Are you a boy or a girl?
I have a band-aid on!
My mommy says you shouldn't do that.
Wanna be my best friend?
What are you eating? Can I have some?
I'm (insert age) years old!
What's your name?
My cousin's a big kid! He's seven!
I pooped.
Let's ride bikes!
I watch PBS Kids! What do you watch?
Do you know [name of random friend from out of state]?
Add your own favorites in the comments...
I peel the stickers off fruit and stick them on the side of the sink and then leave them there. Over the day the sticker welds itself to the enamel sink and then it has to be scrubbed off. I could put the sticker right into the trash, which would be the logical thing to do, but I continue to stick the stickers on the sink and Warren continues to scrub them off.
I'm lazy and I don't deal with stuff. I will let the Netflix DVD that we've finished watching sit in the DVD player for days on end even though we have nothing else to watch. I forget to put reusable shopping bags back in the car because it's all the way downstairs in the garage and then I wind up using a zillion plastic bags. I will walk by the same mess, or live with something that needs fixing, for weeks because I can't be arsed to take the time to deal with it.
I don't carry cash with me. Ever. If I do have cash on me, I wind up buying stupid stuff like take out coffee and gum and other stupid things I don't need just because, hey! I have the money right here! Warren totally can't understand that. "Why don't you just put it in your wallet and not spend it?" he asks. Because I SPEND IT, that's why! That means whenever we go somewhere that cash is required, I wind up having to ask him for money the way a kid asks her dad for her allowance.
I spend way too much time on the interwebs.
I don't notice when shit goes wrong with the car. We'll be out on a rainy day and he will say to me, "When did you last change your windshield wipers?" and my answer is usually along the lines of, "Uhhhh...?" Or he'll be in my car after a lapse of several months and he'll ask me if I noticed that the steering wheel is vibrating like a wind harp in a hurricane. (Answer: No, not really, is there something wrong?)
I get pissed off and yell when the girls pee their pants or spill full cups of milk. In my defense, I deal with 95% of the spilled milk and urine situations chez Pig.
I complain about stuff I don't control and can't do anything about, like the 40 days and nights of friggin' rain we've had around here since mid-June, and did you know we had only EIGHT days of sunshine in all of JUNE??? WTF am I supposed to do with the kids when we can't go outside and can't go to the playground and - oh, sorry.
Re: The laziness mentioned above - I am totally lazy about what the girls eat. A lot of their dinners consist of things I can heat up, fry up, or toast up in 25 minutes or less. I'd rather make them some kind of cheese-and-starch combo that I know they'll eat than make a "real" dinner that India and Celeste will pick at only reluctantly. I feed them peas and baby carrots all the time because peas are easy to heat up and baby carrots come ready to eat. I don't make them try new vegetables because I don't want to listen to them bitch about it, yanno?
I cannot walk past a flat surface without piling crap on it. I swear, even if I have nothing in my hands as I walk past the kitchen counter, sh*t spontaneously generates and jumps onto the counter! Every day I come home from work and dump all the day's bumpf on the counter, and every night Warren comes home and asks, "Can we try to keep this counter clean?" It's a little tradition of ours. Stacking stuff on a flat surface also encompasses putting folded laundry on top of the girls' dressers instead of putting the laundry in the dresser drawers.
I love trashy reality TV. I would rather watch Real Housewives of Anywhere than most PBS Frontline shows (and I like Frontline, too!). Warren only got to watch the second half of each episode of We Shall Remain because I insisted on watching Dancing With The Stars on the good TV.
I've decided that the secret to a good marriage isn't the stuff you like about each other; it's the stuff that you hate. If you can look at the things that drive you absolutely batshit crazy about the inconsiderate jerk you married and still feel like you got a decent bargain, that says far more than any lovey-dovey hearts-and-flowers romantic nonsense. Let's face it, living with a fellow human being 24/7, there's going to be lots of things to dislike. Years ago I lived with a guy who was a really decent human being, but there were things about him I just couldn't stand and I wound up hating being with him. If the relationship had been stronger and based more in reality than on our mutual illusions of each other, those issues could have been surmountable. At the ripe old age of 41, I've come to realize that I'm probably not going to change all that much. Years from now, I probably will still be lazy, prone to leaving stickers on the sink, and impatient about ridiculous things. On the other hand, my bad habits don't include lying, gambling, stripping under a pseudonym, spending us into debt, or manufacturing crank in the basement - all of which goes back to my "good bargain" theory. Personally, I got the much better end of the deal when I married Warren, a fact that I refuse to tell him because I don't want that going to his head (although he does insist on asking me why I didn't pay off my student loans with the signing bonus from my incredibly lucrative first teaching job). We'll see how long it takes him to realize I said this, because he reads my blog only very infrequently (which miffs me no end, but I deal - see what I mean?).
