Reject #3

Title: Would You Buy This House?

Date: October 16th, 2009

Actually, it's already sold. Sorry, didn't mean to rip your heart out, in case you happen to love nondescript early 1970's homes that have been abused by large families and come with exorbitant California price-tags. Anyone? What, no takers? (furrowed brow) Surprising.

This is the house I grew up in. What? You didn't grow up in a ghetto, eating shoe leather, and working in illegal child-labor factories to support yourself and your orphaned siblings? (This is you talking, in case you didn't know). Nope, suburban California, eating a variety of casseroles, no orphans around that I remember, though I only got paid $.25 to take out the garbage so we may have a case for illegal child-labor. Hmmm, I would have pegged you as someone with a much harsher childhood. (You again). Surprising, I know.

Yes, I have one of those stories that goes like this: after being born, my parents brought me home from the hospital to the house I lived in until I left for college. Actually that's not true, they brought me home to a different house, and then 5 months later we moved to this house, and then comes the college part. Except there was also a lot of stuff in between too. And since then as well.

But let's skip all that up to a few weeks ago when I went to California to help my parents get their house ready to sell after living in it for 32 years. The house is almost unrecognizable from when we were growing up, as it has gone through so many transformations over the years. It's like the Michael Jackson of houses. We tired so hard over the years to remove the 1970's from that house, and the result was kind of impressive, but only if you knew what it looked like before. As I was brushing my teeth one night, it suddenly seemed a travesty to me that the next people to live in that house would never know that the upstairs bathroom once had dark green woven-grass wall paper, gold-speckled linoleum flooring, and the most hideous caulk job around the bright yellow bathtub. Now it just looks like this:

Which they'll probably think is bad enough. But at least we fixed the broken lock on the door and they won't have to pull open the first drawer as a makeshift blockade. We did not however, fix the drain in the tub, which is still bright yellow.

You would never know that before this kitchen was expanded and remodeled it was a dark cave of brown cabinets, mustard yellow flecked counters, and orange walls. Even the ceiling was orange, and strangely it took until I was 13 to ever notice it. We had a loud hand bell and it was someone's job to ring it every night at dinner time. Like Pavlov's dog, we all became immediately and ferociously hungry no matter how full we might have felt just moments before. Thousands and thousands of meals for a family of 9 were prepared in here, including Bean Burgers (the regrettable family specialty), Grandma's famous rolls, all assortments of Mormon casseroles, crepes on Sunday night, and of course, homemade oatmeal for breakfast almost every week day morning. Being told to eat our oatmeal because it would "stick to your ribs" conjured up disturbing mental images that still haunt me today. When we complained the reply was, "You're lucky it's not germade." I didn't know what germade was, but if it was worse than oatmeal, I didn't want to find out. Eventually I learned to spoon it into my OJ and dump it down the sink when mom wasn't looking.

And what about the family room? In pure unadulterated 70's style, that wall originally had a red brick facade to go with the dark wood paneling on the opposite wall and the ugliest red, green, and orange astro turf carpet that can only be described as "patterned vomit." This is where we would watch VHS recordings of MTV videos from 1985 over and over again, and dance to Thriller while jumping on the little trampoline. And although the floors look clean now, there was about a 10 year period where at any given moment, someone could yell out "Touch the Floor and You're Barf, staring now!" and we would all immediately jump onto the nearest object to avoid directly touching the floor. You could easily make it from one end of the family room, up the stairs, and into the farthest bedroom with never a shortage of toys, books, papers, clothes, the occasional plate, and other miscellany to step on to avoid becoming "barf." We rarely had to use the furniture.

No one will be be able to tell about all the times we slid down these stairs in sleeping bags, eventually ruining the original puke green carpet and probably the sleeping bags too. Later, my brother Arnold would put our pet hamsters in lunch boxes and roll them down the stairs to their deaths. Or about how we figured out exactly how sneak down the stairs to avoid any creaks, and which step to sit on (3rd from the bottom) to just barely see the TV in the family room, where mom and dad were watching Dallas and thought we were asleep. By the way, that banister is brand new; we had to live with a wrought iron railing with most of the black finish chipped off. It's funny to me to see a picture of the stairs completely bare; I have no memories of that ever happening.

