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Lately the things I hear about in the news seem to stick in my mind like cheap gum to my dental work. I mash and stretch these things long after they've lost their flavor, but I keep turning them over in my head.
Here's a prime example: Iranian uranium. Iranian uranium. Iranium uranian. Uranian geraniums. Geranium uranium. Iranian uraniam, uranian germanium, germanium iranians, Iranian uranium. Your aim, Ian.
How is no one else talking about this? It's driving me out of my mind and no one else seems to have noticed! I must be the only one who's sane, etc. etc.
Another one I heard today took my by surprise: Barak Obama. Morocco bombing. Barak Obama. Morocco bombing. Morocc Obama. Barak O'bombing. Marak Obombing. Mom bombing. Marak Bonbon-ing. At best it's a headline about a badly-received campaign speech he gave in (the non-existant city of) Morocco, Missouri: Barak Obama's Moroccan bombing.
It's not something I wish to do, it just happens on its own.
I wonder sometimes if this means I should go into poetry or some other kind of occupation that involves chewing over the sounds of words. Or maybe it's just an indicator that my SNQ, (silly neologisms quota) is not being met.
Like how Joel and I started calling hiccups hippo, as in, I have hippo. It's because in Spanish hiccups are called "hipo," which is pronounced /ee-po/. Or what Joel's brother's call a poorly assembled piece of Ikea furniture: wango. It's a play on the Spanish word for "loose," "huango," pronounce /uahngo/.
Well, I guess it's better for me to have mental gum stuck to my symbolic fillings than actual gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Although the Iranian uranium thing is about to become almost as annoying. If you see me scraping the inside of my ear, you'll know why.
Yesterday I kept Paula home from school in observance of a Baha'i holy day, the Declaration of the Bab. It marks the very first time Baha'u'llah's forerunner declared His mission, two hours past sunset on May 22, 1844.
We got up a little late since we had gone to Chicago's celebration of the event on Tuesday night. Joel didn't have to be at school until 9:30 or so. Needless to say, we took our time, sitting around the table and talking. When Paula finished eating she went to play dress-up and I went to the basement to look for our old picnic basket.
I didn't find the picnic basket, but I did find my brother-in-law's old pasta machine, passed on to me back when I was single and had time on my hands. It's been in a box in our basement since we moved in here, but yesterday I brought it upstairs, cleaned it off, and attached it to the kitchen counter.
I called out to Paula. "Do you want to make spaghetti?" Her eyes got huge, and she jumped up and down.
I made a little pile of flour on the counter, made a well within it and broke in the eggs. Paula and I began mixing the two ingredients together before I realized, hey - flour and egg are going to be super, super messy. Wet, sticky messy. Ew.
I hate wet, sticky messes, but gritted my teeth and managed to stick with the mess-making process until we had a nice little ball of smooth and elastic dough. Paula immediately began to taste it. Again, ew.
The instructions say to slice pieces of dough and run them through the pasta machine's flat rollers over and over, folding them in between times. I thought this would be great: I would insert the dough, Paula would turn the crank. I would gently guide the flattened dough out of the machine.
But since I was guiding the sheets of dough out, that was what Paula wanted to do. Okay, I told her, just gently move your hand away from the machine as the dough rests on your palm. Don't pull. Don't pull. I SAID DON'T PULL.
She looked up at me then. Oh, yeah. Slow, relaxed morning, three changes of dress-up clothes. She wasn't wearing her hearing aids. Funny how non-compliant she can be when she can't hear me.
Yeah, so we washed the dough off our hands, retrieved the aids, placed the aids, and went back to making pasta. Everything was going fine until we passed our sheet of flattened dough through the spaghetti rollers. Out came the skinny little noodles. The short ones fell onto the counter. Paula grabbed them and crammed them into her mouth.
"Honey, it's really not ready to eat yet." More cramming into mouth. Raw spaghetti shreds exhausted, she reached into the bag of flour and began eating handfuls of flour.
"Are you hungry, Paula?" No response. Now louder: "Are you hungry?"
I got down to her level and said in my best "I'm a caring mommy, not a frustrated crazy woman" voice: "PAULA! ARE YOU HUNGRY AND NEEDING A SNACK?" This time she was just ignoring me.
She nodded her head in a momentary pause from her flour-eating activity.
I gave her a peanut-butter-sickle (My friend Amy's solution to children who are hungry between meals: take spoon, swirl in peanut-butter jar, withdraw attractively spiraled mass of fatty, proteinaceous goodness) and sent her somewhere else so I could roll dough in peace for a moment.
Overall, though, it was lovely. We ate our pasta for dinner after a beautiful picnic in Wilmette and visit to the Baha'i House of Worship. Just what I wanted for a holy day.
