As usual, just when I get depressed, thinking all the things I know are too minor to blog, I visit Jo's site. For Jo, just eating breakfast and listening to Beethoven can be inspiring! And I am inspired to tell you minor things about my day, but with renewed verve and vigor.
You too can join the Spanglemonkey Robot Army! Be all that you can be!
My daughter's excited to be going on a fourth grade field trip tomorrow to snow country. "There'll be over a hundred kids on the bus!" she told us excitedly. "And it's one of the premium buses, too - it has a DVD player, an' screens, an' we'll watch movies! But parents can't go," she added, "'cause there's no more room. There's not even enough room for Mrs. S - she's driving up in her own car." BB and I were left to reflect sadly on that poor teacher, driving alone in the quiet instead of sitting on a crowded schoolbus, listening to Jimmy Neutron reruns at top volume for 4 1/2 hours. Such a shame!
They're going to Donner Summit, to visit the museum there and get acquainted with one of the more famous and, er, colorful events of CA history. So Bunny packed a backpack for the trip, and showed me how well she did. Extra socks, extra pair of gloves, etc.
"Maybe you'll want to take a lot of extra food," I said.
"Nah. There'll be plenty of students on board if I get hungry."
She's taking along a CD player. In a world where every other kid has a handheld game or an iPod, I couldn't begin to say no. But the batteries were dead. We went to the kitchen for replacements. The thin cabinet next to the microwave is where we keep lightbulbs, batteries, tools, candles, and God knows what else. There aren't enough drawers in this kitchen to make a junk drawer - this was the best we could do.
While I gingerly poked around the cabinet, trying to keep stuff from falling out, Bunny jiggled her CD player and prayed for the right size battery to come up. "Come on, double-A's. Come on, double-A's ..." Junk roulette!
You can always raid the smoke detector for double As. But you didn't hear it from me.
Posted by: Wende | November 08, 2005 at 11:50 PM
How on earth do you expect your child to maintain her status in the vicious jungle that is grade school when you send her out into the world WITHOUT AN IPOD? A portable CD player? Why don't you just put a sign on her saying "Hey, Look, My Parents Are Mired In the Mid-90s" and be done with it?
First thing tommorow--off to the Apple store and get her au courant with the current millenium!!
Every CA child should learn how to play The Donner Party Game. If the South can still be fighting the Civil War (oh sorry, in these here parts its called The War Of Northern Agression--is there anything funnier than conservative crackers appropriating the language of Marxist historiography?) and Texas has the Alamo and the East Coast has George Washington defoliating the cherry tree with Agent Orange then in CA every child should learn how greed, bad planning and voting republican can lead to cannibalism. Word up!
Posted by: Anthony | November 09, 2005 at 05:22 AM
Somebody sharper than me should take a crack at deconstructing the purpose of teaching kids about the Donner Party.
Posted by: pam | November 09, 2005 at 05:42 AM
If you grow up north of Bakersfield you learn about the Donner Party. It's part of our glorious No. CA heritage, which Easterners will never understand! It's a bit like "Let's Hear It For The Boy" albeit a little more intense and a lot colder.
So there's no need for deconstructive exercises. Kids have to learn how to avoid scheduling trips to the gold rush country too late in the season so as to avoid the inevitable social gaucheries involved in eating your neighbors!
Posted by: Anthony | November 09, 2005 at 07:13 AM
I'm all about breakfast. Mmm, breakfast.
Posted by: Jo | November 09, 2005 at 09:25 AM
Hey Pam,
While Anthony is out buying your kid an iPod tomorrow... could you have him pick up the new nano for me? I don't want to be tragically stuck in the 90's either... and since he's buying. :)
Posted by: Wende | November 09, 2005 at 10:05 AM
It's a good thig the two of 'em don't go to school together. I could just see La B and her future prom date in the back somewhere singing 'OH THE KIDS ON THE BUS ARE YUM YUM YUM - YUM YUM YUM -YUM YUM YUM! CHANGE THE CHANNEL THIS IS BORING!'
Hey Anthony while you're at it see if you can get a bulk discount on some Nanos? Mr. Man is pestering us for one for Xmas. His doesn't need to be engraved.
Thanks.
Posted by: pops | November 09, 2005 at 10:46 AM
Ooh... engraving. Just have mine say. . . "MINE". Either that or , "All my love, Anthony." *snark*
Posted by: Wende | November 09, 2005 at 12:52 PM
Bunny has a bright future ahead of her with such a fine education. She could even go to CU in Boulder, where they have named the cafeteria the Alfred Packer Grill. http://www.watermargin.com/graves/packer.html
Posted by: Snow | November 09, 2005 at 02:04 PM
The Donner Party Game is just as much fun as The Whipping the Local Native Americans and Forcing Them to Dip Candles and Hoe the Vegetable Garden at Mission Santa Barbara Game.
By the way, I mentioned this at Spanglemonkey 278 posts ago, which I believe was sometime last week, but when Bunny gets around to creating her own mission, she should go for Mission Soledad. It's the easiest to construct as Soledad was a solitary square adobe building in a windswept, dismal valley. The missionaries were so miserable there, suicides were frequent. Barak suggested that a monk hanging from a noose dangling from the rafters should be an essential feature of any model or diorama of Mission Soledad.
Posted by: GraceD | November 09, 2005 at 10:44 PM
Well Bunny and I had a fabulous time yesterday afternoon at the Apple store. I got her a 60 gig Ipod with all the acessories and we immediately went to ITunes and downloaded all these Hillary Duff songs and other "cool, with it" artists. I wanted to d-load a bunch of 50-Cent phat grooves but Bunny assured me that the kids in her class think 50-Cent is "too bourgie" and all the really fly junior gangstas be listenin to Jay-Z and Ludacriz.
What, all those presents you requested? Well, sorry--if you wanted me as a cash cow you should have shown up at the mall with Bunny and me. I don't mind indulging in brainless pruchasing orgies, but I'm not going to do all the work for you...
I've played the Missionary Game and it's really not any more fun than the Missionary Position (something which the good friars should have been innocent of). Donnor Party, though, is a perennial classic which combines the two quintessential American entertainment issues (being fashionably late and wondering what one will have for dinner) into a delightful, unified playtime experience. Please, don't let the same PC crowd that drove Halloween and Christmas out of the schools take aim at yet another CA tradition!
Posted by: Anthony | November 10, 2005 at 06:43 AM
Bunny needs an IPOD? BB needs an IPOD!!
Posted by: BB | November 10, 2005 at 09:24 AM
BB can sell all his Greg Lake CDs and buy his own Ipod. Besides, haven't you heard--Ipod and vinyl are incompatible!
Posted by: Anthony | November 11, 2005 at 05:48 AM
I tried to play my half mastered lp's on an IPOD...and all I heard was derisive laughter.
Posted by: BB | November 11, 2005 at 10:33 AM
"half mastered"--is that a new term for "half-assed" or "half-baked" cause either of those terms accurately describe Greg Lake on a good or bad day..
All fooling aside folks, Greg Lake and Tim Rice share the not-unfortunately unique position of being among rock's WORST lyricists: "one thing I'll say for him, Jesus is cool" versus "from the spread wings of the seagull come the spread claws of the eagle..."
Whatever you do, do not look into the light...
Posted by: Anthony | November 11, 2005 at 12:43 PM