WANTED: subdued santa

and so the search begins.  the search for the least creepy santa in the local area.  a santa who will not scare the bajeezus out of delilah maeve.  i have mentioned before that i often don't fit the profile of "traditional parent."  this would be one of those times.  but in this case it is not due to a missing mom gene.  it is because in this moment my brain is waging a battle with my nostalgia.

my brain: why are you feeling the need to subject your child to the torture of sitting on the lap of some stranger dressed in a poly-blend red suit with a face full of synthetic hair?

my nostalgia: you have always loved looking at the pictures of you sitting on santa's lap.  if you don't partake in this parental tradition then some day delilah will wonder why there are no pictures of her sitting on santa's lap as a child.  

thus the search.  which is potentially pointless because even if i do locate a jolly old elf with some realistic whiskers, statistically speaking, delilah maeve averages a forty-five minute idling time before she is remotely comfortable approaching a stranger.

last year we went to the children's christmas party at the knights of columbus.  she was totally freaked out by the santa.
 

this photo demonstrates the measure of proximity she would allow.  she wouldn't even look at him.  and her high pitched yelps that echoed through the hall were code for, "get me the eff away from this dude."  i don't blame her though.  his fake beard was so stringy and gross and it covered 97% of his face.  she's no fool.  she knew he was sitting on a throne of lies.  he even creeped the crap out of me and i love costumes.

in the end we may have to settle for another photo shoot with the midget santa from my childhood.

oddly, she's not creeped out by him.  maybe because she's larger in stature.  and maybe because he doesn't smell like beef and cheese.

peep show

there's something indecent going on in the bathroom at school.  not in every bathroom.  just in one particular bathroom. 

in this particular bathroom there was water damage last year.  this led to the replacement of the flooring.  well, they replaced the cream colored linoleum tile with black linoleum tile.  i'm sure the powers-that-be figured the black flooring would give the bathroom a nice clean look.  and they were right.  the floor does look nice and clean.  it perpetually looks like it's just been cleaned.  because after the installation the maintenance crew proceeded to wax the ever living crap out of the new black linoleum floor. 

it is so shiny that when you enter you grab the wall to avoid slipping on its faux wetness.
it is so shiny that if you asked it who was the fairest of them all it would answer back. 
it is so shiny that while sitting on the toilet you could bend over and pluck your eyebrows. 

i'm not exaggerating.  it is THAT shiny.  in most rooms a floor that shiny is a perk. 
in a bathroom... not so much.

at the beginning of the year i was in one of the stalls buttoning my pants when someone entered the bathroom and locked themselves into the next stall.  their shadow on the floor caught my eye so i looked down.  that's when i realized the problem with such a shiny floor in a bathroom.   i was basically standing on large black mirror which rendered the partitions between the stalls absolutely obsolete.  i could see EVERYTHING that was going on in the next stall at a very unflattering angle.  [shudder]

needless to say, i now avoid this bathroom. 
because it's like a perverse car crash.
and i would really want to look away.
or go in blind. 
but a bathroom is not the sort of room in which to blindly feel your way around.

i don't bake cookies. i bake mud pies

prick me with a pin
so I can fly about
aimlessly
releasing my contents
carelessly
control, purged
free from me

then
I'll
r
u
n on empty

most days i want to be four again.  not consistently.  but there is usually a moment or two when my desire to navigate the day in a dreamy, free-spirited way comes to the forefront of my mind.  four was my favorite age.  i have vivid memories of that time.  the time before i really went to school.  when i had a doll named mary who i blamed for all wrong doings.  when my culinary genius took the form of precisely concocted mud pies complete with ingredients of the creepy crawly variety.

when i was four i lived in a world intertwined between reality and fantasy.  i truly believed i could hover.  i was introduced to this ability through a series of reoccurring dreams.  i would be in my front yard playing.  suddenly i would jump and float through the air and land softly.  those dreams translated into my reality as i practiced this ability while playing alone.  i don't remember trying to convince anyone of my ability to hover.  i don't think i cared much whether anyone else knew i could do it.  except maybe for heather (our fox wire terrier) but she was always with me while i played so she did not require convincing.

