Really? When we applied for the rad all-transfer elementary school, I didn't think for a second that we'd actually get Baldo in there for kindergarten.

Turns out we did. Got the letter yesterday.

I'm not accustomed to getting Good Letters, just rejections (I put them in my butt, usually; sometimes I take a picture) and bills and ads. And occasionally a reminder about the cat's parvo vaccine, that sort of thing. Here was this letter of acceptance. It was weird. I had to read it over the phone to J. to confirm that it was indeed saying what I thought it was saying.

Posted by Marrit at 11:35 AM

I am down but I am far from over Attention, everyone.

I've decided that I need a new theme song. One that's more of a joke, one that says, "You know, I suck, and that's okay." I've recently met with some failures of an unspecified nature, and I'll be 35 this summer. I feel frustrated and angry in a universe that is indifferent to human complaint, which could be the bipolar, or maybe it's something existential, like the impending downfall of humanity. I don't know. Too soon to tell.

So anyhow, I need a song that people can jump around to in spandex, a song with boogie fog and a Casiotone-arpeggio solo, so I have selected "Far from Over" by Frank Stallone, which rotated up in the Gigabeat (how'd it get there?) while I was unloading groceries today. It lent an air of importance to the unpacking. It was my new anthem.

Please don't think of men's synchronized swimming when you hear it. Listen to it anew, and then choose a theme song for yourself that sucks. It will make you feel better.

This one goes out to all the English I students Archaeological team ventures to Ithaca, homeland of Odysseus.

I sure hope Circe doesn't turn them into pigs.

Dear Wired, Steve Carell or Rainn Wilson naked would have been a lot funnier.

John Krasinski naked would have been a lot hotter.

Next up: Linus Torvalds. We demand it.

Thanks!

--the women and a certain percentage of the gents (because our money is also green)

sure you are I sat by one of my colleagues during a SXSW screening. He told me his wife was pregnant and due in three weeks. I congratulated him.

Inevitably our talk turned to work-life balance. He told me that since he was a freelancer and a teacher, he could be at home with the baby and work.

"Uh huh," I said. That's what I always say.

Now, I'm not saying it isn't possible. Just that having your productivity tied to a small child's sleep schedule is a pretty risky gamble. I mean, more than baccarat.

You want to know what I get done these days? Fuck-all nothing. Hey, Mairt! Hey, Mairt! That's what. And he's five now and has stopped throwing up all the time. But in the early days it was like this:

Previous employer: Can you just give us the time you have? While the baby naps?
Me: Can it be done in fifteen minutes? Because that's how long the baby naps.

We need to lose our illusion that people who are "at home with the baby" are likewise capable of great professional feats. Those that are have nannies. Good luck just the same.

Pass the Ativan. Globally. Rocket misses U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, leaves three-foot-wide crater in ground.

Folks, until our petroleum habits and and religious wars obliterate the human species, we're all just going to get crazier and crazier. Katrina survivors? Crazy! Giant tsunami? Crazy! Iraq war? Crazy on all sides except Halliburton executives! Complete impotence of the American voters? Crazy! Religious militants tried to shoot you with a rocket? Crazy.


Translation:Holy shit!

oppositional/defiant Today in line at the video store, Baldo planted his face in my buttcrack, took a giant exaggerated sniff, and proclaimed to the assembly, "Marrit, your BUTT smells!"

What could I say?

"Well," I said. "Then you might want to avoid sticking your face in it."

Natural consequences, right?

The grandmotherly lady waiting with us cracked up.

My butt probably does smell. We're trying to finish up a flat of juice boxes. Yeah, they're apple.

We are ass-crack deep in some kind of stage wherein the child will subject himself to danger and unpleasant sensory impressions in order to embarrass/outsmart/whatever me. He wants me to react. He wants me to react a lot.

He's five. What the fuck, y'all? I thought five was supposed to be really chill. Five is not chill. There are good things about it but chill isn't one of them. Sometimes he talks so much he interrupts himself, which is hilarious, and I have to smother my laugh because five is also a Year of Frustrating Things: greater competencies but also a greater awareness of the continuing road of childhood, more complex social networks, death and superheroes and shoelaces and shit. No wonder he rambles nervously all day.

