Calling all tooth fairies!

(the lazy dialogue posts continue)

Jabber lost his first tooth!

I was the devious mom: Ooh, lemme see! Wow, that's really loose. Do you want me to pull it out?

Jabber: Nooooo, I don't want it to hurt. Maybe it will fall out tomorrow.

Me: But it's barely hanging by a thread!

Jabber: We'll just let it hang there.

Me: Okay, but I'm kind of worried it will fall out in your sleep and then you could swallow it! Do you want a tooth in your tummy? *tickles his tummy* Tooth Tummy!

Jabber: Um...no, I do not want a tooth tummy. But I don't want you to pull it out. It will hurt.

Me: Okay, well, here. I'll just sort of dry it off with this washcloth, and then you'll be able to get a good grip on it and wiggle it better, okay?

Jabber: Okay!

Me: All right, open up...WOOHOO! There's your tooth!

Jabber: MOM! Did you pull it out? That hurt!

Me: But there's your tooth!

Jabber: *giggles* MY TOOTH!

We've actually had a week of firsts, but I haven't had much time to write about them. Jabber and Monkey went to their first Haunted House last weekend, at a pumpkin patch party in one of our local parks. That was the first time that Av had a motorized ghost get stuck in his hair, and the first time that Jabber had to lead the way through a dark, scary maze with Zombies jumping out at him. It was also the first time that Jabber had someone enthusiastically hand him a Snickers Bar, and the first time he realized that not all Halloween candy has been carefully de-peanutized and approved beforehand by his mother. Of course, the candy was whisked away into my pocket, and we tried to stay cool as all the little children in the area snarfed their Snickers all around us like allergen death traps.

It was also the first time I took both boys out to eat at a real restaurant all by myself, and the first time they were able to demonstrate proper manners in a really impressive way. Granted, there was a tricky moment there when Monkey decided that he didn't really want the quesadillas he ordered, and instead the pancakes that Jabber had ordered looked far more appetizing. But it was the first time, when confronted with such a dilemma, that Jabber stepped up to the plate and generously offered part of his pancakes, which, along with my dinner roll slathered in strawberry jelly, was enough to appease the small sticky boy with the loud voice, and we made it out of the restaurant without any scenes.

I personally had my first time with general anesthesia as I had my wisdom teeth out, and the first time in a long time that I've had four days off of work in a row. I thought maybe it would be quiet time to get my book reports graded and maybe catch a nap or two (this pain medicine makes me sooo sleeeeeeepy), but this morning Monkey woke up and decided to be the FIRST of our family to get the dreaded flu, so...fun times!

And my final first of the week: filling out my first conference sign-up form...I mean, from this end of the transaction, anyway! How exciting!


Not a great photo, but my battery died on the camera and this was all I got, but here are the kids feeling like superheroes after conquering the haunted maze!

more jabbering

Jabber: I DON'T LIKE LENTILS. I'm not eating them.
Me: Okay, but that's your lunch. So if you don't eat them, you'll be hungry.
Jabber: I'm going to eat jelly toast instead.
Me: Too bad no one is giving you jelly toast until the lentils are gone.
Jabber: unnnnnnghhhmmmamaaahhh!
Me: Not to mention licorice.
Jabber: WHAT? LICORICE? You know what, Mom? I can just turn off my tongue. I mean, I could slurp these lentils right into my mouth, and my mouth would just not taste them anymore. *slurps*
Me: I don't care if you taste them, as long as you eat them.
Jabber: I'm eating them!
*ten minutes pass*
Jabber: I'm full, Mom. My stomach just told me it can't hold another bite.
Me: Oh, did you finish your lentils?
Jabber: Well, no. Because my body is telling me that it's too full for one more bite. I might explode, Mom.
Me: Oh, good. Then I won't have to get up and make jelly toast. Or get licorice.
Jabber: But Mom. Didn't you know I have two stomachs? Like remember when I told you I had two stomachs, one for food and one for liquids? That wasn't real. ACTUALLY I have two stomachs, but one is for sugar and one is for non-sugar. Lentils go into the non-sugar stomach. Even if there's natural sugar, that falls into my non-sugar stomach. But my sugar stomach is completely empty. It wants licorice.

Nightmares...

Both of my children can recite Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are by heart, but I'm hesitant to take them to the new movie for fear it will give Jabber nightmares.

I think it's sort of telling about their personalities that Monkey likes to go to sleep at night while snuggling this book, There's Something in my Attic, by Mercer Mayer. He stares at the illustrations in the dim spill of light from the mostly closed bathroom door and talks softly to the monster while he falls asleep.

Across the room, Jabber huddles around his nightlight and complains about the book. "It makes me so nervous," he says. "I'm just going to look at my pillow." He buries his face in the pillowcase and tries hard not to think about the attic above his head.

It constantly surprises me how alike and different my two children can be, how they complement each other and how they contrast.

Dear Mister President

Jabberwock is makin' money. Of course the neurotic parent inside me hopes that this is not a telling side-effect of his deep anxiety caused by listening to David and I discuss our own personal budget shortcomings, but if it is, I suppose we'll have to work a therapist into our budget somewhere down the line. As it is, I suspect he's mostly thrilled to have mastered the concept of the tens and ones place and almost mastered the skill of writing the number five in a consistently non-backwards way.

Also he likes to cut things into little pieces.

Anyway, after he made a set of prototype currency featuring simply the denominations in green marker (including the rare but very useful $1,004-dollar-bill), he decided to battle the threat of counterfeiters by adding an image.

Specifically, the image of our U.S. president.

He churned out about a dozen bills with the image of President "BarackObama" artistically rendered in green, mostly with his mouth open in a giant grimace of executive enthusiasm. Then, if you look at the bill in the center of the photo, he tried something new.

"Mom?" Jabber looked up from where he was sprawled on the living room rug. "President BarackObama has a mustache, right?"

"No, he does not."

"Oh." He considered his drawing. "Well, he should. He'd look good with a mustache."

***

(I know, I know. I've been slipping again in my bloggy resolve. I've considered blogging about my to-do list, but you know, seriously, it's depressing...)

avert your eyes, then...

Scene: living room, after dinner. Monkey plays on living room floor.

Monkey: LOOK DADDY! Look what I can do! (throws plastic hammer up into the air and makes a half-hearted attempt at catching it)

David: Oh, Monkey. We don't throw toys.

Monkey: But I like it! (throws hammer)

David: Yeah, but we're in the house. And that's a hammer. We don't throw hammers.

Monkey: I do! (throws hammer)

David: No, Monkey. I really don't want to see you throwing hammers.

Monkey: Okay! So go away, Daddy!

Baby Neal Cassady?

before I forget...

Earlier this weekend, I was reading a book with both boys about a firefighter, and I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. I expected them to answer that they wanted to be firefighters, since that's what we were talking about.

Just as I suspected, Monkey talked about being a firefighter (but also a zookeeper, which surprised me), but Jabber shook his head.

"No, I'm not going to be a firefighter," he said. He seemed so completely certain--totally confident in his decision.

"You don't want to fight fires?" I asked.

"Well, no," he said. No hesitation. "Because I'm going to be a tattoo artist."

Hmm.

NO POLKA DOTS!

I know I've already written about this, but life with a toddler and a kindergartener is not free of repetition, so my art shall imitate life. (oh, stop scoffing. I didn't make it Art with a capital A or anything...)

Monkey astounds me all the time with how vehemently he declares his likes and dislikes, and although these are sometimes changeable (for instance, last night he fell asleep while muttering over and over, "I love my daddy and I hate my mama. Mama is a bad mother bad mother bad mother. I love my daddy and I hate my mama..." but this morning he loved me again), one thing he does not change his mind about is fashion.

The child knows what he likes. And even more, he knows what he detests.

He's also very good at making it impossible to dress him in anything that falls into that last category.

