Lemurs! Presidential motorcades! Goat smackdowns! Facebook friends! Sororial boyfriend meetings! Lemurs! Crazy Jersey-ans straight from central casting!

So, we went away for the week and left you all hanging. Sorry. I was unaccountably paranoid that the heroin-addicted brothers who are alledgedly robbing our street would read and find out. Luckily, all is well.

All of the above and more coming up tomorrow after I get a good night’s sleep, go to work, go shopping, make cookies for Eliza’s class for her birthday, and do about 3 loads of laundry.

In the meantime, please to enjoy this mpeg movie we recorded at the Washington DC Newseum in which we attempt to get Eliza to describe the trip thus far.

And also this image, which proves that the combined energies of 1 chihuahua and 1 three-and-eleven-twelfths-year-old are too much to be contained in one photo:

1. When it’s not your kid, three-year-olds having meltdowns are kind of funny. I was in a store this morning where a small child was in the process of trying, in vain, not to lose her mind. “I would not like that! I would not like that!” she sobbed, all crisp patrician New England enunciation.

2. The pond near my office is host to 3 duck families with 4, 6, and 9 babies, respectively. Ducklings happen here every year, and every year some are lost to a variety of depredations, not the least of which is the enormous, prehistoric snapping turtles in the pond (clearly, our ducks do not do their turtle homework the way Mrs. Mallard did). And so, this year as in every year, I slow as I walk by the pond and see if they’re all still there. Today I saw an older man holding his a bike, his lips moving as he counted to himself, one, two, three… before remounting and pedaling off, satisfied.

3. Nunchucks: I haz dem. Stay tuned for pictures of black eyes.

4. My Y karate class is over for the summer, but because I like to be overcommitted, I agreed to teach bo (fighting staff) to the brown belt newbies all summer at the dojo. I taught this class for years pre-Eliza, and in the middle of class last night, Sensei, who is masterful at those kind of comments where he seems to be mentioning something offhand and insignificant but is actually being quite pointed, said something about how someone should really be teaching that class and did anyone want to — with a flick of the eyes in my direction.

So, I raised my hand. When I began learning bo 10 years ago, I saw it as a thing I had to learn to get to the vastly flashier sai (tridents), but I guess he saw some previously undiscovered talent of mine for flinging 6-foot sticks around about 2 years in and announced to me that I would be the assistant and then suddenly I was teaching the class.

We are very deep-end-of-the-pool in our approach and it worked because now I have this thing about the bo, it feels like it’s mine the way sai never will.

I keep thinking I really need to shoot some video of me doing karate so you know I am not making all this business up, but I feel deeply dorky about asking Jim to tape me outside, so I guess I have to get over that. 

Have I mentioned lately how much I love karate? Because I do!

5. We’ve had a number of break-ins on our street lately, and some neighbors organized a meeting for planning the eventual ass-kicking of the criminals. It’s going to be awesome. Jim’s a little concerned, I think, about the posse aspects of it, particularly since it has come to light that a number of the ass-kicking-planning committee have martial arts training. Notably, those are the houses which have not yet been hit. Coincidence? I think not. 

You might think the break-ins would sour me on the city but I am an idiot who is undeterred, all the more because I so enjoyed meeting a number of neighbors I hadn’t met before. Most of them are wryly, self-awarely in love with the neighborhood and the city, too. We are idiots together, and that is something.

6. Small Person: Is whining too much! There has been hectoring on my part to the effect that I am sick, sick, SICK of her bad attitude and she is an ingrate, etc. It is, however, difficult to keep a straight face when the Small Person starts zoning out during said lecture and I yell, “Look at me when I am talking to you! Look in my eyes!”* and she does this fixed, bug-eyed stare and tries not to blink. 

7. Those things on your chest? Are bumps. As in, “Mommy, when I am a grown-up, am I going to have BIG bumps, too?” I was distracted and corrected her, “Honey, those are boobs — uh, I mean breasts.”

