new year's fucking eve Shrek 2, the movie of the week? Check.

Black-eyed peas? Check.

Champagne of beers? Check.

aw hell naw roaches Last night I reached into a kitchen drawer and felt the six-legged frenzy of a brownbanded cockroach (Supella longipalpa) making love to my son's bottle of Atarax.

I screamed (yes, I did) and grabbed the largest, heaviest thing in my immediate reach, which was our new, still in-the-bag Yellow Pages. ("The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!") With great vengeance, furious anger, and a phone book I arrested the flight of the brownbanded cockroach. It left a trail. Its friends got away, but I think I sent a message. Motherfuckers.

Today's sunrise brings Googling and boric acid. Motherfuckers.

gracias A Little Bird sent me some year-end screeners. I can say no more, except to give a hearty thanks for the gift of cinema.

holiday freakout Happy Holiday of Your Choice from Baldo.

holy crap So when I volunteered to work this kindergarten party, I must have thought that the kids would mingle and I'd make sure they didn't run out of cheese?

Aw hell naw. I led nineteen children in making reindeer hats out of construction paper, with pattern and materials supplied by Awesome Teacher. We traced "mittens or gloves," we cut them out with scissors, I stapled them together. Rotating groups of five.

Some kids are more into making holiday-themed hats from the shapes of their hands than other kids are. My own child is not into crafts. Apparently neither was I. My first two rounds I kind of beefed (be sure to turn the stapler upside down so the poky part faces away from the child's head when the hat is worn) but my game improved. We all gave it our best.

The Five-Year-Old in 10 Words or Fewer "Hey, guys. Want to hear how high-pitched my scream is?"

I feel a bit like this

cereal/killer J. was the first to point it out.

"Clifford (tm) Crunch cereal is the same as Lucky Charms. With no marshmallows."

Clifford Crunch is organic. Lucky Charms has a better web site and a game on the back with a Pop-O-Matic inside.

We have a rule: You can pick whatever cereal you want as long as it (1) has no nuts or seeds, because of the allergies, and (2) has fewer than 12 grams of sugar. You want to eat George Lucas's Robot War Movie Officially Licensed Crunch? If it has no nuts or seeds and contains fewer than 12 grams of sugar, that's fine with me. We used to be tweaky about food dyes and high-fructose corn syrup, but eliminating them from our lives made not one bit of difference in anyone's eczema or frame of mind, so finally I decided it was time to broaden the cereal aisle. Besides, the $5 high-road cereals without synthetic semi-food substances in them? All have nuts and seeds and shit. Yay! Sunflower seeds, for example, are a full-body rash waiting to happen. So meh.

Besides, Clifford Crunch(tm) is Lucky Charms without the marshmallows. They are visually indistinguishable upon casual inspection (say, from the couch). I think we have enough here to warrant study.

I have a feeling that the central science might come in handy! Ah, chemistry.

I will admit that I am not wild about the marshmallows. But somehow Lucky Charms rings it at 11 grams of sugar. The other people in the aisle acknowledged I'd been pwned.

aw hell naw

My friend Anne pointed me to this poster--"from the makers of Aw Hell Naw Robot"--and it's stayed on my mind.

It's given me an Aw Hell Naw outlook, which is unequivocal about what it will tolerate but not furiously angry. It calls to me, as in

• Aw Hell Naw dishes
• Aw Hell Naw limbs on the roof
• Aw Hell Naw Fraggle-sized hole in the side of the garage
• Aw Hell Naw auto registration
• Aw Hell Naw school shoes with a hole in them
• Aw Hell Naw rotovirus in the office
• Aw Hell Naw toys

and off I go.

a most fucked-up day The kind where you just shake your head and say, "That's fucked up."

There's a lot of shit flying at your head, but it's not necessarily all bad: it's just a lot at once. And it's not necessarily big or catastrophic shit, it's your regular daily shit: just all at once.

Count 'em up:

• Weird work shit.


• Fucked up regular every-other-Thursday commute.


• Running late at dinner.


• Son inquires about sex for the first time.


• I explain how (1) babies are born (because that was the angle of his question) and (2) women become pregnant with babies.


• Son demonstrates how Really Awesome Teacher assumes an "X"-shaped stance with her arms when discussing words with the letter X.


• I assume he is no longer curious and tell him he can ask me any questions. Now we are ready for an age-appropriate book.


• Son mentions that a certain second-grader is "really, really fat. I mean, really fat, like he ate everything."


• Holy crap. Thank God we covered "Is Santa real?" over the weekend.


• I explain that people's bodies are different shapes no matter what they eat and that eating nutritious food is important to everyone.


• Speaking of which, dinner is ready. Here's yours. Be sure to try the green beans.


• Sorry, you've had enough juice today. Want some milk or water?


• No, milk or water.


• Massive tantrum.


• Dinner continues.


• UPS package containing this year's Christmas present (classroom-sized Lego box purchased from the rad toy place with awesome sales arrives.


• "I want to open it! I want to open it!" Repeat. Repeat.


• You don't want to have any presents to open on Christmas?


• "NO!"


