Saturday, February 10, 2007

I Love The World at Six

...news hour, news hour, rah rah rah...

A lot of people say that they don't watch, listen or read the news because it is too depressing. In the last few weeks, though, I've found quite the opposite to be true. All I hear seems to confirm that I am NOT in fact as crazy, weird or slobby as I could be, and that can only be good news. Case in point:

1. When I first became aware of Mr IQ's little Internet crush, I certainly never strapped on a diaper, packed a bag with an assortment of lethal weapons, and headed off to Oxford to do some damage. Now, that's REALLY weird.

2. Apparently Robert Pickton is claiming he has no clue how a bucket with a head floating in it came to be found in his home. As a friend of mine said, "You know, I've let my housekeeping get a little out of hand before, but, um, not to the point where I would have failed to notice a severed head in a bucket lying about..." Yah! Yah! I'm not THAT disorganized!!

Actually, it's pretty bad around here, to the point where we have managed to misplace both of our cordless phones. We've whistled and shouted and called them by name, but alas, they appear to be gone so Mr. IQ went down to the basement the other day and hauled up one of his (eight) rotary dial phones. (Oh yay. I can write another "Great Things About Living With a Pack Rat" list, she wrote dejectedly.) We can't get our messages now, but I still kind of like it. The ring is so cheezy and retro -- every time someone calls I feel like I'm in a 70s cop show and I half expect a macho voice to tell me to meet someone at Joe's Bar to pick up "the package." What I'm trying to say is that running for the phone these days makes me feel like I'm in an episode of the Rockford Files. Fun, eh, aren't you jealous of my life?

The mothers of the world are driving me absolutely nuts. Every time someone with a baby sees me with Baby Fangs, I'm accosted and interrogated on what she has "accomplished." They wait impatiently for me to finish mumbling, "well, she sure is pooping a lot more these days..." before breathlessly running down the list of everything their kid can do (which is always A LOT.) One mother I actually know was obnoxious enough to slow down the car, roll down her window (it was -37 C out), sing out, "Baby Annoying Genius is cah-raw-ling!" and then drive away without so much as offering to give me a lift. As I trudged home to my concrete pillar of a baby (she just started crawling this week, but on that day, she wasn't even close to getting off her launching pad) I decided I'd HAD ENOUGH. So now when I see a mother heading my way to have the Comparison Chat (I can always tell, they look crazy, absolutely crazy) I give Fangsie a good jab in the ribs; not enough to hurt her, but just enough to sort of piss her off. This makes her scowl, and bare all her teeth and I'll tell you, this absolutely stops these women cold in their tracks. They pause, just long enough to shoot me a look of respect, and then scurry off, surreptitiously glancing at my chest to check for blood stains. Ha! I win! 'Cause at the end of the day, it's all about who would survive the dog eat dog world that would accompany global destruction and the ensuing breakdown of society, and in that department, my baby totally rules. Cuz no one would mess with da Fangs, ya know what I'm saying?

High Intensity is having a hard time in nursery school: A bunch of girls are being really mean to her. So I'm going over to the school on Monday to beat those girls up talk to the teacher. She's only four years old for goodness sakes, she's way too young to have to be going through this. And it's kind of breaking my heart. My baby. Why does life have to be so wretched and mean sometimes?

3 comments:

nitroglycol said...

Ah yes, the delightful ring of an old phone. The ring tone of my cell phone sounds like that, believe it or not.

Heather Plett said...

Bullies in nursery school? Oh man, that sucks.

ccap said...

I ran into a competomom at a pool in a hotel once. This was when Abby was about 6 months old. She went on and on bragging about how unafraid of the water her daughter was. Really?! 'Cause YOU did anything to achieve that?!