Thursday, October 27, 2005

What to Eat When You're Three-and-Two-Thirds

You are now practically a grown-up (except, of course, when you are not--no one here is denying you the prerogative to exclaim "but I'm just a child!" as needed). Here are some changes you might consider making to your current diet:

Think about beginning to dislike macaroni and cheese, reducing by 33% your acceptable dinner entrees (the others being, of course, chicken nuggets and pizza). You might, however retain a fondness for buttered egg noodles, if you want to go a little easy on your parents.

Shake things up a little by suddenly being willing to eat one vegetable. Be careful, though, not to choose a particularly nutrient-rich vegetable. Cucumbers or iceberg lettuce might be good, but we suggest celery. Celery with lots of salt carefully applied by oneself without the help of some buttinsky grown-up (grimly determined expression optional).

You may wish to announce that you don't like raisins any more. If the ensuing discussion includes a mention of grapes without water in them, you may, however, express a great interest in obtaining some of these fabulous fruits. If it turns out that raisins are, in fact, grapes without water in them, you may then feel free to eat them with gusto.


There are also some categories of food that you, the 3 2/3-year-old, should avoid at all costs (N.B.: unpredictable and idiosyncratic exceptions are, however, not only permitted but strongly encouraged).

  • spicy
  • hot (more than 2 degrees Farenheit above room temperature)
  • messy
  • for grown-ups
  • green

The real joy in being 3 2/3, however, is in the diet details. Here is a recipe you might wish to insist on having made for you for breakfast two mornings in a row. (You need not ever mention it again.)

1 slice bread, lightly toasted, crusts removed
butter, spread to edges
French's yellow mustard
cinnamon and sugar

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Can We Go Back to 2000 and Have a Do-Over?

The President's press conference was on the radio. Pete isn't teaching today because it's a Jewish holiday, and there are no classes. Pete said, "Listen to his voice. It sounds like he's drunk or something." We listened together. The President's voice is near the top of a very long list of things about him I can't stand. He seems to have two tones of voice--one smug and snickering (that seems to be the one that most impersonators go for), and the other (much more common, in my perception) a perpetually aggrieved-yet-defensive whine, as if continually responding to invisible enemies (a kind of "how many times do I have to try to talk sense to you people about this" tone) regardless of context. But Pete was right. The President definitely sounded a bit off. Pete put his finger on it first: "He sounds depressed."

He really did. His annoying, whiny voice sounded flat and heavy, weighed down by those oh-so-familiar bags of lead. Depression. And for the first time, I actually felt a little flicker of human compassion for the guy. Is it finally starting to dawn on him, as a whole lot of shit is hitting a whole lot of fans (Iraq, FEMA, DeLay, oil prices, plunging polls...), that he's really not up to this, and truthfully never has been?

Ah, probably not, I guess. But still. Still, one doesn't envy the guy. You can blame him, you can dislike him (lord knows), but somehow there's no glee in watching him have to lie in the foul, foul bed he's made. Of course, he's made it for all of us, which makes it worse by a factor of approximately 294 million.

Bleah.

Classic?

Cassie is coloring a page in a coloring book, which depicts a basket of fruit. She has colored the grapes, the cherries, and the apple red. She looks up at me. "Plums are purple."

Unbidden come marching through my head battalions of pale green Reine Claude plums, squads of round red supermarket plums, neat rows of those speckeledy pink plums. "Um," I say in hesitant agreement, "Lots of plums are purple."

"Well," she says, in a surely-we-can-at-least-agree-on-this acknowledgment of my qualms, "purple is the classic color for plums."

Query

In addition to her own death, Cassie evidently has other weighty matters on her mind: "Is ice cream really just very, very cold frosting?"

Monday, October 03, 2005

The Mortality, She Is a Beetch

I didn't think that this part started until, I don't know, age 7 or something. But here we go, apparently 3 1/2 is the age in this case. Several times now, prompted by who knows what train of thought, Cassie has started to cry piteously before bed, face all crumpled up and desolate. When I manage to get out of her what's wrong, it's this (in an incredulous, desperate whine): "when I die, I won't ever be alive again?!"

What does a sweet, gentle, loving, stone-cold atheist mom reply to that? "Buck up, kid, at least you won't burn in hell"?

I've found a bit of success with the assertion (put forth with feigned certainty) that Cassie will not die when she is a child, and she will not die when she is a teenager. She will not die when she is a young grown-up, or a medium grown-up, or even just a sort-of-old grown-up. She will only die when she is a very, very, very old grown-up. (Tvuh! tvuh! tvuh!) Once Cassie asked me, "say that part again?" so I figured I was on the right track.

I have, however, been reduced in the end to pointing out that some people think that we go to Heaven when we die, and some people think that we're born again as new people or animals. We don't really know what happens when we die, since nobody alive has ever been dead before! (This last part even got a little giggle-through-the-tears the last time I used it--must have been the delivery.)

It's so weird, being a parent and having to confront these little controversies and uncertainties and secret personal truths--things that you can very successfully fudge when you're only dealing with adults, because nobody's going to ask. Gender, morality, death. What's the difference between men and women and ladies? Are mosquitoes mean? Why is it not polite to show your underwear when you'r wearing a dress? When is Ennui (the cat) going to die?

Meanwhile, although Cassie is also a a little unhappy about the prospect of my dying, at this point it's also an idea she can approach somewhat philosphically. She tells me, "when you die, I'm going to go and have lots of new adventures."