So I was all relaxed and at peace in summer vacation mode until I read this post (Me No Cavewoman) by Tense Teacher. (It's amazing how my profession, which I dearly love and plan to keep doing 'til my ten toes point to the sky, can also raise my blood pressure to red-line levels in the space of, oh, five minutes!) She admits in the opening paragraph that she's "a bit of a geek," then proceeds to list the content of a tech workshop she attended on new technology, that being, "Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, touch-screen technology, voice-over IP, MP3 players, cell phones, blogs and wikis." Then she continues on, "Seriously? That is “new” technology?" All right, so she's an early adopter in a course that deals with what is now much more the mainstream, and it didn't break any new ground for her. I hate wasting time, so I can relate to her frustration, even though I know there's a lot I still have to learn about those topics (and don't plan to, so there you go). But then she goes on to make a statement that REALLY burned my cheese:
"I just don’t understand people who want to teach children but don’t take the time to continue learning themselves."
Well, that's a hell of a conclusion to reach, and it's based solely on the fact that a lot of her fellow attendees weren't very comfortable with technology. I agree with the sentiment, of course, but TT's whole definition of learning seems to be based on computer literacy and that alone. That's roughly akin to saying that the only subject area that matters is x (fill in the blank - math, science, English, history, art, philosophy, whatever) and any other subject doesn't really count as learning. Technology's great, and it has its place, but in the end it just a tool - and any educator worth his/her degree should have lots of tools from which to choose. I feel about technology the way I feel about my car: I want to use it to get from Point A to Point B, and then I don't want to think about it. My husband, on the other hand, gets all engrossed in calipers and brake pads and adjustable pillow ball front
camber/caster plates (yeah, I had to cut and paste that). So I use the car to get from Point A to Point B, and I put gas in it and ask him to change the oil, and he putters around with his camber/caster plates, and we both get what we need out of it - so who's to say which one of us has a more "worthy" goal for using the car?
"What's that?!" India points at the computer screen. We are looking through old photos the post-millennial way, and we've come across a picture of my grad school buddy Karin's Hawai'ian wedding.
"That's Karin and Geoff getting married," I tell her. (You may remember Karin from previous posts, and in case you're wondering, yes, somehow she manages to get me in trouble even in two-dimensional, pixilated form.)
"Why is Josie in the picture with them?" India wonders.
"Well, dear," I search my brain for the words to explain this in a way a four-point-seven-year-old can understand, "Geoff is Karin's second husband, so he's Josie's stepfather. Josie went with them to Hawai'i."
"How come I couldn't go to your wedding?" India asks accusatorily. Okay, so my brilliant explanation didn't exactly go down well.
"Because, honey, you weren't born yet," I remind her.
Later that night, over dinner, India announced that she wants a new stepdad and a new stepmom. Why? Because she wants to wear a pretty dress and be in a wedding, of course! "But who's going to look after us while you're out finding new husbands and wives?" she wondered out loud. Then her face brightened. "I know! Nonni and Poppi can look after us for the weekend while you go out!" (Clearly this girl has absolutely no idea of my dating history, or she would have scheduled another decade or three for me to find Husband #2.)
"How about if Mommy and Daddy just stay married and then we won't have to go looking for new husbands and wives?" Warren proposed.
"But then I won't get to wear a pretty dress like Josie," India objected. Then she thought about it for a moment. "I guess it would be easier," she conceded.
"Oh, good." I said, and Warren rolled his eyes at me. "I'm glad we have your approval."
Dear SAHMs,
I have a question for you: Just what, exactly, am I supposed to do with these kids all day, anyway?
It's quarter to nine in the morning. They've breakfasted, dressed, watched some PBS Kids, tattled on each other, looked at books, showed me their new skills (turning lamps on! petting the cat!), sang songs, and run around like heathens and we have the whooooooole rest of the day to get through. It's been raining for the past forty days and forty nights, so the ground squishes when you walk on it and the mosquitoes are as big as hovercraft. So much for playing outside. Neither girl can swim, the local pool is over their heads at its shallowest point, and they're too big for me to hold both of them at once anymore. So much for swimming. Any other ideas, loyal readers???