Imagine this room with floor-to-ceiling marbled mirrors 0n both sides of the fireplace. We only lit a fire in the fireplace once a year, on Christmas Eve. Even the year that Danny and I threw the unlit duraflame log into the Christmas tree and got sent to our rooms, effectively ruining Christmas that year. Hopefully no one will ever know how, in what can be called the "Extreme White Trash Years," the beloved family dog went senile, and began using one corner of the room as a bathroom, and how eventually the smell became so bad that no one would go in there and it became a storage room for broken furniture and old exercise equipment-- essentially an indoor garage. True story. But before all that, this was the room where we held Family Home Evening (most) every Monday night, the only family argument we had that began and ended with a prayer, as we always said. My dad kept detailed minutes of announcements and family business from those meetings, and if you read those minutes you could see for yourself that my brother John and I loved to announce really important things such as, "we have a brown couch!' and, "we're having Family Home Evening!" Every time we would raise our hands, my dad would ask, "do you have a real announcement this time?" We would lie through our teeth every time and he never learned. Another thing he never learned was that when he made a special request to sing I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home, we always changed the words to I'm so mad when Daddy comes home. To this day, I cannot sing that song without thinking of our version.

I don't have a picture of my old bedroom, the only one that was downstairs and therefore the best room in the house for sneaking out. And that's all I have to say about that at this time. It eventually became a pretty decent guest room, I'm sure for the same reason. Someone will probably use it for a home office, and never know that it was once a playroom where we played hours and hours of Q*bert and Burgertime on the Atari. When it became my room, I decided to paint it by myself, mostly to cover up the spot where my little sister Katy wrote her name in large magic markered letters. I chose a green, somewhere between mint and aquamarine, and, inexplicably, only painted 3 walls. For a long time, it was the only room in the house that wasn't painted white, except for the master bedroom which was the color of Marigold butter.

And this spot? I wish I could make a plaque to put on the wall by the door that would read, "Here stood an Alhambra water cooler, complete with a stack of little 3 ounce dixie cups and a bumper sticker on the side that said Get a Real Job, Be a Housewife." And if you thought that hutch ever actually held china, or crystal, you would be sadly mistaken. It was the home to piles and piles of paperwork, office supplies, maps, cook books, and was usually covered in post-its, snapshots, and fliers. But was one hutch enough? Oh, no it was not.

So they had this hutch built in, also to hold paperwork, and piles and piles of stuff. And those piles of stuff propagated and spread to the table and chairs. If it was your job to set the table each night, first you had to remove the piles of things from my mom's spot at the table, and relocate them on top of the piles of other things on the hutch, hoping that they wouldn't reproduce while we were eating. Can you just picture us all sitting there eating meals together? Well, not at that table anyway. It's way too nice. And did you imagine us supping pleasantly together, quietly and calmly discussing current events with no shortage of "please and thank you"? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Notes: I was really excited about this post when I first started it, and somewhere around paragraph 20 or so I started to loose steam. It just got really LONG. To be honest, I never published it because I got bored. By my own childhood. It was a real struggle today to finish it so it didn't feel too truncated. Knowing that I'll never go back to that house is a weird thing, and writing about it is even weirder still. Who knows why? Therapist Aimee? Anyway, I wish I had a prize for you if you made it this far, but let's face it, I'm probably the only one here at this point. Well maybe my parents too. Mom? Dad? Hope you're loving your new house.

Reject #2

Title: It's Time We Had a Little Talk

Date: Sept. 25th, 2009

(sigh)

I was hoping it wouldn't come down to this. This is a tad awkward, but it's got to be said. Enough with ridiculous political forwarded emails. It's called Snopes.com people. Use it. It's not that hard. Don't like Snopes? How about TruthOrFiction.com, or BreakTheChain.org, or FactCheck.org. There are people who get paid to keep you from looking like an idiot. It's a wonderful advantage of living in the Information Age really. So, please, no more emails about toilet spiders. That photo of Obama saluting the flag with his left hand? PHOTOSHOP. And do I even have to say it? He's not a muslim. Please. And no, Diamond Rio's Jesus Loves America song was not blacklisted because of it's political incorrectness. It's common knowledge that political incorrectness has never kept a country song from being produced, and they are unfortunately played on public radio all the time. Did you ever think that maybe that song never became popular because it isn't very good? I mean did you listen to it? And seriously, Diamond Rio? Did you just waste my time with an email about Diamond Rio? Oh, no you didn't.

