oral hi-genie

There are two reasons I know I'm one hundred years old.

#1.
I rode the carousel with Rio on Friday. Three times. She fears the horses (and I'm thrilled the up and down on a pole gives her cause for concern) so we rode the carriage. Three times. She totally could have gone allll day, but I got motion sick. In the carriage. I'm officially old.

#2.
Meals are drawn out ordeals with Miss Rio. That kid is the slowest eater everrrrr. After a prolonged lunch, we had ice cream cones. She had chocolate chip with chocolate sprinkles.

[one hour into eating the cone, a nice old man sits at the table next to us]

rio: 'Scuse me, (points with her pinky and one eye closed)
what's your name?

old man: Roland!

[long story short. he tells her a story about his grandson, she laps the cone and half ignores him. he continues with stories about kids and his kids when they were young, and he ends up telling a tale that cracks him up. he laughs and exposes a mouth of, um, not a shining example of oral health. one in the front is missing, and the rest are summer teeth; some are pointing this way, some are pointing that. all are the bright yellow of a summer sun.]

rio: 'Scuuuuuse me, Roland. Why do you have cavities?

me: sotto voce Hey buddy. Don't ask that again and we'll talk about it in the car. Okay? Please don't say 'cavities' again, okay?

rio: 'Scuuuuse me, Roland. Do you brush your teef? Do you ffffffffffffffffoss?*

*As she struggles with certain complicated sequences, she sometimes draws out the stumbling block. So 'floss' becomes 'fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffoss', which gives me an extra 4 seconds or so to die a thousand deaths. But that's okay, because, you see, Roland wasn't really paying attention to Rio and her 'fl' struggles...

roland: Oh, hohoho, she's so adorable.

me: thanking the deaf gods Oh, she's something.

roland: You're not so bad yourself, you know. In fact, you're a real looker. You know what that is?

me: Oh, heh. Yes, I'm familiar with the concept.

roland: soldiering on in his deafness A looker means when you walk past men, they look at you.

me: Have a nice day, Summer. C'mon Rio, you can finish that in the car.


Motion sick on a carousel and hit on by a deaf bum. What a day.

Help A Sista Out

You are more than welcome to read to the bottom of this post to see why that's the title. In the meanwhile, I'd like to ask you a favor. Pretty big one. Click here. She's having a contest and I could win a blog design. Don't be a poopy-head and take the link and get your own free blog design because I will drop my kid in your front yard and then call animal control on your triflin' ass. Just click. Why? I'll tell you.

TOP TEN REASONS I NEED A NEW BLOG

1. I have a really great name saved, but I'm not motivated enough to start writing on it. It's really good. Great, even. And if I end up one of the bloggers who gets an amazing book deal and then I tour with James Frey and end up all hammered at YOUR local pub, I will totally call you. Promise.

2. Have you noticed how badly I effed up this one? Seriously. And I totally can NOT put things back the way they were. I'm a techtard.

3. It's free. I have to save all my monies because my daughter is so cute I dress her up all the time. Mostly, she's soooo neat. She hates things on her hands - so she wipes everything on her belly. It's darling. And expensive.

4. Bear forgot my birthday. And he gave me a tractor for Mother's Day last year. He said it was a coincidence. If that's true, he forgot Mother's Day, too. So I need a present.

5. Everyone in my house is sick. I've been doing laundry, grocery shopping, making soup ... oh, I'm sick, too. But I guess that's scheduled for when I'm 50.

6. Which is kind of soon.

7. Yellow is supposedly going to be big this summer. I look horrible in yellow. So, if I have a cool new blog to inspire me to write on my cool new site, I won't have to make people vomit in the street with how I look in yellow.

8. Okay, um, I just need it, okay? It's not like I'm asking for a kidney. Which reminds me ... I'm totally thinking of joining the kidney bank. Does anyone else think medication might be a good thing for me?

So, just click. Visit. Maybe have her do *your* blog. Me likey her stuff!

***

We were at my darling Anna's house. Rio starts going upstairs to chase down The Daughter, who is 7 and fabulously kind. TD starts to come downstairs to see Rio and Rio pops a squat on the stair, pats the one next to her, looks up at TD and says:

Have a seat, TD. What's up, sista?

***

I have a friend, Rina, with a great booty. Genetic, methinks. She came over to see us in VT. Rina's having coffee at the breakfast bar - fetchingly perched on a barstool. Rio walks around Rina two or three times. She's looking at her butt; looking under the stool; she ran a toy across the faboo booty. Then she gets over to the side of Rina and says:

Excuse me, Rina. You have a biiiiiiig butt!

***

A lovely woman who's smack in the middle of the whole transgender process was attending the same luncheon to which some fool invited me and my lippy 3 year old. Rio checks her out for a loooong time. Finally she says:

rio: I don't paint my nails.

me: [thinking 'here we go'] No, you don't. You still suck your fingers so until you don't suck them anymore, no nail polish!

rio: Maybe I'll paint my nails when I'm a grown-up boy.


Yeah. Maybe you'll just plain take pity on me and catapult me to click greatness. You know, before I end up getting smacked....

eyeballs, up-to, and what-not

Yeah.

*I broke up with my mom. Again. It's serious this time. She questioned my parenting. Them's fighting words. And fight we did. Oh well.

*My new job continues to fascinate and challenge. I really like it! I'm having a tough time scraping 20 hours a week together, and my house looks rather tenementesque, but I really do like it! The job, not the slovenly way of life....

*I made a little wager with my darling little sister. She's gotten into the bad habit of not working out ever, and complaining, well, pretty much always. It's snuck up on her - much like the 4 remaining papers she has between her and graduation. So, I'm helping her with the last papers. And all she has to do is work out 5 times a week and not complain about it. If she drops the ball (or whines about it) and still wants me to help her, she'll need to pony up big bucks. I'm telling y'all now that I will take her money and buy risky stocks for Rio. :)

*I'm going to Stowe for a bunch of days. Rio and I have been bouncing a virus back and forth, and our travel plans are all screwy, so we're just gonna ignore the calendar and go for it. I can't wait! Although I always start to miss Bear as soon as we hit the highway, I need to recharge my batteries.


*Bear and I have been sleeping horridly for months. Our fabulous and comfy bed hit the wall so freaking fast. At first it was less cushy, but it made the rapid descent into flop house mattress. We finally did something about it. 1-800-MATTRES gets my unsolicited eternal adoration. Those peeps mofo KNOW BEDS. Every bizarre angle and bit of info. We ended up with the Sealy knock-off Tempurpedic. I forget why, but some sort of wicking technology that the Swedes are lacking ... anyway, we got two. XL Twins. Why, you ask? Because they're foam so you can't really tell that it's two mattresses. And, because, we got these extra special platforms:because they were totally on close-out sale. You see, company blahblahblah is now sourcing the motors in China
blahblahblah and so they have blahblahblah left at this super close-out price blahblahblah blahblahblah blahblahblah .... feel me?

So, yeah, up and down beds. Not just for the elderly.

I hope.