Each morning when I help him dress himself (he will no longer allow us to dress him, which is unfortunate on the days when I am particularly rushed...), I have to offer a broad selection of clothing for him to choose from. Right now, he is not interested in any form of clothing for the lower half of his body that isn't "JEANS JEANS JEEEEEEEANS!", for instance. There are some shirts that, inexplicably to me, are completely unacceptable, even when the laundry situation is such that there are no other options. His Star Wars shirt and a T-shirt that proclaims him to be a "Noisy Little Monster" are two such shirts. I mean, I understand his reluctance to wear the monster shirt, especially because when he does, everyone reads it and laughs at him, but Star Wars??? Come on, kid.

Anyway. On to our latest vicious battle of wills disagreement.

Diapers.

He refuses to wear the diapers we bought, which are generic because as any parent knows, diapers are freaking expensive, and dude, if it doesn't give you a rash and it's on sale, that's what you are wearing.

He refuses to wear these diapers. Kicking, screaming, thrashing, wailing, hitting, biting--refuses.

As in, "WHAT? I cannot possibly wear those ugly ass diapers that have polka dots on them! I HATE POLKA DOTS. How could you even imagine that POLKA DOTS were an acceptable pattern for something as respectable as a diaper. How can I even take myself seriously in POLKA DOTS? Have I mentioned I HATE POLKA DOTS? Sure, Blues Clues was a bit demeaning, but I endured it (except the green ones. God, I hated wearing the green ones. I don't mind the pink, the purple, the yellow, and the orange Blues Clues but I have to draw the line somewhere, you know? And green...it was just too much.) with only a modest amount of protesting. But this...this is an abomination. I will not wear them. I WILL NOT. YOU CANNOT MAKE ME."

And you know what? I can't, either. With all that kicking and thrashing and...undulating...I can't get the damn things on in any kind of manner that will actually accomplish the one thing it is meant to accomplish, which is NOT to make a fashion statement. And the one time I did get it on straight and fasten it up properly? He ripped it off in mere seconds.

Like, okay, you're almost three years old, child. Don't like your diapers? You can go on the potty. But seriously. You don't like your diaper because it has polka dots?

We battled. We tried to force him into wearing the damn diapers. No dice.

We bribed. We cajoled. We bargained. We made promises. We explained.

"Monkey, we don't have any other diapers. These are the kind that Daddy bought. When we get a different kind, you can wear those, but look, baby. WE HAVE NO OTHER DIAPERS."

Nothing.

And then.

"All right, Monkey, let's put on the diaper."

"I HATE POLKA DOTS!!! NO NO NONONONONONONO!" (kicking, thrashing, etc.)

"Oh. Well, good. These diapers don't have polka dots."

(stops thrashing) "They don't?"

"Nope. These have balloons. Without strings. Free balloons that float through the air and have dance parties all over the place."

"Oh. Okay."

Diaper success. For now.

jabberish

Well, we all survived the start of school, and Jabber seems to have enjoyed it the most out of all of us. He sums up his experience with these great words of wisdom: "Kindergarten is...um...kindergarten is cool."

We've had some good conversations about the process--one rather amusing one in which Jabber told Ms. N. and me about making a new best friend.

Jabber: Well, you know, I made a new best friend today, but I don't remember his name. He had a coat with stainless steel buttons, though. They were shiny. And he had a voice like a doctor.
Me: (laughing) A voice like a doctor? So like, did he use really big words or something?
Jabber: (shrugs) He just sounded like a doctor.
Ms. N.: What does a doctor sound like? Can you show me what he sounds like?
Jabber: (gives Ms. N. an incredulous look) Well, I can't repeat it, you know, because I can't change my voice. I have MY voice, not his!

We laughed. I have to admit, I want to meet this nameless kid with the shiny buttons just to hear his voice.

On the second day, the bus--which picks Jabber up from my school--came early, and we missed it. Ooops! MOMFAIL. David drove over quickly and picked him up, and all was well, but the next day I suggested that Jabber accompany Mr. L., the "Assertive Discipline Coordinator" for our school, down to the buses, since then he'd be sure to not miss his bus. I had a meeting, so I asked Jabber if he'd be willing to go alone with Mr. L. He surprised me by agreeing without hesitation (Mr. L. is a very nice guy, but I'll admit he does look capable of some pretty assertive discipline). After school, I said, "Jabber, I'm proud of you for being brave and going down with Mr. L. all by yourself."

