Shivers

The other night, Addie was in the bedroom, "lookum book" (reading) on the bed.

Suddenly, shrieks of pain...horror...fear...something awful was clearly eating her alive.

We raced to the bedroom to find her bawling her face off.

It took about a minute to get her to calm down enough to tell us what was wrong.

After that, it took another minute to understand what the heck the kid was wailing.

Pointing: "UNGANGINGAY!!!!

UNGANGINGAY!!!"

There, on the cover of the bed, a teeny tiny dust bunny.

The smallest little dark spot on a light covered blanket.

"ARAIGNÉE" = French for SPIDER.

Now, my fear of spiders has been widely documented and mocked.

My ability to kill one is directly dependent upon its body mass to leg length to leg width to colour ratio.

Basically, if it's bigger than a grain of sand, I call for backup (my long-suffering husband).

I have tried VERY hard to mask my phobia from my children.

Eva mashes them with glee.

Clearly, with Adder...my efforts have been less than successful.

And Etienne's arachnid killing spree just got busier.

UNGANGINGAYS ENTERING MY HOUSE BE WARNED:

There are now TWO OF US LOOKING FOR YOU EVERYWHERE.

YOU WILL NOT MAKE IT OUT ALIVE.

I love my dad

I forgot my dad's birthday.

Again.

Every year, I remember a few days after the fact. Every. Freaking. Year.

My dad is one of the kindest, most principled people I know. His integrity is indescribable, and he and my mum are always first in line to help their friends and family.

And I forgot his birthday.

Tomorrow, I'm going to send flowers and call.

But it's not the same.

I want him to know that I think he's amazing. That I can't begin to describe my fortune in being his daughter.

And I couldn't even remember his birthday.

Next year, I'll do better. He makes me want to do better, to aspire to what he is.

I love my dad.

Drippy tipple

Addie seems to have finally stopped crapping in the tub (of course, now that I've recognized this fact, I'm sure she'll be quick to lay a log tonight).

At any rate, she seems to have replaced one terribly disgusting bathtime habit with another moderately less disgusting one.

My girl likes to drink the bathwater.
And I don't mean casually opening her mouth as we rinse her hair each night.

She attacks the bathwater like a 27-pound bailing bucket on a sinking rowboat on the Atlantic.

She'll fill plastic cups, shout "cheers!" and then down them in a loud gulp.
She'll line up shampoo-bottle lids like shooters along the side of the tub, then down them one-by-one like she's in a bar-room drinking competition.
She'll chug full-flow from a giant plastic pitcher we normally reserve for hair-washing.

I've asked/told/cajoled/pleaded with her to stop.

I've told her bathwater is basically poop soup.

She giggles and gleefully pounds back another.

Here she is, enjoying a recent vintage.

Bottoms up!

Pride

Eva arrived home yesterday from school, vibrating.

Literally, vibrating (if you took a photo of her, it'd be blurry).

Some background: last month, she did a poster and presentation on "the First Explorers in Space".

She worked HARRRRD...laboriously drawing pictures of Laika the dog, Yuri Gagarin, and Neil Armstrong...and then copying out details about each on the poster. We helped her find the information, but she did all the work on the poster herself.

She practiced her presentation over and over with us...was the first presenter in her class...and afterwards, seemed quite happy with herself.

We were very proud of her...and even more so, once we went to the school and saw the other posters - some of which looked like they had been created by marketing firms with budgets rivalling those of major soft drink companies and fast food chains.

ANYWAY.

Yesterday she gets home and says the Grade One class had to vote on the two best posters, to hang in a display.

And out of all the posters...the kids in first grade chose HERS.

Take that, hyper-helpful homework-hacking parents.

Grade ones, I salute you.