With apologies to Toasty, I can't comprehend the whole I-want-to-be-there-for-every-minute-of-their-childhood philosophy. There are trained professionals out there who are much, much better at early childhood development than yours truly, and hey, we all gotta make a living, right? I know I need to get my act together and make a calendar of playdates and little-kid events and excursions, but truth be told, I just don't damn well feel like it right now. My entire professional career is predicated upon thinking up things for kids to do. Now I have to do the same thing WITHOUT getting paid for it, all summer long, for two little people who seem to find my efforts only partially satisfactory at best. Great.
Is there a book out there titled, What To Do With Your Little Kids When You're Bored Out of Your Mind? Because if there is, I'd buy it.
Sincerely,
SP
When I was a kid in the 70's, all my parents listened to was public radio. I knew Robert J. Lurtsema's sonorous baritone well before I knew about Top 40 radio. I had to go over to my best friend Kari's house to listen to WIGY on the clock radio (the kind that had the numbers written on flaps that flipped over every minute with a definitive snap) or to her big sister Kelli's record albums. That's how I became familiar with ABC, 1, 2, 3 and Rockin' Robin and the other Jackson 5 hits.
When I was a preteen in dance class, we did cross-floor moves to Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough and Workin' Day and Night. Years later I sampled a couple bars of the latter for my JV cheerleaders' competition dance routine.
I was a sophomore in high school when Thriller went supernova. Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince presented an alternative version of pop culture in a corner of the world that had previously been much more aligned with Foghat, Bad Company, and Lynyrd Skynryd. They were an urbane, edgy, and glamorous presence on MTV and Friday Night Videos, and I loved every minute of watching them. One kid in my class even wore one glittery glove to prom, and if you don't think that took huge cojones in rural Maine, circa mid-80's, think again.
I rolled my eyes in college when Michael Jackson tried to protest in that sweet, high tenor that he was really, really Bad. MTV stopped showing videos, Nirvana and Pearl Jam made rain-soaked, plaid-shirted West Coast ennui cool, and Michael Jackson became increasingly known for his eccentric behavior and appearance as he retreated farther and farther into a world of his own making.
In wedding reception after wedding reception in my 20's and early 30's, white people danced awkwardly and enthusiastically to the old Jackson 5 hits. They were songs the DJs knew would get people my age up and dancing without offending the older generation.
I started coaching cheerleading. Michael Jackson only made the news when he did something weird or was brought to court, while I tried to teach the girls to mimic the sharp-yet-fluid, totally synchronized dance style he made famous (with widely varying degrees of success).
I was at home on the porch when my coworker (who was in eighth grade the year I started teaching) texted me the news that Michael Jackson had died. Thriller came out literally a lifetime ago. The Jackson Five were long ago consigned to the oldies stations. Shawn Johnson danced to PYT on Dancing With the Stars last season. And Michael Jackson had been working long, hard hours to prepare for a tour he was hoping would bring him back to relevance.
I know many people will say he died too soon, too young, tragically. I hesitate to say that. For this man-child, the boy who performed like an adult and the man who hid behind the mask of childhood, I wonder if this isn't the kindest outcome. The consummate performer and artist always was an enigma as a person, unreachable behind the sunglasses on his increasingly altered face. Some part of him seemed forever trapped in his heyday, longing to return to that time period. We all know people like that, people for whom high school or college was the apogee of their experience and who struggle to recapture that part of their lives until you become embarrassed for them. It's sad enough to witness in your high school classmate who can't get over not being in the popular crowd anymore; it was tragic watching Michael Jackson do it for so many years.
I feel sad for his children. Their existence can't be an easy one to begin with, and now they have lost the central parent figure in their lives.
I feel sad for his family, many of whom went on their own strange tangents as well. Fame ultimately was not kind to them on the whole.
I feel sad for my generation. We stand on the cusp between young and no-longer-young, and, as much as I would never go back nor give up anything I have, loss of youth is always a melancholy thing.
I wish peace for Michael Jackson, who looked to be such a lonely and ultimately solitary soul. Whatever troubles or struggles he knew in this life are behind him now.
