Some Pig

Unreality Check

Warren has taken the smalls upta The State Formerly Known As Home to go bother my parents for the weekend, leaving me with just my thoughts and Murphy, the Co-Dependent Dog, for company. It's heaven!  I get to do chores from start to finish, throw out things the kids never use but would whine about, eat food straight out of the fridge without getting caught, and do schoolwork at odd hours of the day. 

And I get to indulge my jones for Real Housewives of Orange County. 

Yes,  I loves me some RHoOC.  The other versions all are just ... off in some way.  The Atlanta set strikes me as being perpetually on the brink of throwing down, the Beverly Hills gang takes themselves way too seriously, and I can't watch the Real Housewives of NJ for longer than seven seconds before Teresa's voice makes me want to punch her in the solar plexus.  But the OC is the ne plus ultra of the franchise.   This group is so internally contradictory, the entertainment is endless.  They are operatically trivial.  Unself-consciously self-absorbed.  One moment, they are screeching in disgust and recoiling from food served to them at a dinner party, and the next minute, they're talking to the camera about how classless and ill-mannered each other can be.  [An aside:  Even my ultra-finicky eater, the one who refuses to eat anything at home that isn't starch and cheese, knows  the expectation is that you try what's put in front of you when you're at someone else's house, and if you don't like it, you eat enough to be polite.  Really,  ladies, if a seven-year-old can do it, anyone can do it.] 

So why do I love this show?  I love this show because my problems are boringly average ones, like who's going to take the car to the garage, and what are we going to do about our aging parents, and theirs are entertainingly shallow.   One woman (the blonde one) freaked out because she found *one*  tortilla strip on her dinner plate, and EVERYONE KNOWS SHE DOESN'T DO CARBS.  Another one (the brunette) spent her time crabbing about the size of her house while the camera panned through a McMansion of Brobdingnagian proportions because the baby's room is too far away from the master suite.  I can solve that problem in a fast hurry - I will happily volunteer to let her family live in my three-bedroom raised ranch for a week, and then we'll see how big a problem it is to have too much space.  One of them (the blond one again) went to a fondue restaurant and then got upset when she found out that all the food was served with cheese.  Because, yeah, fondue is known as a health food. 

Could anything be as unintentionally amusing as watching a gaggle of bottle-blond Botoxed bimboes with boob jobs moan to one another about how they are totally over all the drama and how they just want everyone to be real?  We're talking about a group of women here who have to have their hair styled just to go outside the house; if they truly got "real" and took off the nails, hair extensions, spray tans, fake eyelashes, lip plumpers, Spanx, and all the other gear they consider necessary to get through the day, there wouldn't be anything left but a little pile of silicone and Lycra.  It's what I imagine life was like for the Tier II-popular girls in high school; you know, the girls who spent all their time together jockeying for social status and boyfriends even though they couldn't stand one another.  (I say 'imagine' because yours truly was nothing BUT real in high school - really awkward, really loudmouthed, and really, really far down the social scale.)   Truly, it's hard to imagine the burdens these women labor under.  In this world of wickedness and woe, it's nice to know that some people's worst problem is whether or not someone snuck a carbohydrate onto their plate.  Carry on, Real Housewives of Orange County!  And if I dare say so myself, keep on keepin' it real!

Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Nick TV

This post is intended as a public service to all middle-school-bound kiddos currently hiding from the heat by sitting in the family room and watching iCarly reruns.  Before you begin your middle school years thinking that you're walking into a real-life version of Hannah Montana, I need to step in and set you young'uns straight:

1.  Take a look at your class photos for the past five or six years.  See those kids - the ones with the buck teeth, cowlicks, coke-bottle-bottom glasses, and awkward retainers?  These are your classmates.  You will not walk into school on the first day of sixth grade and suddenly be surrounded by a pack of well-groomed, apple-cheeked, child-model-worthy preadolescents in a studiedly diverse range of ethnicities and heritages.  