I'm sorry to be so blunt, but if you send me anything without verifying the facts first, so help me I will make a voodoo doll with your name on it and stab your eye repeatedly and then run you over with my van.

Are you still not sure? Let me help you out.

Are you a wacky republican? Stop sending me stuff.

Do you think that sending one email to your entire address book is in good judgement? Take me off your list.

It says it's been verified on Snopes.com? It hasn't.

Do it yourself, or do us all a favor and DELETE it.

And for the love, use bcc people!

And just to clarify: funny emails are always welcome. Make me laugh, not want to kill you. And to further clarify, pictures of cats dressed in human clothes and reading the newspaper while smoking cigars fall in the latter category.

So we're good right? Wonderful. Hopefully we'll never have to have this talk again.

Now, be sure to read this over and over, because Bill Gates himself is tracking your every move on the Internet, and will personally pay you $500 every time you read this post. (It's true, he can totally do that.) Also, if you don't' forward this link to everyone you know before you are done reading this post, then Jesus will know that you don't really love him and Glen Beck will cry because you hate America. And you will become impregnated with Satan's spawn, and everyone you know will die. Oops, too late.

Notes: OK, then. This was a bit snarky, even for me. I used to get bombarded with emails from some sweet lady at church, bless her email-forwarding heart. And the last straw was some ridiculous email about that Diamond Rio song. It's not even worth going into, and I don't know why it enraged me so much. But this post was born as a result. The reasons I never posted it should be fairly obvious. I know far too many republicans, and only a few of them are really wacky, but I figured it would offend them all. So don't hate me OK whackjobs? :) For the record, I know a few wacky liberals too, just none of them forward me emails. But my biggest fear in posting this was that everyone would purposefully start forwarding me the most inflammatory emails they could find, just to be funny. Why did I even mention that? Please don't. But do tell me about the worst forwarded email you've ever received, even from me, because I'm sure even I sent them way back in the day. I think the toilet spider one was the first one I ever got, over 10 years ago. That's why I like that reference. I also like the Glen Beck comment, but other than that, meh-- It never really came together how I wanted it to. I probably shouldn't post it, but here I go: my ode to unsubstantiated email forwarders.

Anniversary Series: The Rejects

My little blog had an anniversary last week. 2 years! It's a pretty big deal. In fact, you know Joe Biden's recent f-bomb slip? Well, he wasn't talking about the Health Care Bill. And in the glorious blogging tradition of blogging about your own blog, I set out to do a Best Of kind of post, but discovered in my list of posts a treasure trove of forgotten and discarded unpublished posts. Eureka! What could be better for celebrating 2 years of mediocre and inconsistent blogging, bad photography, and pathetic blog designs (not a hint Courtney, just a statement of fact) than a collection of posts that were either so bad and/or boring I didn't even bother to publish them? LOVE blogging traditions! So every day I'll dig up one of the dejected posts and give a little explanation, synopsis, or apology. I might try to finish them, or just leave them as is-- now is that CRAZY or what?! I know, I know, you can't wait.

So let's get started.

Reject #1

Title: I Don't Like to Flaunt, but Sometimes I am Just Brilliant.

Like the other day when I thought that it would be a fantastic idea to take my kids to the Seattle Art Museum by myself, in the middle of dinner time. Because nobody else would be there right after work on Free Thursday right? And also because young kids LOVE being dragged around art museums right? Especially ones where you can't touch anything, and they have security guards everywhere, child-hating security guards to be specific, just waiting for some sinister 4 year old to reach out and contaminate something. And there's nothing that kids love more than walking (not running) around silently, looking at things that don't make any sense to them, right?

