Friday, February 22, 2008

my kids know the real truth

I have always loved kids and I have always been quite popular with the under-12 set. I think teenagers kind of like me, too -- at least, the kids I taught years ago seemed to. But teenagers don't do the crazy, lovely things that younger kids do.

When I was a teenager myself, a friend and I did a biology project that required hatching ducklings. Our teacher suggested we go to some local elementary schools and describe our experiment -- which we did, when we just had eggs. Then we arranged to go back and show the ducklings to the kids. At the end of the school year, our teacher pulled out huge manila envelopes full of thank you letters from the classes we'd visited. Of course, they were adorable. But the surprise was so many of the letters were all about how cool and great I was. There were pictures of me and poems to me and it was about the greatest thing. Ever.

When I was a nanny, the little girl I took care of was about four and she started to turn herself into a little mini-Katie. She had her mom cut off her jeans into long, rolled shorts. She made her mom buy her some black pseudo-Docs. Her dad took her to get her very long hair trimmed and Elise came out with a shockingly short hairdo that looked surprisingly like the way I wore my hair.

Which all leads to today. I took my viola and visited Charlotte's kindergarten class. I played a little and talked to the kids. My favorite questions were, "How does it make the sound?" Which I thought was a really great question and I told them how the strings vibrate and the sound echoes in the inside of the instrument. And a little boy asked, "Can you play some Metallica?" Sadly, no. And then the chorus started. "You're so cool!" "Yeah -- you're the coolest!" "Charlotte, you are so lucky to have such a cool mom!"

When Cha and I were in the car driving home, she told me she was glad I came to her class. "All my friends think you are really cool, Mama." She paused. "But you're really just old and boring."

Of course, the only kids who are immune to my hipness are my own. Which is as it should be.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

funniest comment ever

Archie was watching MMA fighting (in HD! in HD!) last night. I must make a few comments.

Man, all of those guys have lots of very bad tattoos. I was almost excited during the title bout because it looked as if the contestants were tattoo-free. Fail! They both had tats. But nothing like the guy with the huge Iron Cross on his chest. Nazi much, dude?

There is nothing as much fun as putting on your best Cartman voice during grappling and saying, "I love you."

And, the winner of the title match made the funniest comment ever, even if it was inadvertently. Maybe because it was inadvertant. When asked if he liked that the fight went to the mat and was a display of Brazilian JiuJitsu, the winner said, "I'm very comfortable on my back." Yeah, I'm a 12 year old, because that made me laugh and laugh. Thank you, crazy MMA guy.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

our new tv

Our TV was purchased before the twins were born. It was a big-ass Sony -- we used to joke that the weight of it would prevent anyone from ever stealing it. A few weeks ago, it was exhibiting signs that the tube was slowly dying. The screen would flash black about every ten seconds. This was very annoying. So we went to look at new TVs.

My only input was that I thought a 50 inch set was as large as we should go. Of course, being a man, my husband thought we would probably need a 60 inch. But seeing some in person did convince him that I was correct in the size assessment. I left the rest to him. He settled on a plasma screen, because our TV stand is a little high and we're also thinking toward the future -- when I hope to reconfigure the family room and possibly mount the set on a wall. Last week, the beautiful thing was brought to the house. And at the end of this week, our DirecTV HD satellite was installed.

I am sorry to see the TiVo go. (Look -- there's proof that I can complain about anything. "We have a great HD plasma TV, but I miss the nine year old TiVo box. Waaaaah!") Just the listings format gives me hives. But I'm sure I'll adjust. I have adjusted -- no flashing, bright colors, and God, HD is cool.

Also, when you turn it on and off it makes a little "bloop bloop" noise and there's a soft blue light on the bottom of the screen that glows. Pretty, pretty.