2.  Open your closet and take a look at your clothes.  If you have an older sibling of the same gender, open his or her closet and get a good gander, too.  This is what you will be wearing to school, and believe it or not, you will wear the same clothes more than once.  You will not have a wardrobe consultant, be offered product placement opportunities to sport the latest tween fashions, or have different accessories for every outfit.  In fact, you will look nothing like Zack, Cody, Nick, Joe, Carly, Hannah, Zoe, or (reaching back in time here) Raven.  The only exception to this is for boys, who all have Justin Bieber's hair (although if you ask them, they hotly deny that their hair looks ANYTHING like his).

3.  When you go to school, you will be expected to go to class, pay attention to what goes on in class, and retain at least some of what you are taught in class.  Surprisingly, instruction lasts longer than the three minutes maximum ever shown on tweener fare.  Furthermore, your teachers will not look as well-dressed or well-rested as the TV versions, and they will not obligingly turn away to correct tests or conference with another student at the exact moment that you want to have a critically important conversation with a fellow student about an issue of deep and abiding concern to you. 

4. Every night, you will be given homework and you will be expected to do it.  Doing your homework is not just a plot device thrown in to give your character a reason to be sitting at the desk in your room so that your mother, the former international-supermodel-turned-award-winning-graphic-designer, or your dad, the rock-concert-promoter-who's-really-a-secret-agent, can come sit on your bed, ask you what's wrong, and then impart wise counsel before you hug each other.

5.  Speaking of your family, what you have now is what you got, kid.  You not going to wake up and find that your stoopid older brother has suddenly become a movie star, or that your mom and dad are really cool and they've been hiding it from you all along. 

6.  Let's talk about that room, too.  Take a look at your bedroom.  See the decor, which has not been changed since you were five and entranced with (pick one) butterflies/Tinkerbell/Tom Brady/superheroes?  You will not be getting a redecorating job by a top Hollywood set designer.  Notice the lack of a high-def TV with DVR, laptop, cellphone, and Wii dedicated to your personal use? You will not have those, unless of course you already do, in which case I'm the dummydope and not you.

7.  Believe it or not, not all football players are stupid lunkheads who weigh 215 at age 12.  Not all girls who aren't your two best friends are rich and mean.  In fact, some rich kids are nice and some football players are skinny and some kids are mean and some are f'ed up. That is called "demographics".  

8.  Most schools do not have gym uniforms.  For some reason, Hollywood types think that gym uniforms Impart a note of wholesome middle-Americana, so tween shows often feature a scene where everyone is wearing matching red shorts and white t-shirts with the imaginary school logo on it (although now that I think about it, this may be a necessary move to counterbalance the patently unrealistic level of cleanliness and attractiveness of the fictional student body).  Also, cheerleaders do not wear their uniforms to school all day, every day.  

9.  Point of fact: When someone suggests putting on a sixth grade talent show, no one is going to throw together a band that manages to write, produce, and sing a whole set of original songs after four days of practice after school (represented on the show by one five-minute segment of one rehearsal, in which a carefully scripted conflict is hashed out and harmony restored to the group).  In fact, believe it or not, not everyone in your age group is in a band, wants to be in a band, or is thinking about starting a band.  Those few kids who say they are in a band are rather grandiosely describing what is, in reality, a random collection of kids who get together to play loudly and talk about how they're going to make it big once they learn actual chords and stuff.

Well, I'm glad we got this straightened out!  Now turn off the computer and go outside, but not until you make your bed.  Don't forget to listen to your mother, and DON'T MAKE THAT FACE AT ME, I CAN TELL EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE DOING.  Enjoy your last five weeks, kiddos, and we'll see you on August 30th!

Funny, That Was My Response, Too

So I'm blogging around, looking for distraction from (in)Decision '08, when I chance to open up Suburban Turmoil.  And right away I get smacked in the retinas with this:

 

I don't think these two are studying for their trig final, hmmm?

Yeah.  This is a real, live promotion for a real, live show on the teevees aimed at real, live KIDS.  Kids!  Kids who should be passing around a dog-eared copy of Forever and cringing with embarrassment when that scene from When Harry Met Sally plays on the movie channel and they're watching it in the living room with their parents!  Kids who are but a few years removed from watching SpongeBob and not knowing if they should be a ballerina or an astronaut. KIDS!