He shrugged and said, "Oh, that's okay, Mom. I just pretended he was you." Um, okay.

In other news, he has started reading after one week of kindergarten. The two things may or may not be related, but all summer we read together and occasionally talked about letter sounds and stuff. At the time, Jabber didn't really "get" it; he totally nailed the initial consonant, and everything else was a big mystery. But the other night we went for a drive in our new car, and suddenly we heard Jabber shouting from the backseat, "PISS! PISS! PISS!"

I turned around, rather alarmed at the language (he MUST have picked that up from school, I thought), but Jabber was gleeful and excitedly pointing at the red seatbelt buckle. "IT SAYS PISS!"

"Oh. I think you're missing a letter," I said, laughing a little. "There's an R in there."

I didn't really expect him to be able to change his sounding-out strategy, but sure enough, he whispered back there for a few moments and then correctly said, "PRESS! PRESS!"

It was exciting, but not nearly so exciting as the following morning as I was driving Monkey to daycare, and I overheard Jabber teasing him from the backseat.

"You have letters on your leg, Monkey," Jabber said, and I didn't pay too much attention, my mind on the day ahead. But then I heard him back there making those "sound it out" noises, and eventually, he said, "F...R...S...A...L!"

Well, that doesn't actually spell anything. I dismissed it as jibberish. jabberish. But then.

"MOM! I'm going to write letters on Monkey's leg that say FOR SALE! Can we sell him now?"

Wow!

Kindergarten!

So I'm flippin' exhausted today, after my own first day of school, but not too exhausted to CELEBRATE Jabber's very first EVER day of school! Yay, Jabber, and welcome to the educational system! Because of my schedule and David's schedule and money and a bunch of other factors, we never sent him to any kind of preschool, just a lovely home daycare, where he played like a champ and slowly learned to stop biting and hitting people (though his brother obviously doesn't count as people). I've worried just a little about how he would deal with school--with the structure and the long hours (he goes from 8:30-4:00 every day!), but he did a splendid job on the first day of kindergarten.

Here he is, back full circle to hanging out in my classroom in the mornings, attending the teacher meetings and eating his breakfast out of tupperware while Mama makes copies. When Jabber was an infant, David worked from some godawful early hour to 8:00 am, when he would come and pick up the baby from my school and care for him the rest of the day. I have lots of memories of Jabber jabbering through morning meetings or maybe sleeping in my sling or even exploring the amazing treasures of the art teacher's closet, but my favorite memory of that time has got to be the day my boss made the mistake of trying to lead our meeting while eating a banana. Jabber basically would not let the meeting proceed until he had relinquished it.

Anyway, I like having my little guy around once again, and I feel good that his first bus ride is a short trip with no stops (and no middle school kids on the bus).



And here he is on the bus itself, though I had only a moment to snap it in between explaining his allergy to the bus driver and trying to show him what you do with a backpack the size of four kindergarteners in the cramped confines of a bus seat. He was brave and happy on the bus, and David says he had no trouble finding his way to the classroom once he arrived.

His first day went well, and he fell off to sleep this evening with the words, "I'm even more excited for tomorrow!"

We kind of thought it might be an adjustment for Monkey to be at daycare all alone, but when D. picked him up, they had this conversation.

D: Did you miss your brother today?
Monkey: Who?
D: Um, your brother? Jabber?
Monkey: Ohhh. Yeah. Where is he, anyway?

So apparently not. :)

Hoping for an equally good tomorrow, for both of us! And now, sleeeeeep.

editing wisdom from a toddler

Me: ARGGHHHHHHH!

Monkey: Mama, what's wrong? I kiss you and make it all better?

Me: Oh, honey, it's all right. I'm having problems with the timeline in my story.

Monkey: I can help you.

Me: *laughs* You want to help me fix my timeline?

Monkey: No. I didn't said that. I said I CAN'T help you.

Me: Yeah, probably right, baby.