And afterward, (my brilliant plans continued) wouldn't it be fun to go to some funky burger joint that was on Oprah's list of "20 burgers you must eat or you'll die", or something like that. Because no one else would be at that sort of place wanting to eat Oprah's famous hamburgers right? I mean, hardly anyone even watches her show. And we all know how much kids love waiting for almost 30 minutes in a really crowded, small space for the kind of food they could get in .3 seconds at a certain other hamburger establishment that also has indoor playgrounds and cheap licensed-character toys? I was sure a disheveled mom and a gaggle of untidy kids would blend right in with the throngs of Seattle hipsters with their skinny jeans and disturbingly fringed hair. No one would even notice me there with three young children. Three cranky, hungry, whiny children. Right? The whole outing was a guaranteed recipe for shiny, happy, scrapbook-worthy photo-op memories, I was sure.

Right.

Yes, another successful family adventure. Most parents find it sufficient to simply look through a book about art with their children, or do a simple craft with them. Me? I don't stop until my kids are emotionally scarred and I've managed in just a few short hours to stunt their cultural development, and ensure that they will forever associate art with intense hunger pains and extreme boredom. But I'll make sure when I put the digitally altered pictures of them smiling at the museum in their scrapbooks, the caption will read:

Museum Day with Mom! We *heart* art! So much FUN!!


Notes: This was from February, and to be honest, I don't know why I didn't post this. I must have meant to add more to it, and by the time I got back to it I couldn't remember what it was. I didn't edit much, but I did add my favorite line: we *heart* art! And yes, it really was a miserable trip to the museum. Pretty much from the moment we walked in the door, my children concluded very loudly that I must have been smoking crack to take them to a such a boring place, and any attempt on my part to point out something interesting (Look kids! That looks neat! Oh wait, no-- that's just a garbage can) was met with blood curdling screams of "you're not my mommy!" By the time we got to the burger joint (Red Mill Burgers if you're local), it was after 7 and everyone was well beyond starving. I think the other patrons must have thought my kids were all having simultaneous seizures. Maybe they were. I was trying to pretend I didn't know who they belonged to. For the record though, there were some very nice people sitting next to us who kept drooling over Nate. Lucky for me that kid has some sort of endorphin-producing effect on most people: they just get kind of happy and loopy around him. He's better than dope that way. Anyway, it was in the middle of Red Mill, waiting for our (over-hyped) food with crazed children climbing all over me that the line about emotional scars and stunted cultural development came to my mind. I think it confirms for me that my most creative bursts come in the middle of complete chaos. Also that I should not trust Oprah when it comes to hamburgers.

See, isn't this fun?

Wherein We Went Crazy and Ended Up in Mexico for 5 Days, Part 2

(Have you ever had every intention of finishing Part 2 of a blog post, and then somehow 2 weeks go by and you still haven't gotten around to it? No? Funny how my resolution to write for 10 minutes each day has not translated into more frequent blog posts, or actually writing for 10 minutes a day for that matter. And I thought that was going to be one of my more realistic goals this year. Moving out of the country might prove to be easier, it turns out.)

So where were we? Oh, right, on a plane to Mexico. Would you like the detailed travelogue, or the witty, bullet-point synopsis version? Witty synopsis, really? You don't want to hear every minute detail of each meal we ate, a list of everything we took on the plane, pictures of our coordinated outfits, and lengthy, poetic descriptions of the Mexican scenery? Really? OK, have it your way. Synopsis it is.

• A funny thing about Mexico is that sometimes it isn't hot, or sunny.
  
• OK, only very occasionally is it not hot or sunny.
• I think every 120 or so years, is what someone told us.
  
• Also during the exact week that we took our trip there.
  
• I'd like to know what we did to offend the sun gods, and what child they want us to sacrifice in order to appease them.
  
• Lucky for us, 70 degrees and overcast is considered quite pleasant. (Take that sun gods.)
  
• For the Mexicans, however, it's considered an extreme winter weather event which necessitates winter parkas and thermal underwear.
  
• We didn't bring our jackets, or even long sleeved-shirts.
• We were expecting to be sitting by the pool, sipping exotic smoothies.
  
• Instead we were sitting by the fire pit at the hotel, drinking hot cocoa.
  
