The Killer In Zee

J.Q. is pretty selective with his playthings. And by that I mean he refuses to SELECT anything actually manufactured for use as an infant recreational aid ("Apply to infant as needed until desired level of merriment is achieved. Discontinue use if excessive glee occurs"), preferring instead to cavort with the remote control, the cell phone, whatever horror the cat has most recently deposited on the carpet. I'm getting ready to petition the AAP to rename "pincer grip" to "grip which allows your child to finally consummate his torrid love affair with cat litter".

Kiddo's disdain for the plebeian concept of "toys" hasn't stopped me from encouraging him to make use of his existing cornucopia of plush 'n plastic. In this I am as enthusiastic as an infomercial hostess. "Wow-EE... look at this thing! It rattles! It crinkles! It jingles! It has many pleasing primary colors and rubbery textures to stimulate your developing brain! Which obviously NEEDS developing, as you are licking Balmex off your foot! Kindly stop that!" Foremost among the toys with which I have pestered my boy is the zebra teething ring.

While I grudgingly accepted his rejection of most playthings, I took the zebra personally. This was a GREAT toy, one which I myself would've employed if I also possessed an overpowering urge to jam things in my mouth (insert misogynistic stand-up joke here, perhaps "Whaddya mean, IF? BOOYAH!"). It was cute. It was well-made. It was a perforated African equid! What more could a baby want? Apparently, a toy not contaminated by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Yup. I repeatedly encouraged my son to sink his little fangs into a teeming colony of pseudomonas aeruginosa. Sorry, Julie... I DEFINITELY have you beat.

When things like this happen, I don't know whether to cry, or scream, or laugh, or curl up into a little ball and die. After my first big parenting mistake (forgot to strap kid into carseat, discovered mistake only after driving on a major highway for half an hour), I was damn near catatonic with guilt and fear. I was a worrier even before J.Q. was born. I worried about money, work, nuclear war, the rising price of yogurt (seriously... $0.80 a carton? F that S, I'll ferment my OWN milk!), my husband getting crushed by the Space Needle during a business trip to Seattle. After the little guy arrived, all of that disparate worry was concentrated and focused on the squeaky pink bundle in the bassinet. Rather than making things easier (hey, no more laying awake at night worrying about whether a duckbilled platypus is a "monotreme" or a "metronome"), this made them incredibly hard. The downside of parenting can be summed up in nine words: you've got a new worst thing in the world. Before parenthood, I was sure I could handle anything life threw my way. Death, disease, destruction? Undesirable, sure, but certainly surmountable. After all, shit happens, right?

Right. That's exactly what's so terrifying. Sam and I have a term for the collection of insufferable behaviors often seen in bright kids. "Gifted Child Syndrome", we call it (on the assumption that maybe giving it a snappy name will make up for our own years of being horrible little shits). One of the hallmarks of Gifted Child Syndrome is an inability to accept that sometimes, despite trying your best, you still fail. I thought I'd shed all traces of GCS a long time ago, along with the half-read copy of "The Brothers Karamazov" and ego the size of a major-league football arena. But once again I find myself railing against the very thought of failure. Shit happens, but the thought of it happening to my son is unbearable. I live - quite literally- to walk into J.Q.'s room in the morning and see his smiling little fuzzy-head peeking out at me from between the crib slats. I won't forget to strap him in again, and I won't buy him another toxic teether (I'm supposed to send it in for a replacement and a "free gift". Like, "Sorry we tried to kill your child! Here is a cheery sippy cup to make up for it!"). But I'm going to make other mistakes, and it chaps my ass in a way not even Triple Paste (which costs so much per ounce I'm surprised you can't get high off of it) can heal.

Shit happens. Between that and the baby, my happiness is greater and more fragile than it's ever been. All I can do is take a deep breath, love my son as fiercely as possible and hold on to whatever I can. Just not that fucking zebra.

Gross Misuse of Company Property.... And I Do Mean "Gross"

Lucky corporate drone that I am, I sit within five feet of a mini-fridge and toaster oven. While a microwave is also available, it's over fifty back-breaking feet away, and I'm usually too busy/lazy/champing at the bit for some sodium benzoate to make the trek. Thusly, I have prepared all sorts of ludicrously inappropriate foodstuffs in Lil' Toasty. My lunch is usually like a distant planet: blazingly hot on one side and encrusted with ice on the other. Between that and the following story, you'd think I'd, I don't know, "learn my lesson", or perhaps "get severely reprimanded by building management". Thankfully, neither has occurred, and I plan to be jamming entire standing rib roasts into that poor beleaguered Oster for years to come.