Monkey: You gonna have to help yourself, Mama. You gonna have to help yourself.

so many books...

So I bought a bunch of books, and it ended up depressing me. How does that work? Well, unlike the adult fiction at the sale, which are mostly donations, a lot of the YA books there were books that have been withdrawn from the library--maybe because the library has extra copies, maybe because they didn't circulate, maybe because they're old...for whatever reason, looking at all those discarded books made me sad. (Even though it means the library is replacing them with new books!)

(I searched and searched my brain just now for the word "discarded", and it simply wasn't there. Eventually I had to ask David, who promptly supplied the word and then said, "How's that for a son of a librarian?" /random aside)

So anyway, back to my woeful depression.

There are a lot of books in the two big grocery bags I came home with. A lot of books that I haven't ever heard of. Books that, quite honestly, don't look very good. And that could be depressing from a *whine whine* "But how come my books aren't published when there are so many dumb ones that get published?" *whine* kind of way, but I have been paying close attention to publishing for long enough to understand that those comparisons are pretty meaningless, really.

Instead, I'm depressed to see so many books that are so...forgettable. They have been discarded. They were published (hurray! the big pie in the sky goal!), they made it to the library (and maybe even the bookstore!), but for whatever reason, teens didn't read them.* They were not big hits. I have not heard of them. I haven't heard of their authors--those people who slaved away just as I have slaved away over an idea so nebulous and maddening, over characters and dialogue and conflict and query letters and revisions and marketing. Only to have their book, still shiny and new, tossed into a huge bag by a middle school English teacher who looks at it, raises her eyebrows dubiously, and says, "Well, you never know. Someone might like this one."

In a way, it makes me grateful that my first novel did not sell, since at the time I finished it I knew only enough to be mildly dangerous. In the last three years or so, I've learned SO MUCH about every part of the writing process, including the part that comes after the book sale, as more and more of my writing friends have books published before my very eyes!

(Check out Bethany Griffin's Handcuffs, Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia, Hannah Moskowitz's Break, and Suzanne Young's The Naughty List, by the way!)

Obviously I'm still terribly ignorant, but I'm learning more and more every day.

I'm rambling rather idiotically, but I guess what I'm feeling is a combination of my usual Barnes and Noble Syndrome: "Oh my god look, there are a lot of books in this world. How is there even room for one more? Why would anyone possibly need mine?" and the sadness of seeing so many books discarded and unwanted, left languishing for the three dollars a bag crowd. "I used to be somebody's baby, but now no one will even pay fifty cents for me," they whisper. Even if they are bad books, I feel sorry for them. But I'm a weirdo, I know.

I'll get over it. I'll keep writing. I'll keep hoping. And I'll keep trying to learn more about how to keep my own babies out of that discard pile, should they ever get to the point of being books outside of my own imagination!

Speaking of babies. Enough of this writing chatter. This morning I was getting ready to go to the library, and the kids were fighting about something or other. I asked them to stop, and Jabber replied with his usual anger word, a fiercely hissed, "STINKIN'!"

Monkey looked shocked (as though he has never yelled the same thing at me). "Mama's not stinkin'!" he said, patting my face with his sweet little hands. "Mama is Beeeeyooootiful!" Hard to feel too depressed for too long with that kind of lovin' in the house.



*I do realize that books are discarded for a variety of reasons, not always because they're miserable failures. I've found some really spectacular and successful books in the discard pile. But the general feeling I got from the books I picked up today was a sort of air of dejection--books that never really found their following. It may be that the authors went on to be perfectly successful; after all, there are a million brilliant authors I've never heard of. It's also highly possible that I just happened to pick up a particularly dreadful pile of books.

moar books!

I just came home from a routine Target run bearing a "small" stack of books "for my classroom" (okay, I don't really bring David Sedaris in for my seventh graders, it's true. But the others are all young adult books! That's responsible! I mean, it's practically like working--for the YA writer elissa as well as the teacher elissa! See? It's like working DOUBLE TIME!)