He stood with one foot in our past, the past that included the hit-making machine of Motown and disco beats and 8-track tapes, and one foot in the first days of globalized, visually-based, 24-hour information and entertainment. Whatever else he may have done, perhaps his most lasting legacy is that he both witnessed and helped to usher in this era.
So long and farewell, Michael. So long and farewell.
Today is my last official teacher day and thus the first day of my vacay. That's good.
You know what's better than the first day of vacay? The first day of vacay when it's also the day of your housecleaner's fortnightly visit.
You know what's better than the first day of vacay in a clean house? The first day of vacay in a clean EMPTY house, because your husband took the little one to pick up the big girl from Camp Nonni-Poppi.
You know what's better than the first day of vacay in a clean, empty house? The first day of vacay in a clean empty house, followed by the SECOND day of vacay in a clean, empty house because they're not coming back 'til Saturday!
You know what's even better than the first and second days of vacay in a clean, empty house? The first and second days of vacay in a clean, empty house UNINTERRUPTED by the curriculum work you had scheduled because the meeting fell through.
You know what's even more better (can something be more better? you bet it can!) than the first and second days of vacay in a clean, empty house uninterrupted by meetings? Two uninterrupted days in a clean, empty house with a novel you've been dying to read and haven't had time to do so since, um, last August!
You know what's even better than two uninterrupted days in a clean, empty house with an eagerly anticipated novel? Two uninterrupted days in a clean, empty house with an eagerly anticipated novel AND most of a hand-packed quart of homemade chocolate ice cream left in the freezer.
Now if you'll excuse me, I plan to sit on the porch for an indeterminate length of time with my seltzer water and the last installment of Harry Potter. I'll stop to have dinner. Or maybe I'll just skip dinner and head straight for the ice cream. 'Cuz today feels like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one!
Since it has been raining since, um, forever, and there's nothing new going on with the kids (those genetically mine and those assigned to me by the district), and the big party that's making me all angst-y hasn't happened yet, I figure this is the perfect time to dig into the Caroline archives and offer an anecdote from my storied past.
My first quote-unquote real job after undergrad was working as an "administrative assistant" (i.e., secretary) for a consulting firm of I/O psychologists. For those of you who stopped paying attention after Psych 101, I/O stands for industrial-organizational, and it means that instead of studying why a specific individual is batsh*t crazy, you study why entire groups of people (for example, your beloathed coworkers at your local cubicle farm) are crazier than sh*thouse rats (why small mammals of the mouse persuasion are so closely associated with mental imbalance, I do not know, but there it is). These I/O headshrinkers, being experts in workplace dynamics, were just about as nutty and difficult to work for as one would suspect. As an idealist and a neophyte to the World of Work I was horrified, just horrified, that there would be so much as a whiff of dysfunction in a consulting firm that was hired to ameliorate the dysfunction of other work sites, but that just shows you what I knew when I was 22 (f*ck all, if you couldn't figure that out for yourself). (I imagine the 22-year-old me was just a joy and a pleasure to have around as a subordinate, too. Ahem.)
Anyhoo, one of the founders of the firm was a Harvard Ph.D., and as the saying goes, you can tell a Haahvahd man, but you can't tell him much. Dr. F. was a brilliant man, but definitely of the absentminded professor/save the world but forget to put on trousers variety. Proof? He filed a lawsuit against his insurance company because he had a house that burnt down and HE had allowed the insurance to lapse because he ignored the bills in the mail. "Que?" I can hear you thinking on the other side of the flat screen, and you would be right, but to Dr. F.'s way of thinking, since he hadn't realized those were cancellation warnings in the envelopes with the bright red stripes on them, and he wasn't aware that he had fallen in arrears on his payments, then it didn't really happen! (That doesn't work for you or me, but then, we don't have Harvard degrees or the money to lawyer up and drag it through court, a fact that used to make me seethe with righteous indignation in my aforementioned young, idealistic, and hand-to-mouth days. Now I realize it's the way of the world, but back then it made my blood boil.)
... then I'd like to start being fond of them RIGHT NOW.
