|
Faithful husband, soccer dad,
basset owner, and former cowboy
Return to TboggHomePage
FELLOW TRAITORS
*The Nether-Count*
100 Monkeys Typing
Ain't No Bad Dude
Alicublog
Americablog
American Leftist
Attytood (Will Bunch)
Bad Attitudes
Balloon Juice
Better Inhale Deeply
Bitch Ph.D
Bloggy
Bob Harris
Brilliant At Breakfast
BusyBusyBusy
Byzantium's Shores
Creek Running North
Crooked Timber
Crooks and Liars
Cursor
Daily Kos
Dependable Renegade
David Ehrenstein
Democratic Veteran
Dohiyi Mir
Down With Tyranny
Echidne of the Snakes
Edicts of Nancy
Elayne Riggs
Eschaton (Atrios)
Ezra Klein
Failure Is Impossible
Feministe
Feministing
Firedoglake
First Draft
Freewayblogger
The Garance
The Group News Blog
Guano Island
Hairy Fish Nuts
Hammer of the Blogs
Hullabaloo(Digby)
I Am TRex
If I Ran the Zoo
I'm Not One To Blog
Interesting Times
James Wolcott
Jesus' General
Jon Swift
Juan Cole
King of Zembla
Kung Fu Monkey
Lance Mannion
Lawyers Guns and Money
Lean Left
Liberal Oasis
Main & Central
Majikthise
Making Light (Nielsen Hayden)
Mark Kleiman
Martini Revolution
MaxSpeak
MF Blog
MyDD
Needlenose
The Next Hurrah
Nitpicker
No More Mr. Nice Blog
Norbizness
Norwegianity
Oliver Willis
One Good Move
Orcinus
Pacific Views
Pam's House Blend
Pandagon
Pharyngula
Political Animal(K.Drum)
The Poorman
Progressive Gold
Right Hand Thief
Rising Hegemon
Roger Ailes
Rude Pundit
Rumproast
Sadly, No
Seeing The Forest
Shakesville
Sisyphus Shrugged
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Slacktivist
SteveAudio
Suburban Guerilla
TalkLeft
The American Street
The Left Coaster
The Road To Surfdom
The Sideshow
The Talking Dog
The Talent Show
Tom Tomorrow
Tom Watson
Whiskeyfire
UggaBugga
Wampum
Wonkette
World O'Crap
TOSS ME
A BONE
Amazon Wish List
SOURCES
MSNBC
CNN
The Washington Post
Media Matters
The New York Times
The Guardian
Yahoo News
Salon
The Raw Story
Common Dreams
Media Transparency
The Nation
Alternet
Joe Conason
Talking Points Memo
THE VAST WASTELAND
Captain Corndog & Friends
Cheerleaders Gone Spazzy
80% True
Corner of Mediocrity and Banality
Village Idiots Central
Darwin's Waiting Room
News for Mouthbreathers
Mailbox
Your e-mail may be reprinted sans name and e-mail address. Think about how stupid you want to appear.
Blogroll Me!
Site Feed
|
Friday, July 30, 2004
Mailing it in...
Vacation beckons and you sit at your desk supposedly finishing up work. But what you're really doing is killing time, pretending to be busy, and keeping one eye on the clock so that you can bail early for the sweet release of time off. Which brings us to America's Worst Mother's™ Column O'Odds & Ends as she and the kids (Cabernet, Chantilly, Discordia, and Zed) get ready to travel up to Maine where they will get poison ivy, mosquito bites, and burn down a cabin.
This week we get political references for the NRO editors to keep the paychecks flowing:
Like the delegates at the Democratic Convention, everyone around here is terrifically pent-up. Unlike the delegates, however, there's no strain in being "positive" and "forward-looking."
Culinary delights:
So tonight we had fish sticks again, one steak divided five ways, miso soup, and pasta with the fag-ends of parsley.
Babies need a new pair of shoes which is why the paychecks need to keep flowing:
"I can't find my shoes," Paris yells from upstairs.
"Neither can I," Violet says from the hallway.
Pre-school strippers:
Phoebe's voice pipes up from behind her. "I'm a little girl from town and I need some stickers," she says, emerging from around the corner. She is naked and has pasted herself stem to stern with bright pink heart-shaped Post-It notes that came with someone's long-ago Valentine's card.
The claim that, long after she has taken a dirtnap, Meghan's contribution to eternity will be her nag:
Molly comes down the stairs. "Phoebe!" she says with a brisk mixture of amusement and censure, and I suddenly realize that in her voice you can already hear my voice, and I realize just as fast that some day she will realize it and hate it, as I did when I first heard my mother's voice coming out of my mouth. Perhaps eventually, like me, she will not mind; will even take a perverse pleasure in the passing-down through generations of certain maternal inflections, the only immortality most women can enjoy on earth
A weird cop-killer moment from the girls:
I become aware that Violet and Phoebe are sitting on the stairs outside my office. It is pleasant to hear them chatting, but I do not pay much attention until there's a sudden outpouring of piteous mewings, and Violet says sternly, in a vaguely Continental accent, "Come here or I will give you a smack!"
"Now, wait a minute — " I protest, getting up from my desk.
"We're playing a game," Phoebe explains from the landing. "I'm a baby."
A few minutes later, Violet strides past and takes up a noble pose at the front door. She lifts an invisible bow and arrow, waits, and lets fly at a passing police car.
"Waaaa!" wails Phoebe from the stairs
.
"Thwap!" Violet murmurs, as another arrow finds its victim. "I've killed them," she says softly, "I've killed her."
"Kill her? Kill you?" asks the infant. "Violet? Violet?"
"Violet," I say automatically, not looking up from my checkbook, "please answer your sister."
"But I'm dead."
...and just like in Texas, the cop-killer gets the needle:
I put a hairclip in, so she's dying," Phoebe explains in her normal voice. I peer around the corner to see Violet spread-eagled on the floor, with Phoebe spiking her solicitously in the arm. The body does not flinch. Violet takes justifiable pride in her personal courage.
amd finally, our Moment O' Manliness:
"Mummy, can you fix my bandage?" Paris asks, limping down the stairs. Earlier this week while shoeless at a neighbor's, he tore a long, terrifying strip out of the sole of his foot on a nail protruding from the floor. Once again he occasioned floods of blood, once again anxious women washed his wounds, praised his bravery, and asked repeatedly, "Are you okay?" And once again, as soon as the thing was bandaged, he expressed perplexity at all the hand-wringing and brow-mopping: "Sure. Why wouldn't I be?"
Next week: Off to Maine where Zed will kill a moose with his bare hands....
|
|
