We ended up with about 2-3 inches of snow. I'm glad we don't need to drive today.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Kids, Teeth, Fur, and Fun
I think it was my Lovely MIL who told me that age 8 can be kind of a dry run for puberty, with all the attendant mood swings. And now I know she was right. You just don’t appreciate how good your kid normally is until she turns into a smart-mouthed, angry, crying monster. Monday is a *really* long day for D.D.—school starts at 7:45 am, then after-school care until 3, hop in the car with Dad to go to Swedish School across town, and get home around 6:30 pm. When she got home Monday night, she had an armful of stuff. I heard her whining all the way up the stairs, then she dumped everything in the middle of the floor and kicked her gym bag across the room. It made me think of the home video show we saw recently, where a little girl threw down her bike and started kicking the tires and screaming. She was probably 8, too.
I can’t be the only person who has suddenly noticed the feel of her teeth against the inside of her lips, or the way her tongue sits in her mouth, or how it feels to breathe in and out. Except then you can’t un-feel it, and then I’m not even sure what the “natural” position of my tongue is, and I feel like it’s getting bigger or lying wrong somehow, or I don’t know how I normally breathe, and maybe I start to feel like I’m hyperventilating since I’m paying too much attention to my breathing. So I have this totally normal reaction (every once in a while), and my husband thinks I’m developing body dysmorphia.
[Edited to add: I think he means some kind of Verfremdungseffekt. Besides, the weird spaghetti squash shape of my head went away as soon as I got used to my new contacts. It was the contacts' fault!]
Oh. My. God. A woman on the bus skinned the Shaggy Dog to make a coat!
In other news, the Christmas Market opens today. I will start toting my camera with me into town for a Christmas photo-blogging extravaganza!
Sunday, November 20, 2005
All Self-Reference, All the Time
Darling Daughter lost her tooth. I can’t believe it came out so quickly. She lost it in the middle of class, so she was able to squeeze a little fame from the experience. The tooth fairy had a business dinner and wasn’t able to get change, so she ended up getting 2 Euros (there’s a 2-Euro coin) instead of the usual 1. German kids get gifts for their teeth, but we’ve found that cash turns out to be cheaper.
D.D. has come up with a tooth fairy theory: the t.f. used to be famous [D.D. didn’t say what for], and she travelled to a lot of different countries being famous, and that’s how she collected so much money from different places so she could give out dough for teeth all over the world. This is what goes through my daughter’s head while she’s getting dressed.
On the way to school, we spotted this enormous black bird in the top of a pine tree that towered over a four-story house. We were trying to estimate how big it was (bigger than our embarrassingly big cats, I would say); D.D. thought it looked a lot like a penguin. That would be pretty big.
In the window of the wedding shop, someone had added a white fur cape to the mermaid dress. Handmade paper dress—you are dead to me now.
Remember my photo of the giant teddy bear? The same company has made an even larger stuffed animal; I spotted it in a department store window recently. Because nothing says “cuddly toy” quite like an enormous stuffed buffalo.
I had to ride a particularly crowded bus one day, and I found myself crammed into a spot where I could not but help staring at the atrocious footwear on the teenaged girl across from me. You know how I feel about the new boots. What this girl was wearing was even worse. She looked like she had gone for a stroll in her best moccasin-boots and stepped into a dead woodchuck. What the hell? she thought, and pulled the woodchuck up around her ankle. Then she had to go find another dead woodchuck so her moccasins would match.
Today we are going to go see the new Harry Potter film. We couldn’t find any showings of the original, so we’re going to watch it in German. We first saw #3 in German, so I guess we won’t be permanently scarred. Interestingly enough, Star Wars #3 didn’t seem so stilted dialog-wise in German, what little we could hear over the tremendously loud special effects.
D.D. has come up with a tooth fairy theory: the t.f. used to be famous [D.D. didn’t say what for], and she travelled to a lot of different countries being famous, and that’s how she collected so much money from different places so she could give out dough for teeth all over the world. This is what goes through my daughter’s head while she’s getting dressed.
On the way to school, we spotted this enormous black bird in the top of a pine tree that towered over a four-story house. We were trying to estimate how big it was (bigger than our embarrassingly big cats, I would say); D.D. thought it looked a lot like a penguin. That would be pretty big.
In the window of the wedding shop, someone had added a white fur cape to the mermaid dress. Handmade paper dress—you are dead to me now.
Remember my photo of the giant teddy bear? The same company has made an even larger stuffed animal; I spotted it in a department store window recently. Because nothing says “cuddly toy” quite like an enormous stuffed buffalo.
I had to ride a particularly crowded bus one day, and I found myself crammed into a spot where I could not but help staring at the atrocious footwear on the teenaged girl across from me. You know how I feel about the new boots. What this girl was wearing was even worse. She looked like she had gone for a stroll in her best moccasin-boots and stepped into a dead woodchuck. What the hell? she thought, and pulled the woodchuck up around her ankle. Then she had to go find another dead woodchuck so her moccasins would match.
Today we are going to go see the new Harry Potter film. We couldn’t find any showings of the original, so we’re going to watch it in German. We first saw #3 in German, so I guess we won’t be permanently scarred. Interestingly enough, Star Wars #3 didn’t seem so stilted dialog-wise in German, what little we could hear over the tremendously loud special effects.
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