The part about this that really skeeves me out is the fact that, while the show's makers may protest that these shows are meant for older teens, such as juniors in high school and up, I can tell you that's not who's watching it.  When I taught upperclassmen, we'd often talk about their TV viewing habits. In my experience, older teens are generally way too busy to watch a lot of network TV.  The school-oriented kids are too busy with sports and yearbook and Spanish Honor Society and mock trial and all that.  The car-oriented kids are too busy working their two and a half under-the-table jobs so they can afford a car and car insurance and gas money and car repairs.  The slacker kids are too busy on-line gaming and skating and making videos of themselves doing sick tricks to post on YouTube and watching whatisface videos (Tony Hawk?) on their PS 2's.  The drama geeks are too busy sitting around the auditorium for hours on end talking about life and how superficial it all is and how very, very fake and phony the adult world is and how they'll never, never sell out to it because they just want to go create art and be happy and ... well, you get the picture.

So if those kids aren't watching it, who is?

Middle school students, that's who.  MY students, in other words. Any product aimed primarily at high school students is going to grab the attention of the middle school set as well.  What attracts them to such adult content?  Basically, what most tweens and early teens want is to be older teens. They can't wait to go to high school, drive, get jobs, date, do all the stuff that they think is cool.  That's why your average middle school girl would just die to have pretty much anything from Abercrombie, Hollister, Aeropostale - anyplace that uses images of older teens to promote their wares.  The other defining characteristic about tweens and young teens is that they still have rather, um, porous boundaries between fantasy and reality.  Of course not all of them believe everything they see, but they are much more gullible at this age than older teens are.  So this Gossip Girl soft p*rn is like catnip to them - it's fantasy, a la-la land version of real life gussied up and tarted up and sexed up to bring in viewers and the advertisers who want to reach them.  So there are a lot - A LOT - of tweens/teens who are kicking around the house at night, not doing a whole heck of a lot (certainly not their homework, by the looks of things) and who have TVs and cable right in their rooms, along with parents who give them pretty free rein over what they watch.  Go back and look at that picture again, and then think about all the eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-old girls out there who are getting their ideas about teenage relationships from Gossip Girl.

Yeesh.

Tellybizzon

For some reason, I've been humming the theme song from The Jeffersons today.  To myself, I might add, lest you now have the image of me walking the halls while people part like the Red Sea to get away from the crazy lady.  I think "Movin' On Up" is the single best tv theme song, ever, period, end of story.  But that got me thinking of other tv theme songs of note, and so I present:

Caroline's List of Notable TV Theme Songs

Theme Song Most Reflective of Its Time:  Gotta be the theme to The Love Boat.  C'mon, I bet you can't even recite a few lines of these lyrics without finding your voice automatically snapping into "slimy lounge singer in polyester pantsuit" mode:  The LUUUUUUUVE BOOOOAT ... soon will be MA-king a-NO-ther RUUUN ... The LUUUUUVE BOOOOAT ... pro-MI-ses SOME-thing for EV'ryWUUUUUN.  Why do I waste synapses on this crap?

Theme Song Most Reflective of Its Show:  No contest here - The Wire wins.  This show, which gets my vote for best show ever created, uses the same song every season, but it's sung differently to reflect the different focus the show takes.  This past season, it was sung by a young teen and the show focused on a number of middle schoolers and the paths they took (or were forced to take).  It's a little gospelly, a little despairing, it's perfect.  The Sopranos does get a second place award here.  With an opening line like, Woke up this morning/Got yourself a gun, you just know someone's gonna sleep with the fishes soon.

Most Funnest Theme Song to Sing at the Top of Your Voice:  Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?  SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!  Shiny and yellow and porous is he!  SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!  And the climactic conclusion:  SPONGE-BOB SQUARE-PANTS SPONGE-BOB SQUARE-PANTS SPOOOONNGE BOOOOOB SQUAAAAAARE PAAAAAAAAAANTS!

Best Instrumental Theme Song:  Rome.  Yeah, I know I dissed this show awhile ago and compared it unfavorably to I, Claudius.  And IC is still Shakespeare to Rome's pulp fiction, but who wants to read Shakespeare all the time?  We just watched the episode that ends with Caesar showing off Cleopatra's new baby, who may be his or may be Pollo's, while the legions cheered ... great stuff.  Lurid, escapist fun.  Runner up:  Law and Order.  Not as evocative, but the show's been on so long now, there are probably pygmies in Papua New Guinea who can identify it from the first two notes alone.