*Shades of my father, who is legendary for the 2-fingered “got-my-eye-on-you” gesture he used to make whenever I zoned out during HIS lectures.

Last fall, I decided to go on a shoe and purse fast for a year. I last bought a pair of shoes in late spring ‘08, and I bought a purse in February ‘08.

The purse fast holds — I spent a fair bit of money on my favorite purse, and I see no reason to get a new one for the time being. (I have smaller ones for if the mood strikes, but it never seems to.)

The shoe fast, though, has now been broken. I can’t find the exact date of my last shoe purchase on my credit card or bank statements (maybe I used what you oldsters refer to as cash?), but two of my go-to pairs have been rapidly deteriorating and a third is on the wane, so I decided to call it good and buy myself a new pair to replace them.

I meant to get a pair of Dansko Mary Janes (which they call Sally just to be annoying) in tan or black, but the lesson here is that if you mean to make the sensible shoe purchase, you should not bring someone who dresses like this as your shopping assistant.

I took the black Sallys off the rack to hand to the shoe lady but Eliza was not having any of that and handed me these bright green slides instead and demanded I try  them on. I decided to humor her but also handed the woman a Mary Jane-ish shoe from the same line in tan, despite my kid’s highly-raised-in-disapproval eyebrows.

Much as I adored the green slides, they were not that comfortable, but the tan ones, oh, they were a dream — so comfortable! — and the company tries to use ecologically-responsible products, blah blah blah.

The kid was all, dude, those are boring, but it’s your funeral.

I let myself be guided by her scorn and noticed they had the tan ones in red also. I asked her if those would be better. Yes, came the unequivocal answer. I tried them on, fell in love, and then we took a vote, Eliza and I, and decided that they had to come home with me, which is how I came to buy my first new pair of shoes in a year. Ish.

***

Even though I will not be dressing like this in the near future, I am trying to take a page from Eliza’s book. Much of what Katie Roiphe says in this essay really rubs me the wrong way — I post Eliza’s pic as my facebook picture sometimes because I want to, not because I’m erasing my identity! — but there is, buried in her faux trend piece, a point worth noting about getting caught up in the good-mommy sweepstakes of abnegation. There’s truly being too busy to have time to groom oneself, which happens to everyone and is totally legitimate — don’t spend 25 minutes on your hair when preschool starts in 10 — and then there’s getting caught up in the feeling that this is how “good moms” are supposed to act, which I catch myself doing too often and which is counter-productive and depressing. 

I also think, as a sometime fashion writer, that there is such a thing as going too far in decrying our societal obsession on looks. I think you can acknowledge the existence of overly narrow standards of beauty while still acknowledging that we have EYES, for god’s sake, and that some things upon which they fall are more pleasant than others. I don’t think it is sinful to want to look one’s best or to dress in a way that amuses you. (This is an argument that is easy to get into in a college town full of newly-radicalized 18-year-olds.)

I suspect some of my sartorial experiments will fail miserably and others are sort of “Meh.” I am still trying to decide if that jean skirt was a good idea and can I really pull off dresses over pants and/or should I care so long as I am enjoying myself?

Anyway, all of which is to say, I like my new shoes and my little fashion advisor and recommend her to everyone looking for a wardrobe update.

Woah, sorry about that. I downloaded the newest version of wordpress because the back end was giving me trouble, but I didn’t realize it had more stringent default settings for commenting. Thanks for letting me know, mom! It should be back to normal now.

***

This afternoon, we were in a long line of cars on the way home from Eliza’s school.

Suddenly, she yelled impatiently from the back seat: “Shopping, shopping, people! Shopping shopping!”

I spent a good ten minutes wondering what in the world that was all about until I realized, Oh. She means ‘Chop chop!’

Dis arm? It MINE. No touchees or I bitees.

This is Eliza’s bughouse:

We put it in the attic for a while because we thought she was over it but she kept bringing it up all mournfully so we brought it back down. It’s currently crammed into a corner of her room, and last night she decided she wanted to sleep in it.