today while i was playing in the dirt i reached up to brush a tangle of hair from my eyes.  in the process i smeared dirt across my cheek.  later i looked in the mirror and saw my four year old self looking back.  the same disheveled hair falling in my face.  the same perpetual smudge of dirt across the cheek.  the same dirt caked fingernails and hands.  and i smiled.  because even though i'm not chronologically four, i am fairly certain i am spiritually four. 

my yoda

i've been thinking a lot about my dad.  it's hard to believe it will be four years in march.  he was a quiet guy.  opinionated, but quiet.  he was also very funny.  but you wouldn't necessarily know that unless you met him after he'd had a few.  that's when he would let his guard down. 

i remember sitting with him in silence when i was young.  the silence felt uncomfortable.  but as i grew older i came to realize the silence was more than comfortable.  that we were often sitting silent in the same paradigm.  we didn't need to talk.  sometimes we'd be listening to something on the radio or tv, seemingly disconnected from each other, but then we'd chuckle in unison.  it took me a really long time to figure out how similar we were.  from the fire in the belly - to the creepiness of our identical legs.  

sometimes i revisit my old journal to reconnect.  i documented funny anecdotes there from when i moved home during grad school.  here are a few of my favorites:
_________________________________________________________________________

my dad is downstairs totally watching that american idol rip-off show.

you know, the one where they pass all the really horrible singers to the next round? and he's laughing hysterically. it's making me laugh just hearing him laugh. god he's funny.

_________________________________________________________________________

right now my parents are attending a stage performance of the graduate. they're going to see lorraine bracco naked. my father (who purchased the tickets as a gift for my mom) claims that he had no idea that their would be live nudity.

sure, dad. 

_________________________________________________________________________

my mother is obsessively clean.  a trait that plagued my childhood with chore lists, endless dusting, and screaming matches over "the missed spot." i used to joke with my dad about her ability to spot a lint ball from 50 paces.  even in a hidden spot nestled between the couch and the baseboard with a lamp in front of it.  i'm not exaggerating.  this woman had skillz.  however, i've made note since i moved back that she has toned down the cleaning bit.  i'm thinking it has something to do with needing reading glasses.

they painted my parents bedroom yesterday.  my dad said he's glad my mom wasn't around when they moved the furniture away from the walls because she would have freaked.  i quote:

"there were dust balls so big you could've saddled them and rode them around." 

_________________________________________________________________________ 

my dad on the topic of egg salad:

"it's like eating a faht sandwich."

______________________________________________________________________ 

it's bittersweet that we can now make egg salad without worrying about driving my father crazy with the residual faht sandwich smell.  i can't boil an egg without thinking about him.  but i haven't been thinking about him because i've been boiling a lot of eggs recently.  it's taken me almost four years to start thinking about how i feel about losing my dad.  it's taken this long to fully acknowledge the hole i have in my heart.  how i feel like a piece of me has perished.

because i am so much like my dad.
he taught me well the art of repression.

my "working girl" moment

i'm in love.
with the new copy machine at school.
i want to marry it and have ten million of its babies.

no longer do i have to stand around waiting for my colleagues to finish copying packet after packet from binders the size of small children.  no, seriously - their binders are only slightly smaller than the book that holds the guinness title for the largest single bound biography. 

[tangent: wasn't that video compelling?  i'm a bit confused as to why a photo wouldn't suffice.  like panning up and down repeatedly gives the book more credibility.]

back to my love affair...
i now have push button copying from the comfort of my rickety wooden midget chair.  today i had a job that required double-sided copying and stapling.  i hit print.  i walked to the copier.  and there were the copies... hot off the presses... just waiting for me.  i may have done a visible celebration lap dance for the copier.  i may have.  ok, i did.

this new nerdy love affair sparked in me a synthesis of ideas which i am aptly titling my "working girl" moment.  let me connect the dots for you...