Paula woke up this morning around quarter to three and said, "I want some food. ... Mommy! I want some food." I had to laugh, silently and while trying not to move since Paula was snuggled into the crook of my right arm. I didn't say anything, though. After a few minutes I took her to the bathroom and we came back to bed.
"I'm going to sing." Okay. She began singing an original and probably improvised composition. I was tired, but couldn't resist her meandering song, whose lyrics are unfortunately lost to history since I wasn't awake enough to remember them. After about five minutes, I told her it was time to go back to sleep.
She nestled against my side and I rubbed her back and scalp. Eventually we fell back to sleep. When the alarm went off at 6:15, we were still asleep. I talked Joel out of bed so he could go make the coffee.
Once Paula was up and had finished her customary morning bottle while we sat on the couch, she asked to watch TV. "You can watch TV after you eat breakfast and get dressed."
"And play?"
"After you eat breakfast and get dressed."
Joel served up fried eggs and we ate them. I brought Paula her choice of two equally agreeable outfits and she reluctantly picked one. I told her it was time to get dressed.
Three minutes later I found her sitting bare bottomed in the corner of her room, putting underpants on her stuffed frog and aviator goggles on Big Bird.
We are both ready for summer vacation.
I'm ready to not interrupt her when she's dressing her dolls after breakfast. I'm ready to not hurry her along when she's sitting there singing over and over, "Everybody, let's pay attention," while studiously ignoring me and any other non-plush-covered people in her vicinity. I'm ready to let the playing of dress-up continue uninterrupted (She yells, "I'M THE SCARY WOMAN!" when I try to engage her).
I have a feeling that Paula is ready for a break from school, too. In an ongoing attempt to help her learn responsibility for her things, just before shooing her out the door I asked her, "What do you have to have with you when you go to school?"
"Daddy."
"Okay, yeah. But what thing?"
"Daddy's a person, not a thing. What thing?"
"Mommy."
"I'll take you to school on Thursday. What are you supposed to take with you every single day you go to school?"
I gave up and pointed to her backpack. She picked it up and put it on. I squatted to give her a hug and kiss. My patience was stretched thin. But those arms around my neck, that slightly eggy kiss goodbye won me over, of course. As she marched off wearing her pajamas, with the back of her hair all matted and lopsided, I missed her. I'm ready for summer break.
Last night Paula woke up in the middle of the night and I took her to the bathroom. She lifted the lid on the toilet and gave me a push.
"Go pee-pee! Go pee-pee!"
Thus commanded I sat down.
She gathered up her fancy white nightgown with the silver-framed oval portrait of Cinderella (in vinyl, in color, dressed for the ball), and sat on the little potty.
"I scared of the bathroom," she told me. She didn't look scared.
"I scared of the bathroom. I scared of the girl."
I tried to decide if this was something she had dreamed or if it referred to the bathroom at school.
"I scared of the bathroom, the toilet," she continued. "You, Mommy, be the girl."
"Are you scared of me?" I asked her.
"No." Duh.
"Are you scared right now?"
"I scared of the bathroom." That wasn't really that helpful.
***
At breakfast Paula started talking about this again. I scared of the bathroom, the girl, etc.
Joel asked her, "Did you have a bad dream?"
"Yeah." She nodded and wrinkled her nose. Why didn't I think to ask her that?
"What happened then?" Joel asked.
"I fly up into the sky."
Cool.
"I have," she paused, searching for the word, then tapped her shoulders with both hands. "Angels. I fly away."
"Did you have wings?" I chimed in, signing ANGEL, which looks like it could be a sign for WING, but isn't.
"Like Hawkgirl?" Joel asked.
"Wings. Like Hawkgirl," she repeated. "I fly up in the sky. Fly away."
You gotta get Joel's school involved. Madero Middle School, where he teaches, was one of the schools locked down yesterday during a police standoff with an armed bank-robbery suspect.
Uh, YIKES.
I planted a little Black Hills Spruce yesterday in our back yard. Paula and I got it for free on Arbor Day at the Morton Arboretum. I also weeded dandelions, and dug out earthworms for the worm bed I want to make. Yes, I know it's kind of silly to take worms OUT of the soil, but I'm just domesticating them. Once they multiply, I'll put some back.
After I brought Paula home from school, I tried to get her to help me look for worms, but she just wanted to hold them. She liked to have four or five of the little ones all squiggled together in her palm, and then climb on my back as I dug through the soil.
"Gently! Gentle with the worms!" I told her over and over again, trying not to sound like I felt, which is to say, certain that they were crushed and oozing out from her fingers.
At which point she would open her fingers, bring the little mass of pink worms to her mouth and give them a little kiss.
"I kiss the worms," she said, nodding with a little smile on her face. As though no greater gentleness could be shown to them.
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