No wonder I ramble nervously all day. Dude. I'm terrified for him sometimes. Now he's in the part of childhood I remember.

I really want to be sympathetic. But that attitude sometimes? Makes it difficult. But I am not embarrassed if he tells a room full of people in the video store that my butt smells. Hell, I'll go spread the word further. Obviously I have very little shame left; sometimes it's an asset even if not monetized.

march/madness Spectator sports are just another way to burn through my emotional capital, but I do get awfully invested in the announcement of the Number of the Day.

"It's 8! Got to be 8!" I'm yelling. I love 8. "Today's the day for 8!"

happy birthday, Iraq war! Mom, Dad: don't look.

I was too jacked up with fever to go see The Jellydots, let alone go to the capitol, so I guess I'll just blog instead. What a difference that made. Look out, it's the Person of the Year.

Just the same, this Constant Foreign War is bullshit, and we need to be reminding ourselves of that.

At least superficially unrelated: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

postgame You know life has returned to normal when the big item on your agenda is a trip to the dump. I mean, the sanitary landfill.

ETA: Now that I have Baldo's fever, I will abstain from visiting the landfill. I am sincerely disappointed.

good/sucky: SXSW edition I have had so many interesting conversations with so many interesting people, and my only complaint is when I have to tape-record these conversations and transcribe them. Can we solve that problem with technology? Have we developed telepathy yet?

Especially since the analog solution--the cassette transcriber--is goofy expensive.

to make the week more exciting Baldo has a fever. Not even going to mention the possibility of him having the chorkenporks. I mean, the charckenparks. Well, I mean a thing that sort of sounds like that. What do you get first, the spots or the fever? Now, we'll be looking for more of a raised kind of spot?

big ppd Something about this Parenthood.com report on maternal depression doesn't sit well with me. Maybe it's the headline "Depression: The Innocent Victims," which I hope wasn't written by the author, who goes on in the second page to relate her experience as a depressed mother.

Depression is still a disease, and anyone affected by it is "innocent"--mothers, fathers, and children. I don't buy that mothers deserve to suffer but their children don't. Nobody deserves to suffer from a mental illness, especially one as treatable as depression.

More to the point: remember that any time the story says something like "Depression in a parent can also result in children becoming caregivers," what it really means is untreated depression. I never wanted to kill myself more than during the shitty times when I thought I was hurting my child just by being depressed. Fuck that noise. Parents who treat their depression do not turn their children into caregivers. Parents who treat their depression model strength and self-care and survival and tenacity for their children. Parents who treat their depression and hang in there every day teach their children how to survive illness and be compassionate toward others.

It is possible to be a good parent and a depressed parent if your kid sees you fighting it.

(small pimpin down in atx) If you're going to be at SXSW Interactive, come say hi at the panel.

If you're not, just go about your business, I guess, and good journey.

OK, didn't see that one coming at all Baldo's really getting into The Saddle Club, which is an Australian tweenage horse opera.

He does not like the episodes with a contest. Too much tension.

Such a Pisces.

Anyhow, I have not committed myself to watching any of The Saddle Club. I sneak away from The Saddle Club. It's so seven-year-old girl, except the closest thing to a seven-year-old girl in the room is me, since I was one formerly. I'm afraid it's going to make me seven years old again, and while there was nothing in particular wrong with that experience I'd just as soon not repeat it. I'll be 34, thanks. I don't even care if I still have zits.

As my dad says of my child, "He's a weird little dude." I was the weird little dude of the previous generation, though not a boy. (Gender is fluid for weird little people.)

Once they hit age five you can get a good sense of which children are going to be Weird People and which are not. Like, I saw this guy riding a really, really elevated bicycle today. As tall as a unicycle. You have to be weird to get an idea like that and execute it. You have to have a five-year-old's sense of possibility. Some kids I know are growing out of that and into other things. Others will hang on to it. I think my son will keep it.