That is my clever way of saying I am not going to miss this year's cherubs. As any teacher can tell you, each year's class is both similar and different. They're similar in that all groups of kids have the same cast of characters: Smart kids, dumb kids, quiet kids, and rambunctious kids; scholars and athletes and doofuses and sweethearts. They're different in that the group chemistry - how they work together, how they act as a group, the impression they leave - differs, sometimes wildly, from year to year. Take the Class of 2005, or as I like to call them, the Best Class EVAH! They were truly fun to be around, and I liked the vast majority of them probably 90% of the time. Looking back at my class lists, I didn't have a single class of '05ers that made me want to turn the page and move on. The Class of 2004, on the other hand? Not so much. I liked a lot of those kids as individuals, but as a group, they just weren't very nice. It was kinda hard to feel warm and fuzzy about a group that deliberately screwed up their state testing to make the school district look bad.
I've been trying to figure out why this particular cohort hasn't found favor with me and I think I have it: This group doesn't get it. They don't understand when they cross the line between harmless goofing around and serious misbehavior. No matter how many times we explain, no matter what we say or do or try, they Just. Don't. Get It. They never miss an opportunity to misbehave. When we went to the high school for their step-up tour, former students in the halls greeted us with warm hellos, then caught a load of our little charges punching each other, running around, making fun of the upperclassmen and basically behaving like submorons. "Is this class really bad?" they whispered to us in horror. "We weren't like THAT last year, were we?" Hastily we reassured them that no, no, they weren't nearly as heinous; this year's vintage of 8th grader was just particularly sour.
So that was Monday. Since then, we've had TWO different boys on our team get punched right in the junk because they noodged and they noodged and they noodged and they noodged until, WHAMMO! The people they were pestering just snapped and went for the giblets. Such is the group we have this year that when we teachers heard about the incidences, our reaction was less one of surprise than resignation (rapidly followed by the drafting of a wish list of future victims). This morning, after Crotch-Shot, The Sequel transpired, we had a team come-to-Jesus meeting where we told the kids, in no uncertain terms, in plain black and white, with no nuances, that they are NOT ALLOWED PHYSICAL CONTACT OF ANY KIND for the remainder of our time together. There will be no playing tag, no bumping the backside of one another's knees, no slaps upside the head, no pushing, tripping, poking, nudging, elbowing, or any other form of touching that involves the violation of any other human being's personal space. That edict was followed by the dictum that, should any of those events transpire, offenders are not to respond to reprimands with denials, eye rolls, imprecations muttered under one's breath, or deliberate walking away before said reprimands are completed. Finally, should anything untoward occur from that moment forward, the offenders will be summarily removed from any or all end-of-the-year celebratory events, with no chance of reprieve.
The room was silent.
The eyes were downcast.
The body language was defensive.
The message - FINALLY - seemed to have hit home.
So you can imagine my consternation when, later that day, one of the prime violators of the no-tag rule stopped to ask me a burning question.
"You know how we're not supposed to touch each other?" he asked.
"Ye-ee-es," I answered warily.
"Will I get in trouble if I do this?" he queried, raising his hand as if to backhand someone. "What if I'm just trying to make someone flinch," he continued, "and I'm not trying to hit them?"
I gave him the Cold Stare of Death. "What do you think will happen?" I asked stonily.
"I'll get in trouble?"
"Yeah. You'll get in trouble."
"Oh," he said, as if he was just realizing that, if we have a no-touch rule? Gee, then doing something that JUST MIGHT HAPPEN to approximate THE EXACT SAME BEHAVIOR that his teachers are TRYING TO ELIMINATE might not be the best choice to make at this particular point in time.
And it only took 170 days for these guys to figure it out.
I don't know who's going to be voted Most Likely to Succeed or Best All-Around four years hence, but I do know who's going to win the First Freshman To Be Stuffed In A Locker By A Senior competition next year.
P.S. My ambassador from ManLand (a.k.a. my coworker's husband) reports that, when you are a middle school boy, you have to make a very big deal about any threat, real or perceived, to the well-being of your goolies. According to him, getting decked in the business offers a golden opportunity to prove to all and sundry that, HEY! WE GOT TESTES IN THE HIZZOUSE, YO! So even if your wedding tackle would be hard-pressed to fill a quarter-cup measure, any shot to the crotch area has to be answered with an Academy-award winning performance of writhing, squirming, and doubling over in pain, preferably with a soupcon of gasping for breath to round it all off. Then you have to swagger around like John Wayne just off his horse for the remainder of the day to accommodate your tender, bruised man tonsils.