• We think Christmas is a wonderful time of the year for young children, and perhaps it is, but it also fucks with their heads.


• Fine. You can open it tomorrow. I do not intend to spend the month of December arguing about this box. Now it is bedtime.


• Because seriously? Fuck Christmas. The other shit in my life doesn't take a break because it's Christmas. You don't want to celebrate, which involves waiting? Fine. Maybe you feel different next year.


• Period starts. Or so I gather from a sudden crumpling of my uterus.


• "Oof!"


• "Why did you make that sound?"


• (half-assed explanation attempting link to earlier topic)


• Brushing teeth.


• Son experiences academic anxiety, manifesting as a fear of first grade and a desire to "race" his classmates in reading, unsatisfied with his recently tested fourth-grade level.


• It's a Neil Simon play? Should I be married to a young Richard Dreyfuss?


• Doorbell rings. We are doing bedtime ritual all in our jammies, except son is bottomless because that's how he rolls. Whatever. You want to take your pants off when you sleep?


• Spouse's eighth-grade student is at the door with his parent to pick up a movie from school, for film class. Those lucky kids get a film class in eighth grade! I didn't get one until college Back in the Day(tm).


• I am standing in front of another parent and child in my SpongeBob pajamas, makeup smeared, my child pantsless and capering beside me. This must look so awesome.


• Did I mention the movie is Psycho? It's the most written-about movie in the realm of film theory, or at least it was Back in the Day(tm), because of the montage. And the parent is standing right there consenting to the arrangement. It's not inappropriate. Why does it feel so inappropriate?


• "I don't have any pants on!"


• Well, there's that.

r.i.p., awesome bag; occupational/therapy As soon as a certain Small Someone is asleep outside my door* I must go out to the car and seek a small black plastic semi-circle upon the floorboards. (I don't want to get near the floorboards of my car, and neither do you. Once I found a piece of bacon there.)

I need this small black plastic semi-circle because it is the missing link to the strap of my Awesome Bag.

My Awesome Bag is the perfect size for my relatively honkin' laptop, which has a giant honkin' power cord because it is a Dell. (I was a standout among writers, but among the chemists I fit in fine.) I mean, it had no wasted space. It had handles and a strap, and it was light and ever so efficiently padded.

It was perfect to me because, though I am a Laptop Person (I use my own computer at work, for one) I am also a Grandma Purse lady, so I'm already schlepping two items. I just need them both. I have to have a Grandma Purse full of gum wrappers and half-eaten fruit bar thingies and my giant East Texan Woman Wallet that folds out four different ways and is fuzzy leopard with red patent trim. So my laptop bag needs to be about the size of my computer while still holding giant honkin' Dell shit.

Awesome Bag met that requirement, and it was cuuuuutte. Vinyl stripes of all different shades of blue. I debuted it at SXSW, where panelist Tracey envied it openly. I put my Grandma Purse over it, and boom, off I went. It reminded me of attaining fluency in Diaper Bag. Shit, I could put on Awesome Bag, then Grandma Purse, and still roll a backpack on wheels with two coats over my arm. My shit was tight! And my child had become independent! Fuck yeah!

Sit down for the best part. I think she's originally from Target, but I got her at Thrift Town (for you Austinites, that's not Land, but Town--I always do better at Town) for $2.99.

I really hope I can put Awesome Bag back together.



*On the topic of The Boy Who Would Only Sleep on the Floor, we got our OT report today. Nothing unexpected. Some of the parts of the evaluation did not surprise me because I know from being his parent that my child is not as coordinated as many of his peers. Now that we are in a diverse kindergarten setting, I see all these little kids with particular aptitudes. Already the kinesthetic and extroverted kids play ball in a small group at recess; some want to draw and some just don't in art class.

But I know he is being challenged appropriately. He does yoga (yoga!) at P.E. and comes home really mad when he tries to do the poses on his own and can't. But he tries and continues trying, which is all I ask. Don't be afraid of things because you're not good at them automatically.

He has some sensory processing issues, which does not surprise given that he wore Vic Firth headphones for about a year. I probably should have asked for an evaluation as soon as the kid started walking around with his hands clamped to his ears because he was "afraid of loud noises." But like the sensible 70s mom I am inside, I put headphones from Guitar Center on him because I figured if he was going to be afraid of loud noises, he might as well have his hands free to do kid stuff like digging in rocks and eating them. He wouldn't have to be afraid of sudden loud noises that might happen, and I figured he'd eventually get tired of wearing giant headphones.

He did: a year and some months later.

He ate fine, had no problems with textures except with regard to his eczema (which we could never quite exclude as a co-factor), and was appropriately social, even charming. (He doesn't get that from me.) Verbal as hell and prone to tantrums. (From me he gets that.) But then again, he was three. So I never knew which way to lean.

I am a fortunate American to have an excellent public school classroom with a bad-ass veteran kindergarten teacher trained in GT education and really tight with her parent communication.

It really does get better.

Love/Hewitt Y'all, Jennifer Love Hewitt just went up big in the polls with me.