• Did I mention the hotel? Oh my.
  
• Wait, did I say hotel? I meant luxury hacienda.
  
• When I say it was FANTASTIC, that means that we could never have afforded to stay there had we not used my parent's time share points.
  
• Which is also why Mark was called Mr. Stovall all week.
  
• Though if it weren't for Mark's Spanish skills combined with some serious luck, we might still be trying to find that hacienda today.
  
• That is to say, we got ridiculously lost.
  
• I mean the middle of the night, remote Mexican jungle, no cell phone coverage, bad directions, wrong address, vague maps, crazy roads, seriously had to pee, cranky and tired, arguing married couple kind of lost.
• I would say Getting and Being Lost was the theme of the trip.
  
• Which might have had something to do with a street grid system that looked like someone tangled all the streets up in knots and threw them back on the ground.
• And because of a street numbering system that makes sense only if you have a PhD in completely random street numbering systems.
• And it didn't help that the rules of the road seemed to be only that there were no rules.
• Also because we never thought to buy a decent map.
• Another theme of the trip was having meltdowns to rival anything you've seen on The Amazing Race.
• OK, I had one crazy, hysterical, sleep-deprivation induced meltdown.
• I learned it from watching my kids.
• Yes, we were lost.
• But you know what they say, whatever the hysterical American tourist does in the middle of the street in Mexico, stays in Mexico.
• Or on Mexican YouTube.
• I can't remember what the people across the street who were holding a video camera and laughing their heads off said.
• But in the middle of all that getting lost, trying not to die in our tiny rental car, screaming at my husband in the middle of the street, and constantly making fools of ourselves at the fanciest hacienda we've ever stayed at, we also became completely enamored with the Yucatecan culture and way of life.
• Do you know how many unbelievably nice people helped us when we were lost?
• No less than 50.
• Do you love fresh Mexican food?
• You should try it with a Mayan flair.
• You've seen all those pictures of ancient Mayan ruins in National Geographic?
• They are even more amazing in person.
• You know that bright purple house three doors down from you that makes you want to gag?
• In Mexico, that exact same shade is "vibrant" and "cheerful."
• And wouldn't you love to live in a place where hammocks are considered a piece of furniture and a must-have in every room of your house?
• We would.
• Really.
• I can see how the adjustment could be hard; it seems impossible to get there; it's not a perfect place.
• But ever since we got home, all we can think about is how we can't wait to get back.
• One more funny thing about Mexico, is that it makes you wish you were a semi-professional photographer.
• When in actuality you have no photography skills whatsoever, and have to hide that by making all your pictures as tiny as possible and arranging them in a collage, so as to hide your lack of talent.
• Ta-da!

Wherein We Went Crazy and Ended Up in Mexico for 5 Days, Part 1

Sometimes you just get silly. (Some people might call it "having a mid-life crisis", but I see no need to use proper names here.) You see, a funny thing happened when we went to the beach last Summer: we got super tan, and started calling each other "babe." No really, eww, we would never not be tan, right babe? Actually, we had an epiphany of sorts and set a goal to move out of the country in 1 year.

Let me back up. At some point, early in our marriage, we started started talking about wanting to live abroad for a while. For the life of me, I can't figure out why we didn't just pack up and go then. I guess we thought that being responsible adults was the right thing to do. In fact, we were looking into passports and visas and teaching English and such, and then along came Mia and going back to school and then getting a job and buying a house and having 2 more kids and here we are. Or rather, there we were on the beach on the Olympic Peninsula, 30-something parents of 3, with a mortgage, a mini-van, and a Costco membership up for renewal, and everything was just peachy. There was another family playing on the beach and somehow we got to talking with them. It turns out they were living the exact life we had always envisioned for ourselves, or at least a very close version of it. They moved to a different country every few years, working on projects for the US government. We mentioned that we had always wanted to live abroad. Do it, they said without hesitating. Even with kids? Absolutely.

This is where the epiphany comes in. As we drove home, we talked more about it, and decided we were tired of just talking about it. Why not just say we're going to do it, and then make it happen? It was time for less talking, and more doing. I think we heard someone say that in a movie once, and it worked for them. And since movies always mimic real life, it seemed perfectly logical and sane to think it would also work for us. Not crazy at all right?

