Auntie Johanna is visiting us for a long weekend. This morning when Eliza and I got up before Jim or Auntie Johanna. I had to go to work and left the Small Person happily playing with her Littlest Pet Shop, with instructions that if she needed help or got bored, she was to wake Auntie Johanna up and tell her, “Wake up! We didn’t bring you here to lollygag around!” 

There is a better-than-average chance she will actually do this, especially since I made her practice it.

***

In an attempt to ward off yet another cold, I brought some Airborne to work with me. I mixed it with some instant ice tea. I am here to tell you that this is a revolting combination of flavors.

***

A couple of weeks ago, Eliza was watching football with Jim when he got a phone call he needed to take, so I came and sat with her. I was trying to engage her in the limited way I can, and was telling her, “See, these guys, SD, are playing against those guys, Pit.” “Those are the Pittsburgh Steelers!” she informed me.

I found this hysterical and was relating the tale to my sister in the car in the way home from the airport, when Eliza piped up, “Yeah, I was all, ‘SERIOUSLY, mooooom, those are the Pittsburgh Steelers!’” 

***

Eliza got invited to a birthday party by one of her classmates. Here is the poem she composed in the car on the way home from school, accepting the invitation:

“Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I would like to come to your party,

And I hope the other kids can come too!”

***

I had a dream last night that I was watching TV and this really over the top musical infomercial about Obama came one. The lyrics went something like, “Obama! Obama! He’s the one!” sung in a Hallalujah chorus type of arrangement. It was quite inspiring, but even in my dream I worried that perhaps the Messiah/Obama thing was a bit over the top, and I told (dream) Jim so. He said, “Well, you know who’s behind it? The Republicans!” He went on to explain that this was a conspiracy to inflate expectations to such a degree that Obama would inevitably disappoint, thereby securing a Republican presidency in 2012.

I woke up equal parts amused and wondering if Obama Pics Daily was actually a conservative front.

Hey-o — in yesterday’s comments, Jo pointed out that I never updated you vis-a-vis the Pretty Pony shoes and our plane travel. I should rectify that oversight, particularly since I should give credit where it’s due: I took the advice in Major Bedhead’s comment and told Eliza I had to hang on to Pinkie Pie’s shoes because of security. She totally bought it, like, “OF COURSE Pinkie Pie has to go through security without shoes!”

Thus, as of right now, Pinkie Pie still has all of her shoes.

The Small Person is passed out like a drunk after a bender on my bed. A very small, footie-pajama’d drunk.

This is a very good thing, and I would like to thank the makers of Tylenol for making it all possible.

Last night she went to bed upset because, “My DOSE is ruddig, Bommy!” She woke up shrieking irately over same twice last night and felt it necessary each time to carry on thusly for upwards of an hour. I am very pleased about the snowday today because I am not sure how much sense I would have made today if Jim had not let me sleep till 9-ish.

Jim is at work so Eliza and I have occupied ourselves cleaning the house and playing with her Littlest Pet Shop. I decided a nap was called for because she was getting cranky and her forehead was reaching “warm your dinner rolls here” temperatures, and dosed her with Tylenol because, unlike Mama D’s poor Miss A, Eliza gets sleepy from the stuff.

Now she is snoring at a good clip and I am going to try to make up for the karate class I will be missing by shoveling the driveway. What this activity lacks in Zen, it makes up for in heavy lifting.

This afternoon, Eliza and I were called to action to help a good friend who is unexpectedly in the hospital, being induced, and needed to have some items brought from home. Because she was so patient about all the hither-ing and yon-ing we had to do, particularly given the miserable cold she has, I told Eliza she could pick what we had for dinner, and where. She picked “French Fries! In a restaurant!” so we ended up at a Red Robin. I am now convinced that this chain is the basis for the fictional one where Jennifer Aniston’s character works in Office Space, because the poor staffers were all weighed down by giant buttons of one kind and another. 

The poor schmucks were pressed into service to sing a faux birthday song to a random customer. I thought Eliza would think this was supercool, but when I suggested that maybe we could go there for her birthday and have them sing for her, she shuddered and said, “No thanks!”

1. I am too pretentious for my own good: On Saturday night, while we were watching Wanted, I referred to Timur Bekmambetov as an auteur. I think the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane, whose reviews I eagerly anticipate every week, is equally helpless before the onslaught. Here is my favorite paragraph ever in a film review, which I have reread so many times I can now quote it, and, to Jim’s everlasting delight, often do:

• What is it like being Timur Bekmambetov? No artist should be confused too closely with his creations, but anybody who sits through “Wanted,” Bekmambetov’s new movie, will be tempted to wonder if the life style of the characters might not reflect or rub off on that of the director. How, for example, does he make a cup of coffee? My best guess, based on the evidence of the film, is that he tosses a handful of beans toward the ceiling, shoots them individually into a fine powder, leaves it hanging in the air, runs downstairs, breaks open a fire hydrant with his head, carefully directs the jet of water through the window of his apartment, sets fire to the building, then stands patiently with his mug amid the blazing ruins to collect the precious percolated drops. Don’t even think about a cappuccino.

This is even more fantastic than his review of Jurassic Park III, which is sadly not available online in unabridged format so far as I can tell but which is a pinnacle of the form in which he compared a plot point involving the pterodactyls to being mugged by umbrellas.

2. I cannot find my iPod. Things are heading rapidly to DefCon 1 around here. I haven’t listened to Timberland’s The Way I Are in four whole hours here. Does anyone else do this, the obsessive over-and-over playing of the same song? Eliza seems to have a bad case of it, and it drives Jim crazy — more so when she’s fixated on Me and You and a Dog Named Boo than when she’s stuck on Pinball Wizard. Seriously, though: Where is my iPod?!

3. A couple of weeks back, we rented Venus, which stars Peter O’Toole as a horny 80-year-old dude who gets the hots for a slutty young relatives of one of his friends, and ends up in a tit-for-tat (pun intended) trade of money and goods for the opportunity to see/touch/sniff/lick various of her parts. This was allegedly charming and life-affirming. I found that I did not agree with that assessment.

The good part was that when Jim sent the movie back to Netflix, he accidentally sent them Eliza’s Clifford the Bog Red Dog DVD instead. We have been in stitches ever since we realized this, imagining the hipster who rented Venus for a hot, sexy date sipping the DVD into his player, only to be confronted with that banal theme music and that big goofy dog instead.

4. Do you ever go back and read stuff you loved as a kid or teenager and find yourself thinking, wow, that is NOT how I remembered this? I bought Little Women a while back and I couldn’t get through it — all the sermonizing. Jesus Christ, Louisa, I GET IT, you are all morally superior beings. Now go jump in a lake.

Jane Eyre, on the other hand, I am very much enjoying rereading. For one thing, it’s funnier than I remembered, especially in the first section where she’s this scrappy little kid trying to hang onto her spirit in her awful relatives’ house. The big confrontations are deadly serious, but also written with such an understanding of how kids are about unfairness, that there’s a lot of affectionate humor in them. It’s not haha funny, but I smiled throughout at little Jane. And Mr. Rochester; that dude is funny, with the gruff barking and social unease. But Jane — I’m loving Jane. She’s just… awesome. I don’t know, something about her frankness, her attitude of “the only way out is through.”