Pink Prickly Pear

excessive celebration

At happy hour this weekend, I happened to have one eye on the game.  I'm no football fan, but I like big butts and I cannot lie...

So, I'll admit, I was halfway paying attention to the men in tights.  Suddenly...

Triple P:  That man is riding his team mate like a pony in the end zone!!

Mr. Pear [glancing up at screen]:  Oh yeah.  Excessive celebration.

Triple P:  Huh?

Mr. Pear:  Excessive celebration.  Yep.  See - the ref is calling it.  They're getting a penalty.  15 yards.

Triple P:  For riding a man like a pony?!?!?

Mr. Pear explained (briefly, because he's not particularly a fan of the game either) the history of excessive celebration and the banning thereof.  Makes me sad.  What's not to like about a bunch of grown men riding each other like ponies and, in general, reveling in their big score in the football game?  Besides, celebratory acts, excessive or otherwise, are so subjective.  For those of us not actually interested in the actual game, it's one of football's saving graces.  I'll take a 350 lb. man's funky chicken over some choreographed cheerleader routine any day of the week!  

My anaconda don't. want. none. unless you got buns hon.

(Are you going to be singing that all night now?  I've found it both amuses and soothes the boy.)

So ladies (yeah), Ladies (yeah)
Do you wanna roll in my Mercedes (yeah)
Then turn around
Stick it out
Even white boys got to shout
Baby got back

The internet is for wasting time and laughing at people.

Hot Chicks with Douchebags?  Makes me all misty eyed for New Jersey...not.

Mr. Pear sez, "Tell me where those people live so I can never meet them."  I say, "Keep on with your hair grease, binge drinking and photo taking.  I can always use a good laugh laff."

It's the smallest details in the photos that suck me in...the hotel room shot ostensibly to show that not only could you afford a cheap hotel room, but you splurged for room service with champagne.

***

And now, I really must go, for my in-laws arrive with the white gloves in less than an hour.

Easy like Sunday mornin'...(and a rant about the sorry state of affairs in the Border's children's department)

I've been married to my father-in-law's son for over nine years now, and yet he still thinks it's perfectly fine to call me at 8 o'clock in the morning!

Granted, we have a child, and people with children are frequently up earlier than they'd like, but still, on the weekend, she often lets us sleep in.  Or one of us takes one for the team and lets the other one sleep in.

Mini-pear is sleeping over at her friend's house.  We both could have slept in!  But instead the phone, which was right next to my ear - where it should be when my baby is away for the night - started ringing away merrily.  For some reason, the dog decided to join this joyful chorus by retching violently in the kitchen. Mr. Pear got up and mopped up the vomit.  I listened to my voice mail (of course I didn't actually answer it!), just in case it was an emergency phone call (because really, that's the only reason I want my phone to ring before 9 a.m.).  Somehow Mr. Pear was able to flop back asleep and me?  Well, here I am with my tea wondering what I should have for breakfast.

Should I fill you in on all the hot details of date night?

We took a nap.  Went to Jimbo's to buy laundry soap specifically for cloth diapers.  Stopped at the new Apple Store to check out Mr. Pear's application on the iPhone.  That was really cool!  He wrote that!  And it's right there on the screen!  Apple!  Huge!  Then we stopped at Borders (I've yet to find an indie bookstore with a children's section in defiantly anti-intellectual San Diego county) to refill the summer book fairy's stocks.  Border's books has the most asinine method of organizing children's books I've ever seen.  One would think that fiction for independent readers would be organized in much the same way adult's fiction is shelved.  Wrong!  Instead, there is a section for "Animal Stories" and a section for "School/Friendships", etc.  For someone who went in with the idea of looking - oh, I don't know- say, by the author's last name, it was baffling!

Eventually this employee who soon revealed herself to be completely useless asked if I was finding everything okay.

PPP: No, actually, I'm not.

Useless Employee with No Knowlege of Children's Books: Oh, something in particular I can help you look for?

PPP: Well, I could probably find it myself if the books were shelved properly...

UEWKCB *smiles benevolently*: Well, it is the children's department...

PPP: Meaning?

UEWKCB:  Sometimes the children will pull things off the shelves and not put them back in the right places.

PPP:  No, I'm curious as to why they aren't shelved alphabetically.  If I'm looking for books by a particular author, but don't know the subject matter of each and every book she's written, I'm going to have to look in all these separate sections...

UEWKCB *ignores my logic*: Well, it is back to school time, so we are running low on a lot of things...Shall we look them up in the computer?

So I tell her we can start by looking for anything by E. Nesbit and Edward Eager.  She needs me to spell both their names, and while on one hand, I can appreciate her wanting to get it right, I am mostly really disappointed that she's obviously never heard of them.   If I were in a real bookshop, with a proprieter as opposed to an employee, with someone who actually cared about children's books, I imagine they might screw up their little face with glee and breathily declare how much they enjoyed E. Nesbit's books.  Perhaps they'd even say, "If your reader likes those, she should try something by ________", but, no, this lady is just an employee at a big, box bookstore and doesn't know jack about kid's lit.  So disappointing.

At any rate, they don't carry anything by E. Nesbit.  Really?  Really?  I craned my neck looking at the screen - not just out of stock, but you don't carry them???  And we went and looked under "Independent Readers/Science Fiction" for the 2 individual copies of Edward Eager's books they had in stock.  One, we already owned.  The other I found "mis-shelved" among the E's in "Independent Readers/General".

UEWKCB:  See, the kid's are always putting them back in the wrong place.

PPP:  No, I'm pretty sure that that's where I'd shelve him - with the other E's...

And she had the nerve to give me a pitying look!

/rant over.

We came home, made smoothies and watched American Gangster.  2 hours and 45 minutes!  Long!  A midnight dog walk, and I was more than ready for bed.

I like to listen to podcasts as I drift off to sleep.  Quite often this means I miss the end (or middle and end) of something and I wake up thinking, "Were they really talking about ______?"

Last night I was listening to a BBC program about food - and I was pretty sure I heard one farmer talking about how much money they were losing on their pig farm, until they opened it up to the public for "pig cuddling". 

I love pigs, so the first thing I did this morning (after making a cup of tea and toasting a bagel) was google "pig cuddling farms".  Sure enough, that's exactly what you are encouraged to come and do at Piggy Wigs Farm.

Next time I'm back in the Motherland I know exactly where I'm making a day trip. 

We didn't get to cuddle these little piggies at this urban farm in Leeds.

In which I am late to the party...

So late, in fact, that it's now a book.

I'll be nice and suggest that if you are drinking and perusing your favorite blog, you might want to swallow what's in your mouth and set down that tasty beverage so it doesn't end up all over your screen and gum up the keyboard and such.

I know I didn't put Batman Begins on our Netflix queue.

I'll dropping Mini-pear at her 5 hour long play date in a little under an hour.

Then I will:
Hit the Indian grocery store
Hit a thrift store (or two)
Come home and work on a secret project

***

We have not been watching much lately, other than Kid Nation (Mini-pear is slightly obsessed).  I recently discovered the groaning shelves of Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt at the library and send myself off to bed very early so I can read for the maximum possible amount of time before falling asleep.  However, the other night we decided to watch John Waters' Female Trouble.  It's been sitting in its little red Netflix envelope for almost a month.  I love John Waters.  Fine cinematography it's not, but it's good for a laugh (and a squirm) and an hour or so of knitting.  I usually forget most films quite soon after watching them, but Female Trouble will stick in my head a little longer than most, chiefly due to the scene where Divine gives birth on a skanky looking couch in a hallway.  We noticed right away that it was a real baby - a really little baby - a very close to newborn baby.  Which means that somewhere, in Baltimore, someone entrusted John Waters with their 2 week old baby.  And allowed him to smear it with ketchup or whatever low budget concoction (not that ketchup is big budget by any means) served as new born baby goop.  And then gave said baby to Divine and let him wrestle with it on a particularly nasty looking piece of furniture.

I want to do a follow up interview with the baby.

X-mess 2007 kick off! (yay/boo version)

Yay - Encinitas Holiday Parade!  Classic cars and baton twirling!

Boo - It was cold!

