knock-knock

I admire writers who can be funny.  Bloggers, especially--a funny blog is the best.  But writing humor is difficult stuff.  My sense of humor is understated.  I'm the kind of person who makes quiet, wry comments to the person next to me in the back row.  I'm the kind of teacher who is rarely ever completely serious but also rarely ever completely joking.  Only the quick ones catch on which is which.

I value funny.  At almost every job I've worked, I've had a co-worker who regularly made it a point to tell me jokes or share funny comics with me or otherwise make me laugh.  But it's so easy for humor to fall flat on the page.  I can't always predict what humor I'll enjoy.  I've definitely enjoyed Douglas Adams several times over (even this sort of bizarre Apple IIe computer game that I recall playing somewhat a lot as a teenager), and David Sedaris is absolutely golden, especially because after listening to him on This American Life and such, I can never read one of his books without hearing him actually narrating the stories in my head.

Recently I read Douglas Coupland's novel, The Gum Thief, at the gym.  I'm not sure I'd say that the purpose of the book is to be humorous.  I mean, to be honest, please do not ask me any time soon what the purpose of this book is.  I loved it, and I have no idea what I think about it yet.  But anyway, this was a book that caused me to allow spontaneous explosions of surprised laughter to escape me while I was running in ellipticals with my ipod stuffed in my ears.  Who knows how loud I laughed? 

What are your favorite funny writers?  They don't have to be writing to be funny...my favorites are often the ones who just are funny. 

Already??? SRSLY???

Yesterday my little Jabberwock came home from daycare with a little slip of paper folded and refolded in his hand. As soon as I came home from work, he leaped over to the door and showed me. "Look, Mama, it's Cute Little Girl's phone number. She wrote it just for me!" Sure enough, my four-year-old son was holding his first girl's phone number. This morning he made me repeat our phone number over and over on our way there so that he could memorize it for her. "I want her to call me, and I will tell her I love her!" he sang from the backseat, in between his memorization attempts. "But first, I'm going to say good morning to her in Spanish."

*Sniff* I thought I was the only one he said good morning to in Spanish!

This on the same week he successfully used sarcasm. I don't know how well I can stomach this growing up stuff!

It's not a good sign...

When I've got writers' block for the title.

Mostly, since I've started doing this blog thing (less than a month ago, and already I'm a hopeless addict), I just go about my daily life and then a topic starts twisting and turning in my mind. By dinner time, my fingers are itching, and by the time the kids and husband are in bed, I'm ready to roll. But tonight I've just got a slew of little random thoughts in my head. So why not form a list? A list of today's thoughts, in no particular order.

1. Deadlines. I have literally fifty million of these coming up this week and next for the end of the school year. Fifty-two million if you count the bills I still haven't paid for the month, but until school is over, I have to limit my attention to the work deadlines or I may explode. Or implode. Some kind of plosion, anyway. Sometimes I like to think of myself as the type of person who performs best under a little bit of pressure, and in fact I often use that very thought as a great excuse to procrastinate (like, say, blogging instead of finishing my work?). So far, I'm doing okay with this philosophy, although the periodic episodes of racing heart and dizziness may be an unfortunate side effect. I am going to blame the crushing headache I had this afternoon on all the data I had to enter and analyze on reading scores, though. Hello? English teachers are not made to analyze data. I would, however, be perfectly happy writing a poem on said analysis.

2. Making lunches. I really despise this, though not as much now that my kiddos are in a new daycare with a woman who makes them food, even with Jabberwock's food allergies. Now I only have to make one lunch instead of three. I did go grocery shopping this evening, after I got done working out at the fitness center (after I washed three Tylenol down with a cup of coffee and took a twenty minute nap, of course), and that makes lunch-making much better. Which brings me to thought number

3. What the hell are they doing to the strawberries out there in California??? Those suckers were the size of my baby's head! Granted, living in Minnesota I have a bit of a skewed perception about fruit and vegetable growing, since we aren't even close to being able to put them in the ground yet, and the average farm strawberry around here is about the diameter of a nickel. OK, maybe a quarter. But these strawberries were monstrous. I know, I should have taken a picture, but hey, I'm lazy. They are tasty, though.

4. I'm still on the lunches. I think what bothers me the most about this mundane chore is the fact that I am physically incapable of making my lunch until AFTER I clean the entire kitchen. My husband cooks for me (I know, I'm completely spoiled, but srsly, NOBODY would survive around here if I did the cooking!), and unfortunately he has no issues with cooking in a dirty kitchen. He doesn't really seem to see the mess, and he definitely doesn't clean up when he's done. I'll say, "Honey, thanks so much for dinner, but couldn't you just clean up a little bit as you go?" and he'll look around, genuinely puzzled. "I did," he says, his eyes sweeping blindly past the saucy fingerprints on the fridge door, the cheese wrappers and empty bean cans on the counter, the tomato pulp pooling on the cutting board, dishes and silverware littered all over. So on an evening like tonight, when I took off right after dinner and nursies to work out and grocery shop, there's quite the array of crapola waiting before I can make my lunch.

5. Five is a nice round number, so I thought I'd share one last thought for the day. I debated posting about this, since I don't really want my son to be too embarrassed, but it's just so darn cute I can't resist. We dined quickly last night in a lamentably fast food nation style (but at least with milk, apple slices, and string cheese and sweet potatoes from home for the kids) and then went down to throw some rocks in the Lake. Jabberwock discovered halfway through our walk that he needed to use the (nonexistent) facilities, so we beat a quick retreat to the van. Shortly after he realized his need, he tugged on my sleeve and said, "Mama, I think I pooped in my pants a little bit. I thought I was just going to pass some gas, but some came out." Poor guy, we were still quite a ways away from our car. David carried him back and got him all cleaned up, and he was a really good sport throughout the ordeal.

When we got home, I said to him, "Jabber, I'm really proud of how well you handled this whole situation. You did a great job with this." He looked up at me, and with a wry little grin said, "Oh, yeah. I did a great job. Four years old, and I pooped my pants. Great job." SARCASM! Perfectly executed sarcasm from my sweet four-year-old! Mama was so proud!