DOT ONE:  recently i've been thinking a lot about invention vs innovation.  a braimbling which was further indulged while listening to the lovely british accent of sir james dyson, one innovator extraordinaire, on npr the other day.  DOT TWO:  i have been steeped in thinking about a new undertaking at school which led me to exploring the workings of several MIT media labs, including the personal robotics group.  one of the projects the group is working on is playtime computing.  DOT THREE:  my love at first copy job moment.   

so today, as i was enjoying a semi-private moment with my new girlfriend (she has to be female... she multitasks like a mofo.) waxing poetic about her versatility (this machine does just about everything imaginable.  at the present time i'm imagining her mixing me a really delicious cocktail. which is just about the only thing she doesn't currently do.)  i had an epiphany.  there is room for innovation here.  what this machine needs is a personal robot! one much like alphie.  it could come out from a door in the bottom of the machine, wheel its way to my classroom, and hand deliver my copy job as i sit in my rickety wooden midget chair.  now if i can connect that dot with the work of marcelo coelho, i would receive a cocktail with my copies.  or at least a latte.  an ice cream sundae?

"now get your bony ass out of my sight."

who said debbie is a downer?

hattie was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease last summer.  at six years old she has become quite an expensive pet.  years ago troy had a basset hound who was also an expensive dog.  this is one of the topics we were discussing with our neighbors last night over adult beverages.  debbie asked troy where he got the basset hound.  he had purchased it at a mall pet store.  which turned our conversation to the depletion of these types of pet stores.  you rarely see pet stores in malls anymore.  most likely because such establishments earned the reputation for ill treatment/care of the animals and for selling dogs acquired from puppy mills.

then the topic turned to debbie's petland (one such store that had been at the south shore plaza years ago.)  and debbie shares, "i once got a hamster there.  when we got it home i looked at it closely and realized it wasn't right.  i took it to my mother and told her 'mom, this hamster isn't right.' and i turned it around so my mom could look at it.  it had these bulges on it's butt.  they were like cysts.  so we took it back to debbie's petland.  the kid working behind the counter looked the hamster over.  then he told me there was nothing wrong with it.  it was a boy hamster."

[insert hysterical laughter]

while saying our goodbyes debbie realized their dog ollie had a red ticket stub stuck to his side.  she plucked it off of him and exclaimed,  "oh! i need that!  bj's is giving away a pearl necklace, so i had to buy a ticket!"

[insert more hysterical laughter]

as we are walking out the back door debbie looks at the tall tree in the backyard and proclaims, "we really need an adult swing out here."

[insert even more hysterical laughter]

i "like" to be amused

i'm highly amused by what people "like" on facebook.  from the mundane (chapstick) to the imperative (breathing).  i find it intriguing how these categories are highlighted when, after submitting a status update which includes the name jesus, a data sort is set in motion and the right sidebar informs me which of my friends "like" the bible.

my current favorites in the random "like" category include...

"the extremely awkward moment when an ugly person calls themselves ugly"
"i'm in an open relationship with alcohol, it fucks me regularly"
"getting shampoo in your eye and accepting the fact that you'll never see again"
"typing in gibberish because you're a goat and have no hands"

and therefore the award goes to...  joe.  these are all topics he "likes."  where the hell does he find this crap?  (this is a rhetorical question. i don't really want to know.  i could potentially get lost there.)

something else that highly amuses me:

the random crap we find on our classroom floor.

the children have left the room for lunch recess...

...you find random meat products on the floor.

the children have left the carpet after a group meeting...

...you ponder the one sock left behind.

the children have left the table after a reading group...

...you cringe at the used band aid under the table.

the children have left the cubby area in a whirlwind as they depart for dismissal...

...you return to the cubby area to find a hairnet on the floor.

i'm totally amused, yet totally baffled by the latter.  as far as i know, i do not currently have a lunch lady on my class roster.

the writer of this blog has left the table...

...you view this entry as the steaming pile of procrapstination that it is.

there's always room for neologism.
it's just like dessert.