One Craptrocious Week for Sale

To Do This Week: - Take daughter to receive first round of flu shottage.

- Have lady garden inspected by mid-wife.

- Step on Scale of All Knowing in front of nurse practitioner.

- Stop denying fact that Hershey's cookies n' creme consumption of late could kill a small giraffe.

- Teach proper quotation and attribution for eleventieth time!!!!!!

- Fly to Cleveland with toddler in lap, leaving my poor Loverpants behind.

(If you've made it this far, flying to Cleveland is totally not even the worst of it) - Attend funeral for Nana (she passed this past weekend; we are relieved, saddened, thinking about wonderful, whimsical pixie that she was).

- Try to remember what to say before and after Gospel reading in Catholic Mass even though have not attended since Bush Sr. administration, lest I remind parents that flushed tens of thousands of dollars of their tuition dollars down tubes for 12 years of Catholic education. Mea culpa. - Return to Beantown.

- Take toddler daughter to growth clinic.

- Put her on Scale of All Knowing in front of nurse practitioner.

- Endure wrath of growth clinic wondering why our daughter is not gaining 10 lbs./hour.

- Remind growth clinic that daughter is product of lean Asian man/gymnast-sized Caucasian mother.

- Try not to eat more Hershey's.

- Try not to find self at growth clinic for rapid expansion of girth not due to prenatal baby.

Mud

The humorous: We headed home, the Baby Girl and I, a bit earlier from the park as anticipated. I forgot to turn on my common sense button before we left the house. Got there, found the playground awash in wicked hot direct sun (imagine! at 11:30a!). But it was our good fortune that the park sits next to part of a little bay area that empties into Boston Harbor, which, you figure, empties into the ocean.

So Baby Girl...well really I decided we should "cool off" down by the water. Sand was muddy and dense like quicksand. Within a minute, Baby Girl and I were caked in mud to our knees (common sense would have told me to turn around, not pass go, not collect $200 but WE HAD TO get to that water!).

Almost got eaten alive by tiny crabs, so populous were they. Attempting to walk back to sandy patch and Baby Girl cannot traverse mud. I pick her up, she kicks me in the face. Now my face is muddy, including my spectacles which do not come with wiper features. Our clothes are also muddy, and I don't know how this happened really. We were sparkling clean just moments ago.

I look down and see that my shoes, which are part Croc plastic, part fabric are irrevocably muddy. I make a donation of Crocs to the park garbage can. I drive home barefoot with child screaming muddy murder in backseat.

The serious:

When I think about my life in Christ, I think about how often I am rebuked to give up something more to follow Him. How I will say, Jesus, I give you this this AND this BIG BIG thing, oh, but that thing over there? I'm going to take care of that, Jesus. Don't you mind that. That's under control.

He says pick up your mat and follow me. Deny your mother and father and follow me.

Maybe even throw the shoes away that are keeping you from getting to the living water, throw them away and follow me.

I'm shoeless now, Jesus. I think I'm ready. But what about my muddy kid with the tears?

Kongrisheee

Loverpants has an aunt who is lovely and sends us clothing items for Baby Girl from Korea. I am especially grateful for these items, not only because our now 18 month-old is a peanut and fits more readily into the Korean clothes (go figure, since she is Korean), but because the ensembles are novelty items in other ways, too. Item the First arrived some months ago. It has been hanging in the closet until I figure out its purpose.

For starters, doesn't it look like a straightjacket?

And what of the 2 pockets? Is one for the latchkey kid's carabiner? And the second for her lunch money? Is that how they roll at 18 months in Korea?

I also have to wonder about the text on the shirt.

If you look closely, it refers to "Fashtons using Basic fabrics...." Fashtons? Is that a cleverly elided hybrid for tons of Fascists? Because that doesn't seem quite appropos for children's apparel.

Now the second shirt is very cute. The curious thing is that the tag is on the outside, but I suppose children don't like tags rustling their skin.

The irony for me, though, is that it is social custom among Koreans to "fix" the appearance of friends and acquaintances. This includes a certain vigilance about tucking in people's tags. Presentation is everything in Korean culture, so if someone pulls a tiny string off of you - like it was the biggest bother to them, like they couldn't concentrate on what you were saying because of that pesky thread on your scarf - you should be complimented. So I don't know if this pajama set is just forcing the compliment, but Baby Girl is a fan of it so far. The front of the shirt says "Let's Go Happy Travel." Nothing too ridiculous. Happy Trails would probably make more sense, but at least it's better than this broken English e-mail found on the straightjacket pocket: