Stakeouts and other small absurdities

Molly's in a strange stage right now where she fights and fights sleeping and the only guaranteed way of getting her to sleep within a few minutes is to go for a ride in the car. The only problems with this are 1.) gas prices and 2.) that if we leave the house any time after 10:00 she is going to fall asleep before we get where we were going (unless we're driving, for some reason, to the market across the street, and why would we do that?). So I'm in a little prison of naptime. If my errands/plans aren't urgent, I generally turn around, making the big-block tour of our neighborhood and transfer her to bed. She'll then sleep up to three hours - meaning the day is pretty much shot for getting much done before dinner time.

Sometimes I really need to do the intended errand, though. This enacts PLAN B in my brain and I drive through the nearest cafe for a cuppa au lait and drive to the parking lot of my intended destination. I then pull a rumpled back issue of Harpers out of the car door's storage pocket and read, listen to music of my choosing* and drink coffee for 45 minutes or so before waking Molly up. But this, I'm starting to realize, is not particularly normal behavior in the Des Moines area, where everyone has a purpose, is in somewhat of a hurry and most parents disregard car-naps. Plus, I don't drive a particularly inconspicuous car. In fact, people joke the black Pilot makes us look like federal agents when we pull up at parties - causing several people we know to start sweating and looking for the side-door.

But, on a happier note, at least I'm catching up on my reading after a yearlong void of pretty much reading one sentence of the Sunday paper over and over again each week until I give up in frustration. Here's the best description of anything I've read in print, maybe in this lifetime:

What makes Newt Gingrich's face so attractive is the shape of the front of the skull, which is concave in the center so that its features are perfectly displayed in a sort of naturally occurring candy dish of head bone.

What makes it such a great sentence, I think, is the sentence structure. It's from an article that ran in Harpers in November called "The Kids are Far Right - Hippie hunting, bunny bashing, and the new conservatism," by Wells Towe.

So aside from frequent parking lot stakeouts on the way to waterbabies, storytime, visits with friends, and shopping, my days are mostly filled with at home absurdities lately. I keep coming out of a tired mist to find myself having uttered some truly ridiculous statement that has pretty much no other application in the world except for the one immediately preceding it. Par example:

It's not good to kneel on bacon

While this may be a truism, how many times is a member of my immediate household going to be in such a situation, and also to require me to pass judgement on their behavior? It actually may be quite nice to kneel on bacon, honestly. I'm not sure I've ever tried it. It seemed inappropriate at breakfast that morning, however.

Molly has a cough and it's windy, 24 degrees and snowing gently so we stayed home from Waterbabies today. That meant no sleep-inducing pool fun and no guaranteed nap and a fair amount of time to fill. So we painted. She really enjoys this. I put out blobs of posterpaint on a paper plate, give her brushes and some card stock and she goes to town. While she paints she tells me what her creations represent.

Today's work, in orange on cobalt blue card stock, was "Clementines" which I'd proud of if it weren't so clearly derivative of Matisse. Same for her Monet-like impressionist "Flowers." She also made a Jackson Pollock, she said. That one did have a more free quality than her other work. Then she wanted to read Olivia, the one where she goes to the museum and sees the Jackson Pollock. (Molly of the future, if you're reading this and having hurt feelings, Mommy is using some humorous literary devices called irony and overstatement in a thinly veiled attempt to coax laughter out of her over-educated friends. Your paintings are brilliant, as are you. I hope you never stop wanting to paint!)

When it got to be about 2:30 she was walking around sucking her thumb with her finger in her eye to stay awake, and ricocheting off of furniture. I started softly playing lulling Chinese wind symphonies, and encouraging her to play with my lavender eye pillow (what happens if you lie down and put it over your eyes. Smell that lovely smell? Isn't that relaxing?) What finally did the trick was reading Frieda, a children's book about the life of Frieda Kahlo, three times through.

Oh and did I mention Molly is really talking now? While watching Sesame Street this morning, Baby Bear and his sister, Curly Bear, stopped for a snack of a banana. Molly came running to me and said, "I want a banana to eat, like Curly Bear." Tell me again how television doesn't somehow put people in a mood that makes them receptive to suggestions about eating? At least it was just a banana.

I've used up 90 minutes of precious naptime. I'm off.

C

* Molly also has developed a strong preference for certain kids songs and barks out orders to hear them over and over on the car radio as we drive, until she nods off. Yankee Doodle, London Bridge, this funky sort of Greek styling of There was an old woman who lived in a shoe top her current play list. She can sing them in her sleep now. Meanwhile, I have earworm for hours and people in Target must wonder why we're always singing "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe" with "hopa" type flourishes at the end of the lines as we toss cans of mandarin oranges and chicken soup into the cart... but I digress.