another ridiculous conversation that I am forced to have

Hyphen: should we just go out to eat tonight?

Me: No, I am making puttanesca, why do you want to go out?

H: because you are going to make a mess in the kitchen.

Me: so? I'll clean it up.

H: No you won't. Seriously, you are the messiest cook I have ever seen. You should start a cooking show called "the messy cook"

Me: "I think I will. The start up money for the show will be from the insurance proceeds from my husband's freakish, sudden and mysterious death. And I will call it "The Happy, Messy Widow Cook. And I will have lots of fans."

Living with Hyphen, is like "Sleeping with the Enemy", but without the violence.

speaking of chick-fil-a

While we were there, Annabelle went into the playground. There were lots of big kids in it, so even though she is totally the type who can go into the playground by herself and have a grand time, I went in too. As I was sitting amisdt the chaos, I caught one of the big kids, he was about 5, pretending to punch and karate chop Annabelle. His punches were dangerously close to her face. She was standing there with this curious look on her face, trying to figure him out. Mama Bear had already figured him out, and she jumped up and intervened.

Me(pissed): "What are you doing? She is half your age and half your size."

Karate Kid stared at me with a look of complete shock that someone would talk to his spoiled little West-U self in such a manner.

Me: "now run along and play, but I am going to be watching you and you had better not pick on anyone else."

Karate Kid(as he was running up the playground): "can you see me now"

Me: "yes."

Karate Kid(running to another part of the playground): "you can't see me now though."

Me(although I couldn't see him): "you better believe I can, and don't think for even one second I won't kick you out of here if you misbehave again."

He left on his own accord. And when he did, I gave him one of my special eat-sh*!-die looks. I think my point was made.

lessons learned

The other day we were reading one of Annabelle's favorite library books--Spot Goes to School. It is really a baby book, but she picked it out and likes to read it, and apparently do other things to it, because as I was reading it, I noticed there was a little bit scribble scrabble on it that wasn't there the day before.

"Who did this?" I asked.

She looked thoughtful for a second and whispered "Ann-belle"

I explained to her that you were never supposed to scribble on books, especially library books and that she would need to tell the librarian what she did the next time we went to the library.

"Tell librarian. Say--I sorry I write in this Spot book." she said.

"Yes, that's right. You will need to apologize."

So throughout the week from time to time, she would say something like "I write in Spot book. I tell librarian, I sorry I write in Spot book. Librarian say, that's okay, accidents happen." Periodically, when we would see someone, she would confess, "I write in Spot book" and push her little lips out and make her serious face, the kind of face she makes when she tells on someone for doing something wrong, like when she told me "Grandma drives too fast."

Anyway, Friday came , and our plan was to go to the library, turn in some books, check out some books and then go to Chik-fil-a and have super-delux fun on the playground while mama relaxed and drank her sweet tea.

Right before we went in, she made her little speech to herself and as always it ended with the librarian telling her, "that's okay. Accidents happen." She was full of confidence as she trotted into the library.

But then something happened as I held her up to the counter, got the librarian's attention and showed him the offending page. "Tell him what happened, Annabelle. Tell him what you did." She turn her head away from him and held her head down in what could only be described as abject shame. I prompted her a few more times and she craned her head as far away as she possibly could. The librarian was touched. He looked kind of like how I felt, like he wasn't sure if he was going to laugh or cry.

I was feeling bad for being so old school about something, and then the librarian said "I am going to have to charge you for it." Do whhaaattt???? Eleven dollars later, five of which was a processing fee, I was contemplating whether I should be truly old school and say that we would have to go home and eat peanut butter sandwiches, because I spent all of our Chik-fil-a money on the Spot book. But I saw no reason to punish myself as well.

Lessons learned
1. Annabelle learned not to write in books
2. I learned that honestly is not always the best policy at the Houston Public Library.