Best PBS Children's Show Theme Song:  Curious George by a landslide.  Clifford's too saccharine, Sesame Street has been around so long it's a little boring, but CG always makes me smile.  It could be because it comes on at 5 pm and I know I have an hour without a whiny toddler demanding my attention, but still.

Best Theme Song to Sing While Re-Enacting Key Moments from the Latest Episode:  NUH na na na na na na na NUH na na na na na na BAATMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!  Another runaway winner. 

That's all I have.  Feel free to submit your favorites. 

To Boldly Go

I learned something distressing earlier this month.  Recently, my better half (no, I don't mean the cat, I mean Warren) and I began watching back seasons of Battlestar Galactica on DVD.  If you are hopelessly behind the times on your pop culture references, those in the know refer to this show as "BSG", which is far easier to type.  Actually, Warren's been watching and I've been half-watching, which is saying something, as I usually don't find the sci-fi genre particularly compelling.  I've always been a little leery of anything that encourages people who walk around talking in nonexistent languages and making weird hand motions, for one, and I don't find the thought of alternative realities tremendously thrilling.  The idea that parallel worlds could possibly exist is more demoralizing than anything else; I probably have just as many unfinished chores to do in the fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions as I do here.  But I digress.  Anyway, I discovered that Warren's interest in BSG isn't purely artistic, nosirree.  There's more to it for him than just an appreciation of the topical yet timeless storylines, the poignant dialogue, the special effects.  Warren's got an ulterior motive.  He's got a jones for Starbuck.

In case you've been eschewing TV in favor of attaining bodhisattva status or pursuing a leisurely re-reading of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Lt. Kara Thrace Starbuck is the gun-totin' cigar-smokin' whiskey-drinkin' ass-kickin' fighter pilot babe-in-residence on Galactica.  Generally, you can count on at least one scene per episode that will require her to take off her jumpsuit and strut around in her bulletproof vest thingummerbob while either a) playing cards, b) disobeying orders, c) pummeling some male soldier-type character into mashed potatoes, or d) doing all three simultaneously.  I ask you, how the hell do I compete with that? I whined said as much to Warren, who immediately chose to interpret my fears to mean that I'll be hitting the gym full force.  "Does that mean you're going to get all buff and toned like Starbuck?" he asked eagerly, face alight like a little child's on Christmas Day.  "You mean you want me to start kicking your ass on a regular basis?" I responded sweetly, deliberately misinterpreting his point.  "Sure, I can do that."  Warren's face fell about six stories.  Somehow I don't think that's the reaction he was hoping to get.

After thinking it over, I don't know why I found Warren's lust for interest in a burlygirl all that surprising.  When Warren and I were first dating, and therefore on our best, pre-taking-each-other-for-granted behavior, we went for a hike on a warm summer's day.  As I walked ahead of him, I unthinkingly did what I always do when I'm exerting myself in the great outdoors, and I, um, blew my nose without benefit of tissues. (NB: I'm pretty damn good at it, too - seldom any blowback or unwanted residual slime hanging about.) "You did a snot shot," Warren marveled in tones of sheer astonishment, "you just did a snot shot.  I saw you do a snot shot.  Did you just do a snot shot?"

"Oh hell," I thought to myself, "here I go and find one of the only straight, smart, gainfully employed, non-neurotic, unmarried males under the age of 50 in the greater Boston area I've ever met who doesn't head for the hills at the prospect of having me for an actual exclusive girlfriend, and I go and gross him out beyond recompense.  Nice going."  But I was wrong.  Warren wasn't repulsed by my distinct lack of couth; he was thrilled - because it meant he could do snot shots with wild and reckless abandon his own self.  Apparently, his previous girlfriend wasn't as relaxed about proper tissue etiquette as yours truly is.  Or gross. You could say gross.  Regardless, the point is, Warren has a sneaking attraction to women who are willing to transgress standards of ladylike behavior on occasion.  Like, most of the time. 

