only viable course of action which was to prod me to remind the tooth fairy about her wayward tooth. And it worked. I slipped into her room and slid the envelope from its place beneath her sleeping head and left 4 shiny quarters in its place.

Communication, so subtly crafted. That's my girl.

Punctuation is important?