How Not to Prepare a Lean Pocket:

1. Fire up toaster oven, insert Pocket. Reflect on the mass-produced soullessness of my lunch selection. Unable to decide whether purchasing an egg roll from the Truck of Questionable Sanitary Practices would be hipper and less like sucking-on-the- syphilitic-corporate-teat- of-Archer-Daniels-Midland, or merely more likely to cause projectile hurling.

2. Idly read Pocket's box. Note many warnings... "THIS PRODUCT MUST BE COOKED PRIOR TO EATING" [what, I can't just jam a stick in it and have a Pock-sicle?] and "DO NOT RE-USE CRISPING SLEEVE". Is anyone THAT cheap? Well... perhaps my late, great Aunt Shirley, famed for the classic, "No, no lunch for me... I'm SO stuffed from all the rolls I ate... and jammed in my purse, along with all the cutlery and that nice plastic ficus that was in the vestibule." Along with the many dire Pocket-related warnings, do NOT note toaster oven preparation instructions. Because there aren't any. Could this mean something? Nah, probably not.

3. Become concerned that Pocket is browning too much on one side. Now replace "concerned" with "panicked" and "browning" with "rapidly blackening".

4. Fold paper towel in half, attempt to use towel-clad hand to adjust level of rack in toaster oven... while oven is still operational. Whoops.

5. Become alarmed when paper towel touches heating element and catches on fire. LOTS of fire. While panicking, still find time to silently give thanks that I am no longer employed at Big-Ass Computer Facility, as they had an oft-deployed Halon system. Although having to periodically watch the "We Assure You, The Halon Gas Will Not Kill You" video was pretty amusing.

6. When blowing and waving fail to extinguish towel, fling towel to ground and stamp on it, leaving big ol' scorch mark on carpet [Ed. Note: which is still there. Some people get a star on the Walk of Fame. I get a blackened smudge on industrial low-pile acrylic).

7. Slouch off in shame to eat Lean Pocket (charred exterior, chilly center...yummy-yum) and pretend like nothing ever happened.

8. When unobservant coworker says, "Hey, something smells good in here!", tell them to shut up.

- J

P.S. One of Lean Pockets' many ingredients? "Yeast Food". Ew.

P.P.S. They also "Contain 10% Pepperoni". Since they're "Pepperoni Pizza"-flavored Lean Pockets, I'm not sure what the other 90% is. Based on my experience, I'm gonna say kerosene.

Photo Special: He Likes to Move It, Move It

I'm not sure if someone with hair like this should be granted the power of independent locomotion. He's probably just going to use it to wriggle down to the drugstore and buy out their entire stock of Dippity-Do.



In any event, today's category is "Things On, In, Or Squirming Frantically Towards My Entertainment Center:

1. It's the end of the world as I know it: J.Q. is now mobile. Like a teeny-tiny archvillian, however, he only uses this ability for evil. Last night, he refused to inchworm into his daddy's waiting arms, choosing instead to take a side-trip to the enticing snarl of electrical cords several feet away. I'm pretty sure that if I wanted him to walk (which, given his lust for all things which can choke, strangle and electrocute, I DON'T), all I'd have to do would be put a big ol' spool of barbed wire on the other side of the room. You want to find out where Iran is keeping its fissionable material? Don't send the U.N. - send my boy!

2. Kant-Leak Wax Toilet Ring. I have several things to say about this:

A. Oh, yes it Kan.

B. What, you don't keep YOUR toilet rings in your entertainment center? What could possibly be more entertaining than the sticky beige wad of goo which lives under your crapper?

C. Every time I see a Kant-Leak (or chisel the remnants of one out from under my fingernails), I imagine Immanuel Kant striding into our bathroom to take a whiz. I suspect I would find this more annoying than Enlightening. "Listen up, 'Mannie... your 'Categorical Imperative' is to zip up der lederhosen and find my spackle knife, pronto!"

3. The TV Which Can Be Seen From Space. Shortly before J.Q. was born, we knew Sam would have to exchange his lil' red-and-black deathtrap of a convertible for something more Practical and Grown-Up... a tool-of-the-man-mobile, as it were. While he willingly agreed to sacrifice The Ladybug, the decision was still painful. He began driving with the top down in ALL weather conditions, including torrential sleet, as well as stroking his keys in a particularly heart-rending fashion, as though they were a cute little puppy with a fatal disease. I figured Sam should have one last fling of bachelor-esque selfishness before beginning his life as a parent. Had I known that the product of this fling would be as large as the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey", I probably would've just encouraged him to sleep with a cut-rate call girl or snort a wheelbarrow full of coke.

The TV Which Can Be Seen From Space arrived at our house in a semi truck one rainy night, and was wrangled inside by Sam and the awe-struck truck driver. "It's so BIG... so CLEAR!", said Sam, voice quivering like he was having a profound religious experience ("Imagine how much better the Burning Bush would have looked in HIGH-DEF!"). Since then, I have grudglingly tolerated its presence. Reaaaaally grudgingly. It's the electronic equivalent of the wretched old uncle you just can't bear to eject from your home because you know that within the half-hour, he'll be rolling up his sleeve at the local Phlebot-o-Kwik Discount Blood Bank for $10 and free cookies.

In summary:

- Most Dangerous Game is no longer "man". "Attempt to stick drooly little finger into open PC case" way more dangerous.

- TV gigantic, ostentatious, guilt-inducing. Possible solution to all problems: donate TV to local mendicant population for use as a spacious shelter.

- Selling point for Thumbscre.ws: it's probably the only place where you'll find influential German philosophers and toilet wax mentioned in the same sentence.

Orken, Bjorken, Buyin' a Ninety-Nine Cent Fork-en

Stephen Malkmus doesn't care for IKEA. That ain't especially news; show an indie rocker puppies frolicking under a rainbow and he'll somehow spin it into a wry riff on the soul-shattering ennui of the post-modern age. And it'll get stuck in your head for DAYS, too. "Scamper, clueless puppy, 'round that cold, cold 'bow / the Geneva convention has gotta go go go / Unilateral action, universal defeat / run away, little hound, to your Booda-Bone treat". Somebody give me a record deal!

As I just made abundantly clear, I'm NOT a rock star. I'm a boring-ass suburbanite (Have attended CSNY concert! Have ten cans of very slightly different shades of off-white paint in my garage! Have eaten Dippin' Dots, ice cream of the fucking FUTURE!). I'm allowed to like IKEA, and I do. I mean, they have a ball pit! You can get a hot dog and a soda there for a little over a buck (which leads me to believe their hot dogs are made with even lesser quality ingredients than the usual hooves and snouts... disobedient employees, maybe). You can get a cutting board for two bucks, a comforter for twenty, and a mattress for under a hundred (I'd caution against that one, though; it's kind of like sleeping on a soft, puffy chip 'n putt course). Best of all, however, are the product names. They're enamel-meltingly cute and have more umlauts than the entire lineup of Ozzfest. And while technically region-neutral, they seem EXTREMELY Scandinavian. So much so that, while reading "A Doll's House" for English Comp II, I found myself thinking, "Torvald... Torvald... isn't that my colander's name?"

And thus was born quite possibly the silliest thing I have ever done (and I've worn underwear on my head AND fenced with a baguette): the IKEA/Ibsen Quiz. Feel free to share your scores, but be warned... I BUILT the damned thing and I still only got fifteen right.

It's All About Meme, Meme, Meme

Snack I Enjoy, But Probably Shouldn't:

Gerber Fruit/Veggie Puffs. Yes, I KNOW they're technically for my child. But they're only 125 calories for a whole can! Also, he's still working on his pincer grip, whereas I have perfected my cram-down-gaping-maw-by-the-handful grip.

Song To Which I Don't Know All The Lyrics, But Damned If I've Let That Slow Me Down:

"Last Goodbye" - Jeff Buckley. I sing this one in the car all the time. When I'm doing my version of Jeff's falsetto, I get the impression my car REALLY wishes it were an automatic transmission, just so it could shift itself into first gear while doing 60 and thereby end the agony. In one of my longest-standing secret fantasies, I am finally uninhibited enough to sing "Last Goodbye" in front of other people, and I sound AWESOME. That's how I know it's a FANTASY: I couldn't hit a note if it was tied down and I had a Louisville Slugger. Also, I've been drunk enough to shriek "IGGY POP RULES!" and then vomit on myself, yet I STILL wasn't drunk enough to sing in public.

If I Had a Million Dollars... I'd Be Boring:

1. Have medical science resurrect Frank Lloyd Wright and then force him remodel my house before I'd let him return to eternal slumber.

2. Have as many kids as I wanted and send them all to ridiculously overpriced Quaker private schools.

3. Trade in the ancient Civic of Shame for the NEW Civic of Triumph.

Baby's Got a Bad, Bad Habit:

1. Too verbose. No shit, Sherlock.

2. Easily distractable: will start reorganizing linen closet, go off on series of tangents and wind up reroofing house. Possibly even the neighbor's house ("GET OFF OF THERE, YOU CRAZY B- ... wait, are those 25-year textured-lap shingles? Carry on, then.").

