That
picture I posted at the bottom of the last entry... I got to thinking
about it, and it seemed familiar even though I'd just taken it,
and then I remembered a picture of me from around the same age.
So
that's me. Still do the furrowed brow thing, too. And here's Stealthpunch
Junior again:
I
black and white-ed it so it'd be easier to compare.
Is
it just me or are there similarities? Which I guess wouldn't be
too unusual since he did spring forth from my womb. I think his
nose is better, though.
===
Speaking
of noses and furrowed brows, this is the year for skin care. I am
appalled at the state of my skin and the mistake-me-for-a-ma'am-all-the-time
wrinkles. I must do something about it, even if it requires spending
lots of my husband's hard earned money to buy fancy products. No
botox, though. I draw the line at poison.
===
This
morning the boy and I went to our first music appreciation class.
It's like Gymboree but with tom-toms. It went pretty much as expected,
with sitting and clapping and then walking around in a circle singing
songs. He's the youngest by a few months so he's the only one not
walking, so while the others ran around and did sommersaults he
kinda just sat like a lump in my lap. Plus I don't like to sing
in public, so we're off to a great start.
Afterwards
we went to the gymnasium part of the community center and I borrowed
a basketball and sat the baby down on the free-throw line so he
could get a feel for things since from the look of it he'll be dunking
by nine, and then I met a dad who was hanging out with his baby
who turned out to be two days younger than SP Junior and was scooting
all over the giant gym in his walker. Hanging out with those guys
was I think more fun than the class.
I
got asked to join the city's Mom's group yesterday by the mother
of the club president. I went to the local city planning office
to protest having to pay my tiny publishing company business tax,
since mostly all I do with the P&B kids book these days is sell
it through Amazon, and they want me to pay all this money to run
a business as if I'm a big corporation. It's bogus and they only
want their greedy blackmail dollars, so I went in to yell at them.
The head tax guy, who apparently inspired the management guys in
Office Space, was having none of it and told me to pay up. I said
quite sincerely "And what if I don't?" whereupon he told
me they'd take me to small claims court and then shut me down. I
told him I would weigh my options. So this lady was listenening
to the whole thing and of course I had the baby with me, and at
the end of it all she tried to convince me to join her daughter's
mom's group and said it would be a good place to sell my book. Which
isn't a bad idea. But I don't know if I can stomach joining yet
another thing just to pimp a few sales.
===
In
an hour people are coming to clean the carpets and I'm very excited.
It's not great timing since it's still kinda wet in the mornings
and the dogs have muddy feet that always need to be cleaned, but
fresh carpets will be nice. Also I haven't talked about Beans going
to doggie boot camp over the holiday and how he's better behaved
now. But that's due to the electricity. Some of you will send me
hate mail for training him with a shock collar (when he's bad I
yell to Gray "Zap him!") but I swear to you it's the only
thing that works. He's much kinder and gentler now, but maybe that's
because his nerves are physically fried. We have to go to follow-up
classes for many weekends to come, mostly to retrain me. The trainer
called me out for being lame. "The dog is doing fine, it's
you that's the problem," he said. Nice. He made me put the
collar on my wrist to see how it felt before we signed up with him,
and I will just say that it wasn't horrible, but I'm also glad I'm
not a dog with behavior problems.
===
Tonight
I'm going to see "The
Business of Being Born" in Hollywood. (I just typed in
what I thought was the website and it porn stormed me with a thousand
popups, but that's the right one in the link.) There's a Q&A
with Ricki Lake and her director afterwards, so I'm guessing the
audience participation part will be interesting since it's all about
the childbirth industry and homebirth versus hospitals. As recently
as this morning in banjo class I was listening to one of the women
talk about what a miserable birth experience she'd had, and I was
bummed for her. It's funny how if you say you had a great birth
people think you're a freak. It should be the other way around.
===
I'm
going to go to the mall while the cleaners clean. Do you know what's
at the mall? The Apple Store. Will they have the new MacBook Air
in stock? This nerd can only dream.
Also,
on the subject of nerds, thank the good lord that American Idol
is back. It's always predictably the same, they never change the
format, it's just fresh with new good and bad talent each time.
If they ran it and Flipping Out back to back I would sit in front
of my television twenty-four hours a day.
===
I
leave you with the best not-of-baby picture I took in Portland:
