January 2008 Archives

For some reason I was thinking of a movie I saw when I was a kid about a family that either lost their grandmother or somebody like that, and they got a new one. The catch to the “new” grandmother was that she was a robot (The Electric Grandmother). The coolest thing about this robot though, and something I tried to do for years following that, was that she could dispense liquid from her finger. She'd just point at the glass, and it'd start flowing right into the glass. You want some orange juice? *BAM* There you go. Milk? *BAM* Diet Coke? *BAM* Water? *BAM* Magic. Truly magic.

How exactly did I try to do the same feat? Well… when I'd get water on my hands (while washing my hands or when I was in the shower, or even when out washing the car), and it'd start to run off the end of one of my fingers in a stream… I thought I was the coolest kid ever… since obviously I could dispense liquids from my finger… as long as the liquid was water, and you didn't mind that it had a little soap in it. Yeah… I had magical powers like that.

I'm in total shock to find out that Maria has never read a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I loved those things as a kid, except I totally sucked at them. You say to yourself, “How can you be bad at reading a book where you impact the flow of the story?” Well… it's not that I couldn't make a decision, or that I couldn't read (the latter does not work as an excuse of why you didn't do your homework in the 5th grade, btw). It's that I cheated. I would get to the decision point, and it would tell me to turn to X page if I chose one way, or Y page if I chose the other. Not only would I turn to both of those pages to see how it would go, but I'd follow the page numbers after those, and even after those, until all my fingers were holding various pages. All of this was in my attempts to avoid the inevitably lame ending of “Your head a splode” or something like that. The point here isn't to focus on how bad I was at the books, and spoiling the intended excitement and reader engagement, it's to focus on how deprived Maria is for having never read one. If you, for some reason, still have one of these things around your house, and would be kind enough to alleviate the shame which Maria should be feeling over this hole in her childhood, please send it to me her. kthxbye

Cecilia wanted to use some of the money from her piggy bank to purchase herself some snow boots. I'm happy to let her “spend” her money, but the money will be mysteriously replaced in her bank. In the spirit of finding the path of least resistance on something so trivial, Maria was helping her get some money out of her piggy bank to use. It's not uncommon for me to empty the change from my pockets into her bank, or slip in a bill every now and then. Maria asked Cecilia why she had so much money in there, to which the well-trained 3 year old said, “Because that's how I roll, Mom.” I sure wish her mother would stop teaching her to say stuff like that.

Upon being wished a good night, and being told by Maria, “I love you mucho” Cecilia kindly responded, “Silly. I'm Cecilia. I'm not Mucho.” So much for her learning another language any time soon.