3. Horrendous dietary transgressions: sugar, sugar, sugar... with the occasional dash of capsicum. I guess my ideal food would be Buffalo Milk Duds.

4. Convincing myself that I sometimes "predict" things. Just because I was thinking about a particular song just before it began playing in Home Depot does NOT mean I'm psychic; I probably heard it during one of our other 10,000 trips there and came to subconsciously associate Elton John with Roto-Zip attachments.

Things I Enjoy Even More Than Sugar-Dipped Sugar:

1. Playing with my boy.

- We sing! Our latest batch of Gerber-inspired songs have a 70's bent: "Piiiiineapples in flight... Hawaiian Dee-light!" and "Puff, the magic fruit thingy, goes in your mouth, then travels through your digestive tract, 'til it shows up down south!"

- We dance! Some of us need clean diapers after dancing too vigorously, but damn it, we STILL DANCE.

- We play! Recent games include "Rocket Infant Blasts Off to Planet Zebulon!" and "Sweet Potato Cessna Crashes into Baby-Mouth Gorge".

2. Reading and writing. I suck ass at 'rithmetic, however.

3. Organizing more or less anything, from shoes to CDs to life choices. Not that you'd know it from the state of my house, but I find ordering stuff very soothing. I had a spreadsheet for my pregnancy, for god's sake. If possible, I would've conceived the child via Excel function... =IF((CONCATENATE($EGG&$SPERM))="Fertilize!","Pink Line","No Pink Line") .

Special Exclusive-to-This-Blog Section: Most Amusing Yet Awful Thing Ever Done By My Bastardly Ex-Boyfriend:

Barged into the bathroom and tossed a dead baby mouse between my splayed knees and into the toilet bowl while I sat there, wide-eyed, pants around my ankles and "Solider of Fortune" across my lap. An unmedicated manic-depressive, he had cared for the abandoned mouse-ling with great zeal (constructing a nest from a cigarette box, feeding it milk from a pipette). Following its inevitable demise, he had apparently applied the same can-do spirit to the question of "how to dispose of mouse corpse in manner MOST upsetting to girlfriend?" This is one of those memories which makes me simultaneously smile and cringe. It's like eating fudge-zipped pickles. Mmmn... emotional turmoil-icious.

Mother of Invention : #1

I've got a pretty long daily commute. I've also got a constant need for stimulation... maybe not the best combo. Once I've grown bored with my newspaper and snack and book and MP3 player and making my cell phone play "Don't Fear the Reaper", I often invent things in my head. Here are a few recent ideas:

1. A portable spigot which I can affix to the bottom of the silo at the apple cider factory down the road in order to get a nice, cold slug of juice whenever I'd like.

Pro: All the apple cider I want! After thorough dishwashing, could also affix spigot to milk silo at local dairy, bust out a wheelbarrow of cookies and have the most wholesome keg party EVER.

Con: My husband claims that, A) the silo is either decorative or full of water, and B) I'm an idiot. He may be right, considering that I recently spent half an hour pondering the question "If the Johnny Five robot from 'Short Circuit' were in an L.A. street gang, would he be a Blood or a Crip?" (Answer: a Crip. Well, DUH!)

Con: Spigot malfunction might lead to inadvertent consumption of 50,000 gallons of apple cider.

Pro: That sounds like exactly the kind of freak industrial accident pivotal to the creation of many superheroes!

Con: Do I really want to be the Cider Cyclone, capable of temporarily stunning my enemies with a powerful blast of sweet-tart goodness? "Say YOUR PRAYERS, little missy, because I'm going to - ZAPPPP! - Mmmn, that IS refreshing! Huh... where were we?")

2. A hot water bottle shaped and weighted exactly like my hand for those nights when J.Q. refuses to drop off to sleep without 45 minutes of parental back-patting. I'd probably call this one the Neglecto-Matic Parental Comfort Simulator.

Pro: Extra free time means extra "Lost", aka "Calvin Klein Underwear Model Reject Island". There are some who claim the show will end with everyone being rescued, or the revelation that "it was all just a dream". Me? I think that, after enduring months of sexual tension dense enough to be cut with a tungsten-carbide drill bit, the survivors will descend into a frenzy of raw, no-holds-barred carnality. The island will be discovered two months later by a bass-fishing expedition, but the silk scarf-clad corpses and unusually skittish local fauna will forever remain a mystery.