So we came home and threw ourselves into this crazy dream during the 15 minutes or so since then that real life hasn't gotten in the way.

There's just been a few teeny snags.

1. We don't exactly have international opportunities jumping in our laps. It would be nice if we had degrees in International Finance, or Living Abroad, or something. But we don't; we have extremely practical degrees in Information Science and, um, Performing Arts. And the chance that Mark's company will move him to one of their international offices is pretty slim. We looked on the government's job listing site, and tried to apply to a few positions, but got caught up in the evil vortex otherwise known as the US government's web-application process, which apparently has a motto of "We want YOU to apply for Government jobs, (but not actually be able to get one because our website is so messed up)." The really frustrating, I mean, amusing thing is, Mark designs websites. Specifically, he designs websites for optimal user experience. So if anyone from the government is reading this blog as part of the Patriot Act, you could really use my husband to redesign the US Government job site, and it would be nice if you could move our family to, say, Barcelona, to do that. Not that we don't love the good ol' USA. Go freedom!

2. We met with our Mortgage lady and got bad news. BAD NEWS. Darn housing slump.

So, enter the Mexico Plan: wherein we find a cheap, safe place to live and just move there, live off Savings for a while and hope we find some means of supporting ourselves, and pray like mad that the housing market picks up just when we want to sell our house. Just the sort of thing that any other perfectly sane, responsible couple with 3 kids to take care of would do right? Years ago, Mark took a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula (think Cancun), and remembered being really impressed with a city there called Merida, which is the capitol of the state of Yucatan. So we turned to our dear friend, The Internets, and started looking into it. Turns out, it's very safe, cheap, and there are already lots of ex-pats living there, who may or may not be mentally ill. Yay!

Remember the less talking, more doing thing? Well, it took some convincing of yours truly, but that is essentially the reason that we bought plane tickets, dropped the kids off at my parent's, and ended up on a plane to Mexico, headed to Merida.

Really. We got back just under 2 weeks ago. At this point you are thinking, she wasn't kidding about being insane. Well, maybe it's from being a little over obsessed with The Amazing Race, or from too much nitrous oxide last time I went to the Dentist. Or maybe it's just Holy Crap, we're in our 30's and always did what we thought we were supposed to do, instead of living out our dreams, and now our dreams are being suffocated by American suburbia. Or something like that. But there you have it; this is what we're trying to do. It's a little weird admitting your completely unreachable dream to everyone you know and all of cyberspace. I'm imagining conversations 10 years from now: "Remember when you went to this random city in Mexico because you thought you were going to move there? Yeah, that's a little embarrassing huh?"

Regardless, consider this our Message to the Universe.

Dear Universe,

We really, really, really want to move. Outside of the United States. Preferably somewhere that doesn't have bird-eating tarantulas. Is that too much to ask? Thanks, Uni, you're the best. Really.

Next up, Part 2: Wherein we go to Mexico.

Excruciating Details from Mia's 7th Birthday

Mia turned 7 on Sunday. Her original plans involved going on a cruise to Disneyland with her entire 1st grade class and any one else she's ever known. Eventually that morphed into me taking Mia and 2 of her friends to brunch at the fancy restaurant at the top of the Space Needle. I think that was a good compromise, no? Though if you've taken even one almost 7 year old to a fancy restaraunt lately you probably would have told me to do the cruise. Not that they were bad, but when you take kids to anywhere fancier than Red Robin, you suddenly realize just why it is that you go to Red Robin, and it's not for the food. I think the best part was when Mia opened one of her presents and used her outside voice to exclaim, "It's just what I wanted-- a whoopee cushion! When you sit on it, it sounds like a fart!!" I would just like to say to the (childless) couple sitting right next to us: thank you for not snarfing your fresh-squeezed organic orange juice. I was not so restrained.