Well, not being one to stand idly by and watch my husband salivate all over the screen, I thought perhaps I should go out and get a pop culture crush object of my own to wave about in his face.  Unfortunately, given the fact that I have approximately thirty-five minutes to myself each day in which to do any pleasure reading, TV watching, email responding, personal grooming, et. al., that I might feel inclined to do, my ability to accrue a vast selection of potential crush objects is very limited.  Given the shows I watch, I have three basic options. 

The first option is Mike Delfino from Desperate Housewives.  I know, being a woman of a certain age and stage in life, that I'm supposed to get all breathless over the thought of a bit of rough with a hidden soft side and no visible plumber butt showing.  Imagine, he can think deep thoughts AND fix a clogged drain!  What woman wouldn't want that?  Sadly, ole Mike really doesn't do it for me.  Yeah, he's kinda cute and all, the tattoo is tasteful and can barely be seen peeking out from his t-shirt sleeve, the gut-to-waist ratio is firmly in his favor.  Despite all that, I don't go all weak at the knees when he comes on-screen.  While he sounds good on paper, the whole is actually less than the sum of its parts in this case.  He's just missing that certain oomph I want in a crush object.  Next!

We watch Survivor regularly, so there's always Jeff Probst, but please:  The shirts?  The manly-yet-slightly-artsy necklace thingie he wears? The cheesy, pseudo-dramatic "insights" shared after each week's ritual bloodletting?  How does the man look in the mirror and not crack up laughing?  Moving on!

The only other show I get to watch with any degree of regularity is Curious George, so I have to consider The Man With The Yellow Hat, even if he is animated.  Again, on paper, he looks pretty good - runs marathons, appears to be gainfully employed, speaks in whole sentences - but there are a few red flags.  Or rather, yellow flags.  I have some concerns about the whole yellow thing going on.  The man wears the same suit every day, and let's face it, YSL Pour Homme it ain't. Yellow is a difficult color for most of us to wear, and quite frankly, I don't fancy standing next to someone whose clothing is going to make me look jaundiced all the time.  Even leaving aside the fact that it's a blindingly bright shade of yellow, that suit isn't exactly the most stylishly cut set of garments.  The Man exacerbates the problem by tucking his pants into his boots, which makes him look like a total dorkenheimer, and then we get to the boots themselves.  On the one hand, the boots could connote a certain proclivity toward kinkiness that could be a bit of a turn-on, given the Man's otherwise completely straight-arrow appearance; on the other hand, they could just indicate that he hasn't looked in the mirror since, oh, ever.  Finally, I really don't relish the thought of having to compete with Curious George for the Man's attention.  Let's face it, if you had to choose between listening to me bitch about my exhausting life, frustrating day, and irritating kids, or watching a cute little monkey frolic about getting into picturesque mischief, which would you choose?  Yeah, I thought so.  Clearly I need to take some serious steps if I expect to find a crush object who will stir Warren's competitive juices.  I guess I will just have to watch a lot more TV.  As they say, if you want something done right, sometimes you gotta do it yourself.

Take THAT, Madge!

We cleaned our basement.

Some clarification is in order.  "We" means "Mostly Warren but I helped out when no one was screaming or breastfeeding".  "Cleaned" is not a strong enough verb for what we have gone through.  "Purged" is more like it.  Boy, have we purged.  Josef Stalin, Chairman Mao - they got nuttin' on us.  We could teach them a thing or two about purging.  We got rid of things that have followed us through three moves, many of which followed me through four or five or more.  I threw out notebooks from grad school for courses I don'[t remember taking.  I threw out candles - scented, pillared, half melted, even one shaped like a kitty cat.  I threw out student journals from 1998.  Why do I keep stuff so long?  I don't know.  That's what happens when you grow up in a very large house with a very big attic.  There's never a compelling reason to get rid of anything, so you might as well keep everything. 