P.P.S. I had NO idea just how much fun I was going to have thinking up euphemisms for the male pundenda! Really! It's a pity I don't have boy chilluns to initiate into manhood, 'cause now I am ready for 'em! Hey, this is a perfect opportunity for audience participation: What's your favorite nickname for the equipment?
P.P.P.S. If Warren ever gets around to reading this post, he's going to grump about the fact that I'm getting my XY intel from an outside source. "I'm a man," he'll point out, in a somewhat aggrieved tone, "how come you're citing other people's husbands for this?" I just want it known as a matter of public record that my hubs has never, not ever, not even once, ever offered me so much as one helpful insight into the psyche of the under-15 male. He probably will console himself by thinking that he is way too mature to think that way anymore. Which brings up a good point. But I will leave you to make your own deductions about the relative maturity and grown-upped-ness of my current ambassador.
I have terrible news.
I have a party in two weeks and I have nothing to wear.
This would not be a big deal, except that this party is being hosted by, and attended by, relatives of Warren's. Warren's relatives, as a collective group, are tall, willowy, gracious, outgoing, professionally accomplished, personally talented and socially adept. I, on the other hand, am short, squat, and socially awkward. I teach eighth grade for a living and my most noteworthy talent seems to be writing down the snarky things I say in my head for other people to read, a habit for which I receive exactly no remuneration or wide-scale public acclaim. On top of that, I suck at being sociable at cocktail parties where I don't know the majority of the attendees. I can't hear well when there are a million other people talking around me, so my "small talk" tends to consist of me yelling, "Excuse me?" and "What?" a lot to someone who pretty much didn't want to talk to me in the first place. Then I wind up standing somewhere on the sidelines, getting stepped on a zillion times since people don't tend to look down a whole lot when they're looking around for the bar.
As the joke goes, Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
At the ripe old age of forty-one, I have made peace with most of my personal flaws and foibles. I have learned to live with the fact that I'm an introvert. I do not usually fare well in social gatherings if I don't already know most of the people there. I also don't have any sense of how to dress for those occasions that fall outside the three categories of things for which I have an internal dress code, those being work, weekends, and weddings. For example, my friend Toasty invited me to her lovely daughter's first birthday party last year, which was a huge neighborhood shindy involving ideas I shamelessly poached for my own daughter's fifth birthday extravaganza. It was held on a weekend, so I arrived in my usual Saturday mufti of shorts, t-shirt, and athletic sandals, with an air of dishevelment about the hair and frenzy about the eyes, if I remember correctly. Apparently I was the only mom who didn't get the memo to dress in a breezy cotton sundress accessorized with a sweater and cute dressy sandals, because that's what every other mother at the party was wearing. I mean, damn! Is there some kind of sub rosa woman-to-woman grapevine that spreads the dress code through nonverbal communication? "Psst. We're all wearing capris and Indian-print tops to the preschool picnic. Pass it on!" How is it that everyone else figures these things out and I can't? Did I miss the boat by not joining a sorority in college? Did someone pass out PIN codes to unlock the door to middle-class momhood and I forgot to write it down?? What am I doing wrong???
So now I have to figure out something to wear that is dressy, but not too dressy, and stylish, or at least not hopelessly out of date. And then I have to wear it for several hours, preferably without spilling something down my front. And I have to make sparkling conversation while hoping and praying that my adorably-dressed children aren't wetting themselves, eating all the canapes, getting into fights with their cousins, or some combination of the above. Just thinking about all of this is making me slightly queasy. Maybe I can hire Toasty to be my cocktail-party stunt double! She seems to know what to wear, say, and do in these situations. Then I can stay home in my JCPenney's flannel pj pants and hunt through the TV listings for Real Housewives reruns while she dazzles everyone with my social acumen. It's a win-win!
Being ever the optimist, I can see one silver lining around this particular cloud. At least I am not a member of the extended Obama/Robinson clan, because being an introverted underachiever at their family reunions must REALLY suck! Imagine that conversation: "Hi, Michelle!" [awkward silence] "So, um, how's the White House treating you?" [longer and even more awkward pause] "Me? Well, I'm, uh, still blogging. Yep, I passed the 500-post mark recently! I don't suppose you've had time to read my latest post, have you? No? Well, you're busy. What? WHAT? I can't hear you very well. I'm just going to, uh - you'll excuse me - yeah! Let's get together sometime! My calendar's pretty open. Good talking to you!"
