Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Older daughter:

“At camp today some guy sang Native American songs. But he wasn’t really an Indian, he was from America.”

Sort of reminds me of our trip to Florida last summer. Ever been in the car with a child who’s having a screaming fit? Apparently they’re contagious.

I went to go read to Caroline’s class today, which is always fun. The kids are so enthusiastic about stories. And they all listen in their own little ways. One girl likes to play with my toes as I read. Other kids just have the permanent wiggles. Other kids just do their own thing, which is fine. Generally, they’re really well-behaved, and even if they’re not paying attention, they’re doing it quietly. And they always ask for more stories, because it means they don’t have to do any work.

So after story time, they had a little independent reading time before lunch, and another kid brought over Frog and Toad Together and gave it to Caroline and me. I had this book when I was a kid, and I remember that there was something deeply, deeply disturbing about it, to the point that I didn’t like reading it even while I had some unhealthy fascination with it. So I seized the chance to read it today, wondering just what it was that upset me so when I was little. And we leafed through it, and it was perfectly innocuous.

As we were reading, lunchtime came, so Caroline ran to put the book back, but darn it all, I was not going to let it go. The kids lined up, but I ran over to the bookshelf and skimmed through to the back. Aha! Dragons and giants. Scary? Not so much.

Hmm. The Dream. Last story in the book.  Images from Google Books.

Wait, what?  Toad’s doing well up on stage and his friend is in the audience getting smaller and smaller and smaller and he just disappears?  Ay ay?

To a child, it’s just freaky.  To an adult, I have to wonder what the moral is – don’t excel?

My youngest child is in tears because she doesn’t want to take swimming lessons. It’s not so much the lessons that bother her (or her sister); they don’t like people telling them what to do. They want me to take them to the pool and teach them how to swim. Like I’m qualified. I told her that I had to go through the years of swimming lessons and had someone tell me what to do, so she should, too. That didn’t seem to work.

Sigh.

My daughter woke up crying this morning from a bad dream about me. She wouldn’t tell me what it was until this evening. She said that Daddy wasn’t home, and her sister was in the house, but I was sitting in a red truck in the driveway. She kept coming out to try to get in the truck with me, but I would roll up the window and ignore her. Just sitting there. No wonder she was so distressed. What an awful dream.

I gave her lots of love and cuddles today and played Mousetrap with her. She and I both lost to her sister.

The best part about working in the garden with the kids is that you can squirt them with the hose when you’re done. But then, with pre-meditated coldness, they insist on giving Mommy a big hug afterwards. The chumps.

Finally got the radishes, carrots, peas, and onions all set. Need to see if we can find some strawberry seedlings at the garden center, and maybe some spinach. The next batch goes in late March – stuff like cucumbers, squash, edamame, tomatoes, peppers, and corn. The viney melony/winter squashy stuff we’re going to plant in the front, unoccupied flower beds just for grins, because the watermelons took up so much real estate in the square foot garden last year.

Kid: Whatcha doing, Mama?
Me: I’m playing this game, Fallout 3. I’m not very good at it.
Kid: Why do you keep looking at your computer?
Me: I’m looking at a guide to make sure I don’t miss anything in the game while I play.
Kid: Isn’t that called “cheating”?

A post on MetaFilter noting the death of jazz singer Blossom Dearie took me to the excellent Schoolhouse Rock video she sang – Figure Eight.

My daughter came down while I was watching it and wondered at me for a while. She’d seen Schoolhouse Rock stuff, of course, but I explained to her that when I was a kid there were just four television stations, and only one chance a week to watch cartoons, so you’d better be there bright and early with your bowl of cereal on Saturday morning if you wanted to get in your good TV veg time. And how Schoolhouse Rock ended up teaching up stuff in spite of ourselves. And she thought I meant we didn’t have to go to school and just had to sit and watch cartoons instead.

The words. I have a way with them.