Miracle Cure!

If I were wearing these Stuart Weitzman shoes, I wouldn't feel worn ragged in the slightest, even while, for example, hopelessly scraping burned oatmeal out of a brand new pot while the laundry churns out a pair of socks so that I could go outside. In these, I would not even need socks. Although perhaps (let me check. . . oh dear God, no) CERTAINLY I would require a fancypants pedicure before going anywhere even remotely populated with the non-blind.



What's this? ON SALE, you say?

Dilemma of the day: Hogwarts Lego to make six-year-old believe in Santa Claus OR mincing-down-the-Croisette heels for newly dreamy lilting mommy with Mediterranean clouds in her no-longer-bleary eyes to make six-year-old believe in home sweet home?

Shit Show

Either Kid can now read chapter books pretty fluently, or he has a photographic memory. Either one is kind of weird, but neither justifies why, once again, he was the last one through the school doors this morning. We careered to school, nearly took out a city bus and a cat (not really, but Kid believes it to be true), were temporarily blinded by the rising sun and the bits of frost on the window that I hadn't gotten in my frenzy of last-second scraping, and entered the alley in a cloud of gravel dust. He grabbed his backpack, scooted out of the back seat, blew me a kiss and took off running through the frozen field, shoes undone, jacket unzipped, arms and skinny legs flying in so many directions that it's nearly impossible to believe that he had a torso keeping them all together. Such fierce love for him as I have should surely be strong enough to get him to school on time so that he's not THAT Kid with THAT mom in THAT car. Every morning I seem to have a new excuse for the frenzy. This morning it happened to be that I discovered that Kid can read Jack Stalwart unassisted, so of course we had to read until I heard the school bell ringing 6 blocks away. Yesterday it was that I couldn't find a juice box for his snack. Tomorrow? Probably a rabbit will have been discovered in the laundry room along with a talking weasel.

And then I could be THAT mom with THAT talking weasel.

Workaround: brought to you by Pollyanna

Coffee percolator broken. Coffee fizz petulantly out of lid, all over counter, floor, coonhound. Coonhound disconsolate. Coffee addict jittery, cross. Percolator replacement cost $105. What to do?



Aaannnnnd: funny how the right hat can just change your whole mood.

Intervention

So I issued a cry for help. I mentioned DECOUPAGE. I thought that would do it. But no one invited me to a masquerade ball or to the opera or even for a pony ride in the country.

Which is weird--because up til now, my life has mirrored that of an Edwardian artistocrat.

Signs of Aging #1

When you get together with your best girlfriends and one of you brings along and distributes the feminine supplies she no longer requires. . . .

Thanks, menopause, for passing on the savings.

Theology FAIL

"Mom, what happens when you go to heaven and pick the wrong prune?"

If anyone can provide a reasonable explanation of how this happened, I'd be thrilled to know.

Now Playing

Periodically, I go through my iTunes library and clear out the "Last Played" and "Most Played" lists because if I should die horribly--or even, at my age, rather predictably of fatness, sloth, inattention, excitement at a Stampeders game--I don't think I could stand for people to know just how often I have listened to, say, Franz Ferdinand or Dolly Parton (whom you should really reconsider, you know) recently. I get on these jags perhaps not unrelated to my wackadoo case of OCD (you think?) during which I listen to songs over and over and over, until I have memorized every bass line, every warble, every chord squeak. I have been informed that I ought not to worry, teenagers do this all the time, but I have not been a teenager for pretty close to 30 years now.

Daniel Levitin says that we evolved to produce and consume music for six reasons: friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love. Overconsumption of music is for me a pretty clear case of requiring comfort. I simply need to know what will happen next. For 3:40, for example, I know exactly what I will be hearing, if left undisturbed during the length of "No You Girls."

Today however, 2:36 minutes in, right as the bridge was about to happen, predictably, with God in his heaven and all right with the world, I did not actually know what was going to happen next: namely, being pelted in the back of the head with two handfuls of fish crackers and an Alpha Percival Cyclone Bakugan. Nor was I comforted to learn that the Alpha Percival has amazing powers. Reading from the packaging, a small boy assured me that "Using its mighty cyclone spin, it can take down some of the largest opponents on the battlefield, striking with unparalleled accuracy and efficiency." But not with impunity. Oh no, not with impunity.

I shall now take comfort in the knowledge that for the duration of this timeout--roughly 15 minutes, shall we say?--I know exactly what will happen next.

NOTHING.