ah, tv...and food

I have temporary access to a multitude of channels I don't normally have. (Actually, I'm not even certain how many channels we have access to on our sets, but I think it's probably somewhere around...five...ish? And then we have all these weird channels like 5.1, 5.2, 5.3. Okay, then.)

So, I'll just say that I thought I was doing pretty well without watching so much tv last semester (I really didn't have time what with being the crazy freak I was), and, really, I was right. I don't really miss the idiot box all that much. Well, except for cooking shows. We do have some on PBS that Cardo has taken to watching, but usually I'm too restless to sit down and watch them. Today, however, taking advantage of my temporary television time (alliteration rocks, thank you!), I watched some Food Network. I watched Giada make raspberry, mozzarella panini and I wanted to go out, buy the ingredients and make them right then. However, my laziness won out over my desire for food, and I ate two small bean burritos (consisting of flour tortillas and canned refried beans) instead. I am a wonder in the kitchen, people. Really, it's astounding.

Seriously, though, I'll be making those panini in the very near future, hoping that I don't screw them up. I'll let you know how it goes. And, oh yeah, she made some apple iced tea also which sounded very good and I'll try that also. I've been making myself lots of black iced tea with lemon and Earl Grey iced tea lately, because, hello, I could make it at home for about twenty cents and bit of time, or walk down to Starbucks* and pay $2.25 or so.

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* They're finally going to open yet another coffeehouse across from the Starbucks. I can't remember how long the old place has been closed, but I'm actually looking forward to the new place opening. I can go down and buy expensive iced tea and hang out maybe once this summer.

lullaby and good night…mare

Last week, Pic, Cardo and I went to storytime at the library, as usual. One of the songs they sang was a kind of medley of ‘It’s Raining, It’s Pouring’ and ‘Itsy- Bitsy Spider.’ This got me thinking about kids’ verse. (A subject I’d already given entirely too much thought to anyhow.)

Why is it that even when there aren’t somewhat veiled allusions to to-be-beheaded monarchs and the plague and such that kids’ verse can be so disturbing?

The way I learned the ‘It’s Raining’ song is as follows:

It’s raining, it’s pouring,
The old man is snoring,
He bumped his head,
When he went to bed,
And he couldn’t wake up in the morning.

I always thought, even as a child, ‘Somehow he slipped, smacked his head on the headboard…and then he died.’ So, yes, this probably isn’t what this song is saying, but what is it saying? Are there more verses I just don’t know? What is the point of the song? Just in case you couldn’t tell, this song has been haunting me for a good deal of my life.

Of course, there’s also

Rock-a-bye baby,
In the tree top,
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
Down will come baby,
Cradle and all.

What kind of a nightmarish song is that to sing to a baby? Huh? First, why is the baby’s cradle hanging in a tree? Second, seriously?! I have a suspicion that an older sibling invented this ditty for a new baby in the family that seemed nothing more than a nuisance.

Finally, perhaps a weird one:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
All the King’s horses
And all the King’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.

For a few reasons this has always disturbed me. One is the imagery associated with Humpty Dumpty. Every time I see depictions of HD, he’s an egg. Usually an egg with pants. This image bothers me. Why is he an egg? Is that part of the original concept, or was someone just tyring to make sense of the rhyme. Also, and again, what kind of a verse is this to recite to children? Is this a warning against hanging out on the wall? ‘Don’t hang out on the wall. You might fall and your body will shatter beyond repair.’ Um…?

Well, what do you all think? About both these and other verse?

cleanliness is next to…pic

Sometimes people react to me as if i’m a bit off when I tell them Pic cleans her own room. When Cardo comes home and Pic’s room is clean, he usually asks me if I have cleaned it. In the words of Cher (not that one), ‘As if!’

Pic has been cleaning up after herself for almost three years now. (I’ve had some pretty startled responses to that too.) Of course, I don’t mean that she has always cleaned up everything on her own. An eighteen-month-old obviously is going to need help with some things, but she was good even then about neatening things up.