Nothing makes my husband happier than a thorough purge, unless it's a thorough purge of my stuff.  Even though I would far rather have been watching a "Flip This House" marathon instead of inventorying my excess worldly possessions, I had to keep my eye on him lest he chuck out the wedding photos. ("What?  You were there.  Don't you remember?  Besides, you see me every day, you already know what I look like.  Whaddya need those photos for?") To my credit, I got rid of all kinds of things, including a box of assorted fabric that has followed me through at least six moves through three states without ever being used.  I even - deep breath here - culled my very large book collection from eight large moving boxes down to four. I have to admit I did so with one eye toward posterity.  I kept the more highbrow offerings, the classics and whatnot, and got rid of a lot of the pulpy stuff.  Should I fall down dead tomorrow, people will think I actually spent my free time browsing through the Nicomachean Ethics, not reading Janet Evanovich novels.  The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves, I know, but I choose to prolong that delusion anyway.

After several frantic days of moving, lugging, mopping, dusting, sorting, tossing, recycling, and shuffling, we are rewarded with a lovely new office space in the basement, a lovely reclaimed guest bedroom upstairs, a lovely new play space for India in our never-used formal living room, and a lovely TV room restored to its original purpose.  We are feeling very virtuous and proud of ourselves, having sworn - sworn! - we will NOT let our newly spanking clean and organized common spaces get that cluttered and chaotic ever again.  Now stop laughing.  No, really, I mean it.

In the Total Non-Sequitur Department:  Warren and I checked out Rome on HBO recently.  Verdict:  Don't bother.  Go watch I, Claudius over again - it's so clearly what Rome tries (yet fails) to be.  Rome has the desperate air of working too hard about it.  Look!  Ancient Rome was full of gore!  Blood!  Grafitti of penises!  Bare boobies!  Perversion!  Why, it's practically like modern times, only without the internet, coffee, or road rage.  The sets are elaborate, the costuming detailed, and I'm sure the whole shebang was exhaustively researched for versimilitude, but I, Claudius was much more compelling. In fact, Rome strikes me as a more telling commentary on America than it is on ancient history. We always think that bigger is better, that redoing something that was already done well, only a grander scale and with more frills and fancywork, will automatically mean it's better. Feh.  I think we'll Netflix the first season of 24 instead.

At Least I'm Predictable

After reading Nervous Girl's anti-Mother's Day post, and writing about my own reactions to this annually mandated maternally oriented festivity, I read all the other blogs on my blogroll and quickly came to the depressing realization that nearly every other mommyblog in the 'sphere wrote about the exact same topic (to wit:  feelings of ambivalence raised by the specter of Mother's Day).  So much for being an original thinker.  I guess I will have to return all of the thousands of products I purchased over the years because the advertisers assured me that buying said goods would prove beyond a doubt that I am a unique, non-conformist individual who is simultaneously a trendsetting hipster plugged into the pulse of the street. Damn.

On a tangentially related note, Warren is watching the NJ Nets in the playoffs this afternoon, and the network has shown the same automobile ad several times.  In this ad, a carful of young, artfully made up, ethnically mixed, glittery young ladies wearing nightclub-appropriate gear drive a Detroit product to some kind of glamorous urban watering hole, whereupon the car's owner hands the key to the valet and purrs, "Take good care of my baby, will you?"  The camera then pulls back to reveal that every member of this gaggle of clubettes is, in fact, heavily pregnant - or at least has a large round pillow shoved in her camisole front, because aside from the tummy bumps, the rest of their bodies are just as stick-like and Pilates-perfect as ever.  I sat on the couch in my old stretched-out fleece pullover and my big-belly maternity jeans with the expanda-waist and scoffed.  Where are the chubby upper arms?  The comfy low-heeled shoes?  The stretched-out yoga pants?  Where is the husband commenting wonderingly, "you know, honey, I think your butt's gotten bigger"?  Those ladies are no more pregnant than I'm a model on commercials.  Pah!

I Take Back Everything I Ever Said

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I am very leery of television.  I am secretly convinced it's the root of all evil (okay, it shares that honor with McDonald's and George W. Bush) and I feel guilty, guilty, guilty every time the death ray penetrates India's orbs.  We've watched Sesame Street in a desultory way every once in a while, but I try not to make a habit of it.  My husband is even more draconian than I am, and wants us never to expose her to the fact that TV shows specially aimed at children even exist, never mind let her watch any of them.  Please keep in mind that this comes from a person who is seldom if ever at home with India from 4 to 7 pm when I am not also at home, and certainly never at the end of a long work day.  This is important.