David gave me a Look. The same Look he gave me when we were young and adventurous and living on the road with our belongings all in the trunk of our car and my path brought me dangerously close to a bookstore. He didn't say it out loud, but there's a good chance he was thinking that a hefty stack of books was not, in fact, on the List. (The List is mandatory for all Target trips, for all the good it does...that store is pure evil.)

To be fair, David came home yesterday from the library book sale with a pretty hefty stack of his own...I don't honestly think I could live with a man who wasn't at least mostly okay with the fact that my interior decorating skills revolve around arranging bookshelves, crates of books, stacks of books, boxes of books, and a general scattering of books on all available surfaces. Granted, many of those books now feature colorful illustrations of animals wearing overalls, but hey, Monkey's pick at Barnes and Noble the last time we went was The Manchurian Candidate, so perhaps there's hope for the grown-up books to make a comeback soon to the main floor of our home!

So speaking of the library book sale...tomorrow's the day! The BAG SALE! A whole bag of books for only three dollars! A whole room just for MG and YA books...so what if I currently have four full bookcases and a rotating wire rack full of books in my classroom? I'm there.

draft two, in which she sharpens her machete...

So I know I write first drafts like a plague of vicious weeds--a blackberry tangle in the Pacific Northwest, perhaps.

My first pass of editing consists mainly of reading over paragraphs and thinking, "Why the hell is this even here?"

Delete.

Slash and burn.

I used to go in there all tentative--poking at the soil a little, trimming back adverbs. Now I'm more of a clear-cutter. I raze entire acres of this jungle draft. Acrid smoke billows up in my wake.

I'm ruthlessly ripping apart this scene. But I can see something, trickling down through the foliage. Sunshine.

Tiny tendrils of new words uncurl, all the more vivid green against the blank backdrop of my earlier demolition.

Draft Two, in progress. Ten of forty-six scenes are now pruned.

And just in time. I hear a Monkey waking from his nap upstairs.

performance anxiety

So all day yesterday I had this window open. Yeah, this window. The NEW POST window for the blog. I've got a lot to say, some pictures to show, you know. But nothing really...interesting.

Oh, god, not that old thought, I'd say. Delete.

You already told that story somewhere else.

Elsewhere in my online life, I've been talking with people about internet personas for writers. Like, the author website, the facebook page, the author blog, the interviews, you know. Your author brand. Branding yourself.

It all makes sense. Writing novels is not about only writing novels, or not if your goal is to publish novels. To sell novels.

An author's online presence can be huge. So okay. But that's scary. Here I am, puttering around on my little blog, thinking, but oh no! What if posting a picture of the Monkey after getting into a rumble at daycare:
makes people not want to read my books??!? (he was smacked in the face with a plastic train track, I guess? Monkey is badass.)

What if I post a bad review of a book on my LibraryThing account and make people not want to buy my book? Or not want to blurb my book? Or simply hate me forever? Do I need to stop reviewing books in order to not offend someone I'm trying to impress?

Or if there's a really strange blog at an address similar to my name, and people think it's me?

What if I say something OFF-BRAND?

HA.

So I've given it some thought, and I've decided I can't really handle having an "internet persona"--I'll just be a person on the internet. A person who sometimes is funny and sometimes is dull and sometimes posts cute pictures of her kid. And I have corners of the internet for being a mom and corners for being a writer and corners where I write my teaching blog, too. And places like this, where it all kind of comes together in a mish mash of me.

And here's a cool list I read a few weeks ago that talks about publicity and all the smart things writers should be doing as they write and sell a novel...I thought it was interesting and helpful,, and I bookmarked it for the time I may find myself farther down the list!

What You Can Do: Twelve Easy Steps

I liked that. Anyway.

One of the things I have done as a person on the internet is make friends, and last week I got to spend some time with some of the people from my online writing group, which was really cool. We all got in the minivan and took the kids to see some bears at a bear sanctuary way back in the woods. I was expecting something very roadside attractionish--a couple of tame bears maybe, but it turned out to be pretty amazing!The only complication was a minor temper tantrum when Monkey decided that he *really* wanted to touch the bears. I mean, we all did. He threw himself about in my arms for a while, wanting to get down off the platform we were on.

"I want get down and touch them!"

"I know, baby. But you can't touch the bears. They're wild animals, and they might hurt you."

"I WON'T TOUCH 'EM I JUST WANT TO SEE THEY SOFT!"

Uh huh. Here he is pouting.Yes, he was clean when we left the house. Or mostly.

Okay, now I've really got to do some editing.

a tangential slalom course of a post

I go through these jags where I listen almost exclusively to Minnesota Public Radio when I'm driving my car, and I'm in one right now. If you were to see me driving somewhere, you'd probably be able to tell. I might be chuckling. I might be nodding thoughtfully. Most likely, though, my car will be parked and inexplicably idling at my destination--the children straining at their seatbelts while I shush them.

So yesterday I hopped into the car (I keep calling it that, but it's really a mini-van, sighhhh) to pick up the boys from a morning at daycare while I was writing, and this Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, was speaking about happiness, or more specifically, why people mess up so much when trying to predict what will make them happy. A long time ago, I remembered watching this video of a shorter talk he did at some other...ideas thingy...because I remembered the interesting experiments he did with a photography course.

Short story is that he had college students take a bunch of meaningful pictures and create two beautiful prints, and then they had to choose one to keep and one to leave with the instructor. Half the students were told that they could change their minds in four days and switch pictures, and the other half were told that they had to choose and it was a final decision. In the end, the people who had an opportunity to change their minds were less happy with the pictures than the people without that chance. Like, a lot less happy.

Then he asked a new group of students which group they would rather be in, and over sixty percent of them chose to be in the group with the choice. They chose the class that would eventually make them unhappy with their photo.

This was interesting.

I started thinking about shopping, about the difference between the way I shop and the way D. shops. First, I make decisions and then I don't look back. Let's say I'm looking for a new pair of shoes to wear to work. I'll go to the shoe store, find my size, look around at all the options, try on a few pairs if I don't already have a tantrumming toddler, pick one, buy it, and I'm done. Those other shoes that I didn't buy? They aren't in my head anymore, unless I've made mental plans to come back for them after I've earned another pair of shoes or something.

David does pretty much the opposite. He will scour shoe stores for several weeks, repeatedly going in and trying on different pairs. He will research the finalists thoroughly on the internet. He'll read reviews of the shoes. He'll go back and try them on again. He'll pit the stores against each other to get a better price (seriously, he does this all the time, not necessarily with shoes, but I wouldn't put it past him). Finally, he'll make his selection, but much of the time it's a close decision, and he may waver a couple of times as he works through all the pros and cons of each.

The next thing is that I don't do returns. So let's just say I don't like shoes when I get home. They actually pinch a little. Wow, I didn't realize they made that weird little sighing sound every time I take a step. That will be awkward while I'm creeping around my classroom. I totally didn't notice that they made my feet look so boxy. Boxy doesn't really look good on my feet. I shrug and tuck them in my closet. Give them away to someone. Possibly I have slightly pinching, boxy, sighing feet for a while until I have a chance and the funds to try again. But it doesn't really occur to me to bring them back. I don't know why...I just feel like it's a lot of trouble. I made the choice, no big deal. I don't usually feel unhappy about the shoes. Shoes are great, but I'm not going to go crazy over a pair of shoes.

D. comes home from shopping and doesn't take the tags off of things until he's certain. Really certain. And then maybe he'll sleep on it. I guess I can't speak to his happiness with those final purchases, but from my point of view, it seems like if he realizes that there's a flaw in his purchase, he's more likely to wonder about that other option...maybe I should have bought that other one...I saw that one review about this on their website, but everyone else said it was fine...it seems a little like agonizing, to me.

Agonizing =/= Happiness.

So Gilbert talked about how choice--freedom--makes people less happy. Because you can wonder about whether you made the right choice? Because you also have the freedom of regretting the choices?

Oh, dear. This is not what this post was supposed to be about. Warning! Tangent! Where did it start? *traces back*

AHA!

Second paragraph. A likely place for a tangent to crop up.

