A Conversation With Ruby About Bunnies

Last night we played "checker" with Ruby's ugly plastic checkout stand.

Ruby: I'll be the checker and you go shopping.

Me: Okay. (shop, shop, shop.)

Ruby: No, don't look at me. Checkers don't look at shoppers until they come up.

Me: Okay. (avert eyes, shop, shop, shop)

Ruby: Why, hello there! What's your name?

Me: My name is Kristen.

Ruby: No, pick another name.

Me: Okay...my name is Bunny.

Ruby: Are you a nice bunny?

Me: Yes, I am.

Ruby: Do you have bunny ears?

Me: Well, no....

Ruby: Why not?

Me: Because I'm not actually a bunny. I'm a person with the name of an animal.

Ruby: But do you have bunny ears at home?

Me: Why, yes, I do, as a matter of fact. It's funny when I go to parties wearing my bunny ears, because my name is Bunny.

Ruby: Okay, little bunny. Can I pet you?

Me: I don't think you understand. I'm not a bunny. I'm a human. My NAME is Bunny.

Ruby: Okay, little bunny.

A Conversation With Ruby About Cashews

Me: Here are some almonds and cashews.

Ruby: I LOVE cushrooms!

Me: Not cushrooms. Cashews.

Ruby: No, cushrooms.

Me: Okay, then, take your almonds and cushrooms to the living room.

7 Things That Make Me Miserable

I'm trying this new thing where I try to put a positive spin on things. The other day when it was snowing and I was freezing my cojones off, I thought, "I'm freezing my cojones off, but the snow is very beautiful." I'm trying to do away with words like "hate" and "stupid" in my vocabulary, in addition to trying to clean it up in general. You think quitting smoking is tough? Try to quit saying "fuck" when it's your all-purpose go-to word:

• Where the fuck are my reading glasses?
• What the fuck is going on in here?
• Why the fuck didn't you let the dogs out sooner?
• How the fuck did my phone end up in here?
• When the fuck am I supposed to get the laundry done?

Anyway, so that's what I'm working on these days, and I've found that putting a positive spin on certain things is just simply not possible. Here are seven things that make me miserable, period. Stupid things that I fucking hate. 

1. Dog hair. It's all over. It embeds itself in the lining of my boots and makes my calves itch. It embeds itself in the inside of my pants and shirts and makes my whole body itch. I pull dog hair off of my eyeballs some mornings. Oh, you're suggesting that maybe I should try vacuuming once in awhile? Try nearly every single day. By the next morning the piled-up dog hair is a visual representation of any given room's airflow. 

2. Itching. I hate to itch, and I generally itch all winter long. Yes, I moisturize. It doesn't matter, because if I'm not itching because I'm dry, I'm itching because I'm cold. If I'm not itching because I'm cold, I'm itching because I'm being stabbed by dog hair.

3. Stepping in water in my socks. It just makes me angry. I'm asking my mom for slippers for Christmas, slippers with a rubber sole so that when the dogs track snow into the house, I don't have to change my socks six times in an hour to try to keep my feet warm.

4. Being cold. Do I need to elaborate? I think not.

5. Showering in the winter. Sometimes Gerardo has to ask me when the last time I showered was, and sometimes I can't quite count back that far. Showering in the winter makes me itch like a motherscratcher and it takes me forever to get warm afterwards, when my hair is freezing cold and wet and it's too humid in the bathroom to get body parts like my butt crack and between my toes dry. So of course I have to break out the blow dryer--not just to dry off, but also to get warm--which then dries my skin even more, making me itch even worse. 

5. An entire wardrobe that doesn't fit. Everything I own is too small. When you're 5 feet tall, 20 pounds will require a new wardrobe. Unless you're completely and stubbornly in denial like I am. Then you'll just keep squeezing your size 6 ass into a size 4 pair of pants and pretend like they fit. 

6. Exercising. Hence the 20 pounds that fill my clothes a little too full. I have hand weights, a treadmill and a yoga mat upstairs. They're all very dusty, even though I pretend every morning like I'm finally going to go in there and start taking care of business. But every day, I don't. I hate exercising. I hate that damned treadmill and I hate doing yoga by myself. I like lifting weights, but I don't do that either, just because. 

7. Not being able to quick! pop out for something in the winter. There is no such thing as popping out in the winter. Leaving the house is a process, especially if a certain three-year-old is involved. You gotta get dressed, put on some big clunky shoes, pile on coats and hats and scarves and gloves. You have to trudge. I never trudge in the summer, but I do it all winter long. A lot of times you have to scrape or sweep the car, and there is never a trip out of the house that doesn't involve being unbearably cold--UNBEARABLY COLD--for the five to ten minutes it takes the car to finally warm up. And then you have to turn around and do it all over again after you procure what you popped out for. It makes me miserable.

Originally, I entitled this post "10 Things That Make Me Miserable." The good news is that I could only come up with seven things. There are many other things that annoy me, like getting up on a cold winter morning to find that we're out of coffee, never being able to find both of my gloves at the same time and getting all the way across town to Super Saver for my weekly grocery shopping only to find I've left the list at home. But I wouldn't say those things make me miserable. Misery is a special kind of relentless annoyance that keeps on giving.

What makes you miserable?

Apparently, Decorum is Not a Birthright

Three-year-olds say the most inappropriate things, like little drunkards with no sense of propriety, just spewing whatever's on their mind. Yesterday in the packed Target dressing room, Ruby said the following:

"Hey! You don't have any panties on! That's silly, mom!"
"You're all naked, mom!"
"You have a cute little booty."
"I love your vagina."

At Super Saver an hour later, we followed an old lady into the women's room. After Ruby peed, she said:

"Hey, mom! There's one, two, three, four bubbles in my pee!"

I'm just waiting for the day when she REALLY embarrasses me. I work hard at saying only kind things about people in general, even moreso when Ruby can hear me. Still, things slip out, and one of these days she'll probably say something very wrong to the worst possible person. I don't know what, and I don't know who, but just you wait. I'll be posting about it soon, I'm sure of it.

Five Things

Here's what I got sucked into this week...

1. Beautiful but creepy animated 19th century zoetropes, phenakistoscopes and praxinoscopes.

2. Behind the scenes with Sesame Street, circa 1970s. I always wondered.

3. How to live a kick-ass life, based on quotes from Mark Twain.

4. Clever re-imagined slogans for products and companies.

5. Incredible footage of an ice shove. It would make a good horror movie: Night of the Living Ice