Boo - The lady sitting next to me who felt the need to correct anyone in the parade who wished us "Happy Holidays" as opposed to "Merry Christmas".  In the end, I had to get up and move. You know just in case she inadvertently got some bile on me.  I suspect it might burn.  A lot.

Yay - We put up a tree.  A fake tree.  With pre-wired lights. 

Boo - It takes a lot of tree fluffing to make a "fresh out of the box" artificial tree look like an actual tree.

Boo - We bought said tree at Target.  On a Saturday afternoon during the holiday shopping season.

Yay - unclogged the bathroom sink.

Boo -unclogged the bathroom sink.

Yay - I laid in bed reading on both Saturday and Sunday mornings for a very long time reading my book.

Boo - Tanky finally vomited what I hope is the last remnant of the toy she gobbled two weeks ago.

Yay - Finally checked out the Indian place a two minute drive away.  I resolve to diligently work my way through the menu over the next few months.

Yay - Supported new indie hardware store (plunger and light bulbs)

Yay - Supported favorite indie record store.

Yay - Bargain bin holiday music!   Dianne Reeves,  some movie compilation with the Ramones and Elvis on it, The Beach Boys.

Boo - Kenny Rogers The Heart of Christmas (but I can live with a $2.99 mistake)

Yay - new Nellie McKay album has nothing to do with the holidays whatsoever.

Yay - neither does the new Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.

Boo - we just missed them on tour.

Yay - briskly walked the dog for an hour on Saturday and again on Sunday

Boo - sore leg muscles

Yay - I am getting pretty good at juggling fire.

Dear Anonymous in London,

Perhaps He-Man's creamy little thunder-pants are indelibly etched deep enough into your grey matter so as to cause you to misremember the rest of our happy afternoons spent in front of the television.   

It was too G.I. Joe who ended each half hour episode with a "Knowing is half the battle" PSA!  Google and Wikipedia and multiple G.I. Joe fan sites confirm.

We're going to have to settle the score with some wrestling.  On the bed.

Yours in perpetual correctness and encyclopedic knowledge of 80s pop culture,

Triple P

Tonight's insomnia brought to you by...

...the lack of air conditioning.  The thermometer says it's about 83 degrees in here, down from 88 a couple of hours ago.  I shouldn't whine.  Within a few days we'll be back in the balmy mid-seventies;)  I've spent the last three days at the beach...and...I bought a new hat.  So...

*

Did you ever watch that show Connections?

This evening, at our house, The Simpsons to the Solar System to Soap and beyond...

We watched the episode in season seven where Lisa discovers Springfield's founder, Jebediah Springfield, was actually a pirate and a nasty piece of work (Lisa the Iconoclast).  Jebediah had a silver tongue, which led to us looking up Tycho Brahe and his silver nose (which was actually probably made of copper), which led to a discussion of astronomy in general, which ways the planets orbit in particular (counter clockwise with the exception of Venus), which led to us downloading a short film about astronomy from cosmeo.com (you know about this site, don't you?), which in turn happened to mention how excellent the San Diego area is for viewing the skies (especially at Palomar Observatory), which then lead to me wondering where exactly Palomar was and could we go there sometime?  Mr. Pear's response, "It's right by Dr. Bronners!" As in, the soap.  He'd like to visit the factory for some reason.  This naturally led to us looking up Dr. Bronner's website and watching a short film about how Don Bolles (drummer for the Germs) was arrested because his bottle of Dr. Bronners tested positive for GBH.  Apparently all real soap falsely tests positive for GBH.  You should go and watch the film.  It is good for a laugh.

What if we'd had to go to bed early because we have school in the morning?

While we're on the subject of soap, Dr. Bronner's in particular, I took my almost empty bottle of lavender soap to our local hippie-mart to get a refill.  I almost hit the floor when they rang me up, but then I went ahead and paid them the over $15 they wanted for it.  Ouch.  Small local businesses just can't get the super volume discount as big box mart.  Still, it seemed a lot, so when I got home, I checked how much they charged for a new bottle of Dr. B's on their website - $13.50.  That makes no sense at all.  I composed a short email politely asking WTF?  No reply as yet.