Con: if the offspring of B.F. Skinner and Joan Crawford had a child, this is EXACTLY the kind of horrific parenting idea it'd come up with.

3. The world's first all-substance, no-style automobile. It would be incredibly reliable, yet stark and horrendously unattractive. It would run for 500,000 problem-free miles, yet look like a miniature Pinzgauer and have a plywood bench instead of a seat. I intended to call it the "Churro" (a bastardized amalgam of "cheap" and "reliable") until I realized that people might confuse it with the tasty Mexican pastry, which doesn't have substance OR style... just cinnamon-sugar.

Pro: I'm somewhat obsessed with reliability. I'm pretty sure that if Consumer Reports endorsed, say, a particular brand of hot dog as being the most reliable, I'd rush out to buy it. "We have to go to Genuardi's RIGHT AWAY! Can't have our weiners falling apart on us!" For someone like me, this vehicle would be a dream come true.

Con: Thankfully, I don't think there are a whole hell of a lot of people like me.

I Get E-Mail, My Mom Gets a Blog, David Rosengarten Gets Hit By a McDonald's Truck (Well, One Can Dream)

1. In Two Words: E-Mail Me. In Several Hundred Words:

The money I'm forking over for my clever 'n mildly saucy domain each month (note: doesn't "clever 'n mildly saucy" seem like it should be the tagline for a brand of British frozen entrees? Like "I Do Say, Dear Fellow Microwavable Enchiladas" or "Jolly Good Show, Guv'nah! Heat-'n-Eat Lardy Cake")... um, where was I? Oh, that cash apparently also gets me an e-mail address (me@thumbscre.ws).

In order for me to achieve maximum bang for my internet buck, you should e-mail me. I will be clever and witty and verbose enough to make your mail server beg for mercy ("Noooo! I'm sorry about all that penis-enlargement spam! Your penis is perfect just the way it is!").

I will also share my risotto recipe if you wish. It's pretty rockin'. It's also the only thing I can cook. I don't mean "cook well", I mean "cook AT ALL, without it emitting plumes of acrid smoke and becoming molecularly bonded to the bottom of one of my husband's fancy-ass French skillets. Every time I find myself hunched over the sink, scraping away at carbonized chicken with a butter knife, I imagine the good people at the Bourgeat factory slamming down their tiny cups of espresso and exclaiming, "SACRE BLEU! Zees cannot BE!".

2. Nepotism is Nepo-tastic:

My momma has a blog now, too. It's funny and sweet and really well-written. You should visit it: http://www.pinelands.blogspot.com/ . If you do, I'll even let you know the two TOP-SECRET special ingredients* which transform my risotto recipe from "better than chocolate-dipped sex" to "capable of driving Italian master chefs to commit ritual suicide on their mezzalunas". Which, come to think of it, might take a loooong time. "Ow!... I have brought shame upon my profession... OW!... I am the biggest disgrace ever to wear a puffy white hat... AAAGGGHHH!...".

3. Special Asterisk Section: The Dipshittery of David Rosengarten:

If that phrase seemed awfully familiar, it's probably because you've received the "teaser" copy of "The Rosengarten Report" (uber-prig David Rosengarten's food magazine). While it appears at first glance to be a normal sample issue, it's actually fifty pages of statements EXACTLY LIKE THAT... maddeningly vague, hilariously florid and designed for one purpose: to coerce you into giving David Rosengarten $75 a year NOW NOW NOW.

"Many people feel that European plugra is the world's best butter. I say, "Feh! I wouldn't use that shit to grease the wheel bearings on my Lexus!" The world's best butter is actually made in a tiny Andalusian dairy, hand-churned each morning by beatific, full-breasted milkmaids who make Botticelli angels look like the St. Pauli girl. These skilled artisans have been making butter the old-fashioned way for over 50,000 years. What's that, you say? Cows didn't exist then? Well, maybe they milked trilobytes or something. But that's not the point. The butter is the point. It is so rich, creamy and delicious that it actually makes you LOSE weight, as ingesting a fat so perfect will make your own trashy fat cells die of shame. Is your mouth watering yet? Are you trembling with desire? Are you shrieking, "DAVID, TELL ME WHERE TO GET THE FUCKING BUTTER ALREADY?!" Well, I will... for just $75 a year!

I swear that's only a modest exaggeration. Now if only I could pay $75 a year to eradicate the mental image of David Rosengarten quivering with ecstasy while licking the wrapper of a $30 stick of butter.