The other night, I was looking through an old file of writing and I came across this tidbit from just before she started school

She has taken a liking to raisin bran cereal, so we share a bowl – with each other and with the floor. She loves to be the one to put the dishes in the kitchen, so she holds the bowl while I carry her across the living room and over the fence for her to make her deposit. – from 7 August 2006

First off, we were giving a bunch of those baby fences when Pic was just tiny. We loved those up for a while and I have the pictures to prove it. There was just too much that we thought she might get into. Now, though, she has access to pretty much everything (of course, now she’s four and a grown-up (according to herself, thank you very much)).

Second: Yes, my child my take forever to get around to it, but she is perfectly capable of picking up after herself. And, yes, evil mamma that I might be, I refuse to clean her room.

Is it strange to any of you that I make my four-year-old clean her own room?

I don’t remember others ever cleaning my room, but this might be a trick of selective memory. Who knows?

a pox upon us

I’ve been feeling under the weather lately (you know, rather than over it…or something) and this condition has made me reflect on other times I’ve been sick.

First off, though, I wanted to point out that I didn’t really get sick during my last semester. The semester I figured I’d be sick the entire time because my body was so ravaged with stress and lack of sleep. I showed this stress in many other ways, but not in being sick. Huh.

Anyhow, when either Cardo or I am sick, the sick one will sleep on the couch, so as not to contaminate the other person. However, when Pic isn’t feeling well, we all tend to gather in the living room. On the nights when she just can’t sleep for coughing or throwing up or whatever other unpleasantness, we will all converge on the living room floor and endure the night together.

I don’t know what is normal in other families, and I’m sure the range of ‘normal’ is vast, but I feel that we may be a bit off in this situation.

Oh, also, we only spend nights together in the living room when Pic is feeling so badly that she cannot sleep. On these nights, she’ll stay up pretty much all night watching tv while Cardo and I attempt to sleep. Yes, that’s right, we’re awaiting out Parents of the Year awards any moment now. Really, though, Pic gets so hysterical sometimes that the soothing brain-numbingness of the idiot-box is the only thing that keeps her calm. And, when we’ve already been dealing with a sick child and we’re running on fumes and have to work or continue to care for said sick child the next day, we’ll pretty much go with what works. (And, yes, I understand that we are lucky to have problems so easily solved and to have a tv set at our disposal.)

Anyhow, what about the rest of you? Do you prefer solitude when you’re sick or would you rather have someone nearby?

green foods

There’s a sandwich place nearby that Pic and I like to occasion (we don’t frequent it, so yeah…). They used to have styrofoam cups, which made me a little crazy, but we went the other day, and they gave me a plastic cup for my drink. (It’s the first time I’ve ordered a drink there in a long time.) The new cups are compostable. Cool beans! (Hello early nineties.)

I wonder how much more expensive these cups are than others? I wonder if other places couldn’t start stocking them also?

Hmm, just something to mull over.

magic day

Apparently today is Magic Day. It seems fitting that I just finished the Harry Potter series...again.

Actually, I recently realized that I had only read Deathly Hallows once, when it came out. I missed reading the series last year. I barely remembered anything that had happened, so it was pretty much like the first time I was reading it. I was getting toward the end after Pic went to bed, but before Cardo got off work. When he got here, he asked how I was feeling (I've been sick) and I told him I was feeling much better. I know that I sounded worse, but I explained to him that I had just been crying because of the book. This is something about me that he will never really understand. He told me, 'Why? It's just a book. It's not real.' Yes, I get this. I also get that just about everything makes me cry and, of course, many parts of many books bring on the tears. There are definitely times when Cardo and I seem to prove that inane 'opposites attract' theory.

Anyhow, now I'm up and I've nothing new to read. Later today I'll have to remedy that. I have several books checked out from the library awaiting me, but I strangely feel in the mood to read A Keeper of Sheep, which I haven't read in several years because I've had a difficult time tracking it down. I bought it from an amazon seller once, but that was at the time that people were stealing mail from our mailroom and the book never made it to me. Ah, well.

Okay, so, um, rambling over.

Happy Magic Day.

nablopomo

Hey, I finally got around to checking and I'm definitely on the June blogroll, so I added the cute badge over there on the right. I got it from the NaBloPoMo website, June badges, comments section, here.

Now, let me just hope I keep up with writing every day for the remainder of the month.