What I meant to write about was the tiny snippet of the Aspen talk aired on MPR that was about CHILDREN. And how they make us less happy. I believe his three reasons that we still think of our children as sources of joy were Armani socks, Heroin, and Baseball. Maybe I'll blather on about that tomorrow. Or maybe there will be another tangent. What was I talking about?

infer what you will...

Jabber, coming home to find me sweeping the house,

(yes, sweetheart, we are expecting company, why do you ask?)

looks around excitedly.

"Where did you put all the new toys I haven't seen in forever?"

I finished!

I wrote the ending of the first draft of novel number four, A Tangled Web! It's almost 1:30 in the morning, but I'm on the edge of singing and dancing!

Now.

I will read through it and see how much crap it is made of! And then I will revise!

But first I will sleep. Whee!

Little House in the Big Chaos

So I bought a number of new skirts on Friday (shopping downtown was a part of our Friday Date Afternoon), and this morning I had to hand wash them in the tub before I can wear them.

I admit, I do not always wash my clothing before wearing it (and in fact there may have been a time in my life where doing laundry was such a pain in the ass that I bought new underwear rather than wash the ones I had...yes, I know, I could have washed them in the sink, but if you haven't figured out by now how lazy I am when it comes to cleaning stuff, you're a lost cause), but this particular store has a very lovely smell that I can handle smelling for about twelve minutes before it makes my head feel like it has been violated by an ice auger.

(please do not make any wild assumptions about my writing ability based on that sentence, thx.)

Anyway. So I'm hunched over the tub, my hands ice cold and raw, my back straining under the weight of all that heavy, stinky fabric, and I'm reminded of the book the boys and I are reading--that lovely classic Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I started thinking about how Ma washed all their clothes in a couple of washtubs with water hauled up from the creek bottom all the way up to the prairie. How Pa had suggested that she go down and wash the clothes in the river like the Indians did, spreading them on the rocks to dry. How she had been offended and insisted she would do the wash like civilized people do. How much more work that seemed to Jabber and Monkey and me when we read about it.

(Incidentally, I'm very interested in any great non-fiction book suggestions on Native Americans, since this book is generating a lot of discussion among Curiouser and Curiouser...)

Yesterday afternoon Jabber and Monkey and I made cornbread, just like Ma. "Hey, Mama, let's play Little House," said Jabber.

"Little House onna Pare-Ee!" shouted Monkey, jumping all crazy on the top of the step-stool.

"Okay," I said. "I will be Ma." (I lack imagination.)

"Can I be Laura?" asked the Jabberwock, jumping too, though from a sensible floor-level.

"Sure," I said.

"Okay! I'll be Laura, and Monkey can be...." Jabber looked over at Monkey, who was sitting on the kitchen floor shaking his head from the fall off the step-stool--a little rattled but trying not to let it show. "Well, I guess I'm Mary, 'cause I'm the biggest. And Monkey can be...."

It all started to fall apart. He looked up at me. "Can Monkey be Mary but still I'm the biggest?"

"Laura's the most interesting, isn't she?" I said.

He nodded. "Mary isn't very much fun," he said.

"Yeah. Maybe Monkey could be Baby Carrie."

"Yeah. And then I can still boss him."

"Well--"

"MOOOOOONNNNNKEEEEY!" Jabber chased him into the next room. "YOU'RE BABY CARRIE AND YOU CAN'T WALK. YOU JUST LIE THERE AND BE BORING!"

PSA

The words,

"Mommmm! Monkey doesn't have any pants on!"

shouted from the second floor

seldom mean anything good.

to the washerwoman go the spoils

It's an unwritten rule, of course, that the person responsible for sorting and washing and hanging and folding and putting away the laundry gets to keep anything s/he finds in the pockets.

Last week I made $8.00, no lie. Not bad for fourteen hours of work.

Now, I suppose it's the difference between asking David to collect his dirty clothing for me like I did today and simply going into the bedroom and scooping up all of his clothing off the floor (even digging it out from under the bed!) like I did last time, but today the spoils of my labor consist only of one orange toy car, a dime, a rubber wheel, and a pink plastic drink sword.

I'm sorely disappointed.