My friend Karin visited last week with her six-year-old, and they left us an Elmo video the kiddo had outgrown.  Now, I hate Elmo.  I hate his whiny voice.  I hate his habit of referring to himself in the third person.  I hate the fact that a time-tested, classic Muppet like Grover has to take a backseat to this punk-ass upstart.  So, of course, the very first pop-culture reference India ever made was ... yeah, no suspense here ... "Melmo".  It's not my fault, however.  There was a little girl at India's day care for a while who had a grubby Elmo doll she carted around everywhere and sniveled into on a regular basis.  This girl had a perpetual aura of damp about her - teary eyes, runny nose, the works - and if any of the other kids evinced any interest whatsoever in her humid little doll, the waterworks began.  Anyway, looking at that soggy Elmo doll on a daily basis didn't endear him to me any, but India's interest was piqued.  Still, I held firm. NO Elmo dolls in our house!  NO Elmo sheets, shirts, shoes, socks, zip zilch zero, not in my household, thank you very much! 

Fast forward to this afternoon.  I have had, to put it mildly, a rough week.  To be blunt, I think every parent in the district hates me or at least thinks I'm incompetent, but that is another blog post. I'm already running on fumes by the time I pick up Little Miss Pumpkinhead.  We've had an unusual stretch of nice weather this week, so the kiddos have been outside twice a day all week.  This is great for fresh air and exercise, but it definitely runs down the batteries more than India's used to at the moment.  Because of this, her late afternoon moods have degenerated from somewhat trying mild outbursts of crabbiness to downright full-blown unmitigated irritability.  Today we accelerated straight through Cranky, bypassed Annoyed and arrived at Howling Tantrum in record time, replete with a thrown sippy cup and a child face down, sobbing, on the rug. 

Keeping in mind my husband's wishes that we try to distract India from her bad moods, I asked India what she would like to do.  Play basketball with her miniature hoop set?  No.  Put a nightgown on Baby?  No.  Have a snack?  No, no, NO.  Finally she raised a tear-stained face off the crumb-strewn rug and asked, between sobs, "Watch [hic] Melmo?"

Friends, I couldn't run to the DVD player fast enough to get that sucker fired up. That squeaky-voiced irritant could have been advocating mainlining transfats and tap-dancing on glass shards and I would have let her have it.  And if this should happen again tomorrow, why, Melmo it is.

[Exit, humming "la la la la, la la la la, Elmo's World (Elmo's World) ... la la la la, la la la la, Elmo's World .....]

Inventions I Would Invent if I Were Far Cleverer Than I Actually Am

First idea: Human chow.  There are days when I think the Greek gods would have put a harsher curse on Sisyphus by asking him to produce tasty and reasonably healthy hot meals once a day every day instead of just hauling a boulder up the hill 24-7.  This leads me to my first brainstorm.  Despite the fact that our cats confront the exact same diet every damn day of their lives, they still greet the sight of their dish with paroxyms of joy.  If we can make a cat food that your pet will enjoy eating every day, surely modern science can come up with a human chow that fills the same bill.  No, cereal does NOT fit that description.  I am certainly not averse to the occasional bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats for dinner, but I'm thinking more along the lines of something that can be warmed up.  I'll let you know when I find it.

Next:  I want to discover the next child-development-appropriate craze.  Some woman videotapes a bunch of kids' toys in her living room with a music box playing in the background, and suddenly everyone's gotta have the full Baby Einstein video collection.  Or better yet, there's a kids' show where one of the main characters is the puppeteer's hand with a set of Mr. Potato Head eyes stuck between the fingers.  I mean, dang, I think of myself as smarter than your average bear, but obviously I'm a real lunkhead if I'm not seeing THIS right in front of my face!  Ditto educational fads.  Restate a bunch of reasonably common-sense ideas in jargon, give them some kind of buzzword name, and blammo!  You get to fly around the country and charge $300 an hour to write on flipcharts!

I also want to invent dress socks that don't leave that embarrassing elastic indentation on your lower calf. 

Feel free to forward my name to the MacArthur genius grant committee.  I'll cut you in.