Do you know how many times I've heard the word fart in the last 72 hours? As well as the sound to go along with it? And then there was my dad who was gently encouraging Mia to take the thing to church. What really cracks me up though is that Mia doesn't use it for jokes on other people. No, it's for her. To sit on. Over and over again. Oh, and by the way, it's self-inflating. This means she can entertain herself for hours. All she has to do is sit on the cushion, perform a slight bum lift, and repeat the process for as long as she wants. Yesterday this went on the entire time she was doing her homework. She now sees no reason why she shouldn't enjoy a fart sound every time she sits down. In fact, she was quite upset when she came home from school today to find I had moved the whoopee cushion off of her chair. "Don't you know that this belongs permanently on my chair?!" she scolded. And then she promptly sat on it for punctuation.

She has a nick name for it. I believe it's Fartsy.

Oh, and within the first 24 hours, it popped after a particularly enthusiastic pounce. Thank goodness for duct tape, eh Fartsy?

To all her Bardsley uncles: you have a niece you can be proud of.

The Secret Lives of First Graders

I really, really should go to bed. Right? That's what responsible people do when it's almost midnight and they have three young kids to get up to the next day? I know there are responsible people out there because every morning when Mia gets on the bus at 8:44 AM and I'm standing at the window waving in my pajamas after begrudgingly stumbling out of bed, I see those people with their kids waiting at the bus stop and they usually look responsibly showered and dressed and like they're about to go do all sorts of productive, adult-like things. Of course, that's only on the days that I actually get out of bed to wave to her at the window. On the other days  I just envision all those people in my head while I mumble goodbye to Mia from under my warm blanket. "Bye, I love you. Did you turn the TV on for Sam and put some dry cereal on a chair for Nate? OK, great. Thanks, see you after school." I pretend not to see the scornful looks from the pretend responsible parents, and turn over to go back to sleep.

But that's not the point of this post. I've been thinking about Mia and how none of my irresponsibleness has seemed to rub off on her, which means I get to play the age-old game of "My Kid is Way Better Than Your Kid," which is a long and glorious blogging tradition. My mission here is two-fold. Well, OK, actually it's one-fold: she's paying me 2 months of her allowance to brag about her on my blog. What can I say, I'm irresponsible and can totally be bought. So, game on.

Keep in mind: the girl is not even 7 years old yet.  And yes, every morning while I'm sleeping off a bad night of not sleeping, she gets herself up, gets dressed, combs and brushes all the right things, makes her bed, gets herself breakfast, often makes her own lunch, and throws something in the crock pot for dinner before Curious George is on at 8. Did I say makes her bed? Actually she doesn't do that, because she is so meticulous about her room that she sleeps on top of her neatly made bed just so it never gets messed up.  (Though in the interest of full-disclosure, last Summer we did find a rotting banana under the covers of that neatly made bed. So it's a more of an on-the-surface kind of neatness.)

Some of her friends in the first grade are really into having secrets, mostly about ghost stories or who has cooties and stuff . A few weeks ago, Mia told me, "I'm not really into secrets anymore. Mostly it's just people spitting in your ear." She has a knack for telling it like it is.

Another oddly fantastic thing about Mia is that when she gets a fever, she turns into the sweetest, most agreeable and pleasant child that ever was. She will even voluntarily help Sam clean up his messes and tell him he's her best friend-- as opposed to when she's feeling just fine and loudly informs us that killing Sam might be a good solution to the problem of their not getting along. We tactfully remind her that the correct term for that is 1st degree murder, and the consequence involves going to jail for the rest of your life. Her response to this is, "Well, I could just put something bad in his food, like poison, so he'll die that way without anyone knowing." Ummmm, creative, but still murder.

Oh wait, I was supposed to be bragging, right?

Did I mention she's smart? Before school started in September she repeatedly told people, "I'm a little worried because my bus is going to come in the middle of Sid the Science Kid, but my mom doesn't usually wake up until Word World." That's right, she can totally tell time.

Yes, it makes a parent proud. I can only attribute everything to the shining example of capability and selflessness that she has in her life. I mean, I'm pretty sure that she has an example of that. Probably one of those bus stop parents, being all responsible and caring and helping her get on the bus. I prefer to teach by bad example in my pajamas at the window. Or half asleep and still in bed.  Either way really. Seems she's turning out just fine.

Brag over.