The Ghost Whisperer is not for me, and I think she kind of dragged down Party of Five. And then there was that kind of clenching sensation in the chest when she was Audrey Hepburn. Audrey Hepburn was not to be necromanced by Jennifer Love Hewitt.

But mean bloggers are talking about how she looks "fat" in her bikini photos, and she is pissed as hell. As she ought to be. She has the body of an adult woman from a developed nation. She probably works out with a trainer and eats things from Whole Paycheck. A doctor would pronounce her in good health. An individual woman's body is the way it is, and if you would expect her to go beyond good health and starve herself or have surgery to make it smaller, I think that sucks.

Can we please take this opportunity to acknowledge that our concept of "fat" is improperly calibrated? We sound like eleven-year-old girls castigating one another's physical flaws at a slumber party. (One of my very most favoritest genderizing rituals of yore.) None of the "fat" Hollywood actresses are really fat, except for that little sprinkling of character actresses who don't get talked about much. Mostly they are grown people with secondary sex characteristics and a unique genetically determined shape, and their doctors would probably be pleased with their lifestyle. Kate Winslet has never been fat, although I wonder if her doctor is pleased with her lifestyle.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are plugging ourselves with Yellow Dent #2 and drinking soda and sports drinks and sitting at our keyboards. I know I sound like a raving nutjob when I talk about people getting diabetes younger because of all that starch and sweetener, but if we cared half as much about our food supply as we do about female celebrities in bikinis, we might start getting somewhere. Also, I have to accept Jennifer Love Hewitt as a fellow Texan. It's required that Texans accept one another on some level. The Bush Administration has been really hard for me to take, partly for that reason.

Posted by Marrit at 07:36 PM

ur mean "Online bullying a growing part of teenage life."

I don't want to sound like Andy Rooney, but when I was a teenager the only social media we had was a telephone that plugged into the wall and had a big curly cord. (Inevitably a section of the curly cord turned backward and would never be restraightened.) It was a crude tool, but we never ran out of ways to use it to be mean to each other.

The kids these days? I can't imagine. People have so much more exposure to each other, including children to their peer group, that I kind of clutch myself dramatically and fear for our youth. Now that I'm 35 and I have a school-age child, I think I'm entitled to be a bit of a yenta, especially about bullying. For my own child, I worry a normal amount, especially since he's turning out to be a Little Guy with a Big Mouth and certain intellectual over-excitabilities (my girl Kim Moldofsky is blogging about them). Then again he attends Our Awesome School, which by the way is about to have its annual Winter Concert. (I'm really pumped, but I don't think we have appropriate shoes.)

Eventually he's going to be an adolescent in a world of mobile communications, and that's going to present a guidance challenge I didn't face Back in the Day, nor subsequently, when we were using Pine or Elm to check our e-mail at terminals in the student lounge.

Posted by Marrit at 07:37 PM

the central science (she blinded me with) The chemists and I are anticipating a mid-December deliverable, so I have been scarce.

My kung-fu is getting stronger. I know the quirks of the Americal Chemical Society's style manual, such as its policy on end punctuation outside the quotation marks in running text. I do not dwell on the policy, I just enforce it. I'm kind of like Michelle Yeoh as a no-nonsense cop from the Mainland, and pretty soon I'm going to drive a motorbike onto a moving train. (Name the movie.)

My new day job is not my first foray into scientific editing. I did some work on course components for a 7th-grade science curriculum, which was a lark because it was Fun Interactive Learning, and I am so on that, plus I actually understood the science. (Science was not my destiny in the Texas public school system.)

This shit now is some heavyweight chemistry to me, but apparently it's just general chemistry (which is sometimes said sneeringly by other sorts of chemists). It's ironic that chemistry has to some extent taken over my life, considering I've taken two totally ineffective classes in it: my high school class, which was a social hour, and my class in Chemistry Appreciation as a humanities major. I did not do well in Chemistry Appreciation because it essentially comprised mixing solutions and describing the aromas, and I am anosmic. I didn't really have a running start at that one.

There is a lot of scientific notation, and damn if I can't spot the difference between a hyphen and an actual minus in superscript while proofing in a proprietary Flash-based interface. While I am not actually learning chemistry I am conversant in its mathematical syntax set within running text. (The ACS manual says I should put a comma after "chemistry.")

I love being an editor. It's a calling.

Special note to technologists using LaTeX while working with a publisher: Fuck you! I know you're trying to fight the open-source revolution, but the primary consequence of your crusade is causing some downtrodden editor a lot of problems. We can't be converting your shit. We have to read through for instances of "check you answer" and hyphens in your superscript.

I think Google docs will be a good solution as soon as it stops kind of, you know, sucking a little. The chemists work in Google docs and spreadsheets, and some of the flaws (I can't search across multiple pages of a spreadsheet--and this is Google?) piss me off. Must fix that stuff.

The upshot of all this is that I'm not writing much at the moment. I miss it. I do have the pleasure of writing at MamaPop, and the Dick Monologues marches toward world domination (I'm too tired to make a dick joke), but I'm otherwise out of the rap game for now. I don't have the energy to freelance.