He doesn’t care anything about the Confederacy and he says we’re going to get licked. But he dances divinely.

The Monday Three, Two of Which Are Brought To You By Acquaintaces' Facebook Posts

A pox on those pre-selected packages of school supplies.
I get the convenience from the parental point of view -- one stop, one price, no fuss. But pretty much the only thing I ever really liked about going back to school was the trip to buy school supplies -- lingering over the pencil boxes, choosing exactly the right colors of two-pocket brad folders for each subject, digging to the back of the pile for the completely unblemished, untouched notebooks, adding a fresh new bottle of Elmer's glue, the perfect scissors, clean sharp-tipped Crayolas, pens, Kleenex boxes ... how could you rob a kid of that?

Double smallpox on people who decry their kids' growing up.
Not "Awww, time flies! Remember when he was a little pudgy mooshy baby? And here he is, old enough to give lawful consent in New Mexico!" I mean the ones who go "I demand she stop growing up!" or "First day of fourth grade -- oh how I want her back in kindergarten!" Stop it. Just stop that fucking shit. I don't care if you think it, but keep it inside your thick noggin. It's NOT FAIR to make kids feel bad for the inevitable biological process of growing up. You're saying, in effect, "I liked you better when you were little and cute and I controlled your life and had your unalloyed hero worship. It sucks now that you're all gangly and need deodorant and have a sass mouth and I would stunt you forever if I could. Your existence disappoints me and it's all your fault."

In which something makes me anxious, which has no damn business engendering any emotion in me whatsoever.
You know how Vince and the permanently developmentally-arrested bro posse are all living in some insanely luxurious, spacious, apparently multi-bedroom high-floor hotel suite now? Not staying there -- LIVING there, for an indefinite amount of time? Those places are like $30,000 a night. Those Emirate assholes don't even live like that. Wasn't Vince having money problems not too long ago? Who's footing this bill? Why don't they rent a goddamn house like on Cribs? All this wasted money ... why Shatner why?

BOBBY FLAY is now my SWORN ENEMY, which means he is also YOURS.

Look, here's the deal. Many moons ago, somebody once linked on their blog to a drawring of two kids sitting on a pile of books, thoroughly absorbed in reading -- done so well, so simple and early-sixties-looking, I loved it on sight -- and the words "There's more to life than books you know, but not much more," which of course KILLED ME DEAD (Handsome Devil, whaaaat), and I bought it in under sixty seconds from this person's etsy shop. It is waiting to be framed and hung in my reading nook -- this sort of dogleg 1/3 of the Master Bedroom (heh. master bedroom) of our new house, for which I already have a wonderful chair (the Luxe chair + ottoman from Cost Plus), and now need only my bookcases, my goddamn books which are still in boxes in the goddamn garage, a good reading lamp, and the Desk I've Been Waiting For All My Life (which I will know when I see it).

Since that time, probably two years ago, that I bought this fabulous piece of art, I have wanted desperately for some more illustrated lyrics/quotations, preferably without attribution, and not the whole goddamn song or whatever -- Beatles, Pixies, more Smiths, all kinds of cool shit -- which I would create myself if I had that kind of graphic artistry talent but I don't, SO. What I need from you is: FIND ME THIS SHIT ON ETSY. I do not know how to navigate that fucking place. I get lost and then cranky and then want to burn the mother down with every twee little crafter in it. Links, people -- direct links to items and shops. PLEASE help me!

I might be a little young but honey, I ain't naive

So you guys know how much I love Burn Notice (specifically, I love it real hard, and a lot), but the mania for social media (something I deal with in the Day Gig, and which has become a phrase I can't stand) is out of control. In the commercial breaks, when one is not fast enough on the trigger, one will be assaulted with the promos for some online graphic novel they're pimping that's based on the show. It goes like this:

"ENGAGE WITH our graphic novel blah blah blah Burn Notice!"

Engage with. I'm being ordered to ENGAGE WITH a fucking graphic novel thingy ... I can just hear the meetings about (or "around," as is now the term) this idea. "We'll partner with this hot new artist, Joe Yadayada, to capture the buzz/cool factor of graphic novels combined with the cachet of exclusive content and really drive viewer engagement! The metrics'll be off the charts!" They forgot to even cover their naked ambition with some phrasing other than "engage with," which is a CorpComms term if ever there was one. GOD.

Engage this, y'all ...

I got the best one, honey -- it's Nathan Junior. I think.

So I'm out with the kid for breakfast -- sometimes that's the only thing to do when you're rousted out of bed at the ass-crack of dawn on a Sunday morning, amirite? -- and the place is mostly empty except for some old couples (the male half of one of which was droning on about Obama in a very Fox-"News"-influenced way while the wife ignored him) and two other family groups. One of the fams had four boys under the age of four -- the middle two looked like twins -- and the other had five kids -- three girls, about 12, 11, and 9, and two boys, about 7 and 6.

Now. Here's the thing. Everybody was well-behaved, it wasn't that. It was just ... OMG. Four boys under four. I'm betting the last one was either unplanned or a "Surely -- SURELY -- this'n'll be a girl. What are the odds???" sort of thing. And the other fam -- those two preteen girls were all made up and extremely carefully outfitted, and you could just feel the waves of preteen self-consciousness radiating off of them. It squoze my heart just to look in their direction, especially knowing my kid will be right there in about 8-9 years.

And both fams reminded me of how, back in the long long ago, I thought I'd like to have five kids. My fantasy about this was heavily informed, if not lifted wholesale, from the family in A Ring of Endless Light. You know -- living by the sea in a converted stable, everyone loves everyone, there are dolphins and books and shit. (BTW, that's a great book, which I only realized is actually pretty Godbaggy on re-reading about five years ago -- God stuff and sex stuff generally just flew right past me when I was a kid, the former because I was immersed in it anyway so who noticed a bucketload more here or there, and the latter because I had No Idea What Anyone Was Talking About, Ever, for real).

So but -- five. Yeahhh ... I'm gonna have to give you a no on that one (even if I weren't old as fuck already, so it's too late and a moot point besides). Four's waaay too many for me. Three would be ... well, in other circumstances, like if I could stay at home, I might possibly consider it, but it would be a completely different world, requiring complex and fraught mental and emotional adjustments of a sort that I am not currently up for. I was only able to think of two without reaching for the Glenlivet in the last year or so. I love being a mom, and I'm looking forward to this next one in a pretty profound way -- but after that, I'm done -- and my god FOUR OR FIVE? Holy shit.

This post brought to you by the fact that I am lazy, selfish, and risk-averse. Huzzah!