Going To The Zoo
The chidders are on vacation for a week so we are going down to San Diego for a few days, to the zoo and Sea World and stuff like that.
Yesterday, I told the girls that, if they weren’t on their best not-running-away behaviour in the zoo park, we would feed them to the hippos. I said this in a loving way – there was really no need for the authorities to have become involved. The tear-gas was just uncalled for, and I told them last time that I need hypo-allergenic handcuffs, otherwise I come out in a terrible rash, forcing me to sue them again, which I hate having to do. One is forced to ask the question: is having a Child Protection Agency really the best use of our tax dollars?
Anyway, this morning I had a conversation with ProblemChild 2 about what clothes to pack.
Me: Have you chosen some t-shirts to take with us?
PC2: I want to take the blue iceberg one.
Me: But you just put that out for washing last night. Why don’t you take your green one?
PC2: No, mummy! I’ll look like lettuce and it might make an animal try to eat me.
Me: (laughs) Ah, sweetie-pie, just stay close to us and you’ll be fine. There’s nothing going to eat you, I promise. The animals can’t get out.
PC2 (Looks at me, clearly uncertain.)
Me: We were only kidding about the hippos, you know.
PC2 (Looks at me as if she’s never been entirely sure about me)
Friends, I am now experiencing a rare moment of self-doubt. Does such a look signify a maternal failure? Or should I continue with my current parental theory of Keeping Them On Their Toes?
February 18th, 2009 at 9:40 am
And you have a choice to bring them up as humans or animals. Either way you will be wrong
February 18th, 2009 at 11:25 am
on their toes, sugar…i swear one day they will be grateful for the lessons learned at an early age! just ask our coconut krewe! xoxoxo
February 18th, 2009 at 11:27 am
V, wow! that sounds suspiciously like wisdom. We’re not used to that around here. Come away in! You’ll take a wee nip won’t you, February being the cruellest month, an’ that. Nice to meet you, v.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Savannah, I’ll give them your address then, when, as adults, they and all their tribes come after me with pitchforks. I’ll say “She told me to do it! I was young(ish)! It’s not my fault! I was using a lot back then, man! Also, I’m easily led. Look, they don’t give you a manual you know! Anyway, look at the state of your own wee ones! Don’t you ever clean behind their ears with carbolic like I showed you? Plus they don’t look nearly cowed and terrified enough. Ouch! Will you stop poking me with that thing!”
February 18th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Are they only just now starting to look at you that way? Are you sure?
February 18th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Does such a look signify a maternal failure?
No. Material failure. I mean, like, seriously, huh, green t-shirts at a zoo?
February 18th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
san diego zoo? the one from the tv when I was a kid?
rage……
those animals are like celebrities…..except not as messy and less likely to fling their poo at you…..
February 18th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Wisdom from me, are ya mad woman.
Having decided I’m a Celt, I might as well go the whole muc and drink only from the gene pool. Given my preference for goodish Red my source is a bit shallow. And if ever I win the euro lotto and if this warming thing keeps, I’ll cut out the middle man/person.
Anyway I forgot the autofill, it’s amasing what a useful P Noir can delete. While I can have chat on a lesser Greek -Asia minor really- poet and the merits of the under or on the shield, sometimes the name escapes me.
February 18th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Always keep them (lovingly) on their toes….my hubby once told the nephew (a total drama “king”) that he would catch the Ominous Mutatous Gene if he kept pestering the cat and it scratched him. He still avoids the cat. And, we avoid the Drama Scene that would happen were he to get scratched…. O.M.G.!!!!
….anyhoo, the green Tee will hide the camel spit
February 19th, 2009 at 4:23 am
PC2 is SO onto you. Has she got you with a double-bluff re Santa or the tooth fairy yet?
February 19th, 2009 at 7:06 am
It just means they’re getting closer to teenagehood, when everything you say will be looked at with a marked expression of scepticism, doubt and pity
February 19th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Dear, I so wish I weren’t the one to break your parental bubble, but I know the problem children are younger than mine. I shan’t call the authorities but for the love of God, will you please get the electrical implants and remote control. Jeez Louise in a chicken basket, what are you thinking? You don’t need threats, if the mere press of a button is all it takes.
Second, never, I repeat, “Never,” allow the young ones to think that you won’t sacrifice them to animals, Orcs, goblins, vampires, or whatever if truly necessary. Bottom line: Children who don’t scare easily, when they’re seventeen.
Cheers, dear.
February 21st, 2009 at 8:34 am
And lo, it works again!
I have been having problems logging in and leaving comments here. I flooded the Wordpress forums with questions about it and tore out approximately half of my hair, but now it’s fixed itself.
Woohoo!
(She said baldly)
February 21st, 2009 at 8:40 am
Sea Dreams, I can’t always tell their exact expression on account of the cringeing and cowering. It hides their wee faces, see.
Sneezy, Green t-shirts are very high in folate though. Any animal eating my child would have been sure to gain a nutritional boost.
Manuel, wishing you big fat sauteed luck tonight, toots!
February 21st, 2009 at 8:46 am
Vincent, names and reason are both slippery buggers to grasp, sometimes.
His Girl Friday, you would be astonished at the number of lies I tell my children. I slip sometimes though and they’re all over me. “Eat up your crusts, it’ll make your hair curly”, trill I. “‘Ere, I thought eating crusts made your eyelashes curly?” accuse they.
Conan, if hse’s anything like me she’ll go on pretending to believe in Santa years after she stops believing, just to get more presents. She will also beat up her sibling if her sibling suggests to the parents that he or she no longer believes.
February 21st, 2009 at 8:52 am
Kim, they started that at 3. I don’t think cynicism about one’s parents fitness to parent you can come too early, do you?
Rand, orc sacrifice! I knew I should have come to you for advice straight away! Where might I lay my hands on a couple of cheap slavering orcs quickly like – you know, off the books; bypassing quarantine and stuff? I don’t care about coat condition or pedigree or anything. They just have to be able to freeze the blood of small children causing the very mention of them in the future to result in immediate obedience to everything I say.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:06 pm
On their toes, definitely. Life is too short to spend it all dead serious. Develop their tolerance for ambiguity and their delight in the absurd.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:28 am
Mind you it may have been the ’sweetie-pie’ that caused the sceptical look. Certain words and phrases do not travel.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:51 am
On their toes for the win. Lucky suckers.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Keep them on their toes every time. It’s a jungle out there.
Try to keep tabs on how much you tell them of your own life. A friend told hers she was a virgin when she married, then, at a later date proudly said she had only slept with three people in her life. Jaw drop time.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:55 am
I’m told we have orcs in this country.
The father of my children once told them that, together, they didn’t have the brains of a rat.
Later said it was a compliment, experimenting as he was with clever rats at the time.
February 25th, 2009 at 2:23 am
Mary, my children are going to have toe-muscles that bulge like Barry Bond’s biceps!
Vince, baked goods don’t travel well, you’re right, there. I wish you’d reminded me of that before this particular sweetie-pie got car-sick all over the place.
fmc, once they’ve mastered staying on their toes, I have plans to teach them jab-jab-wham so when life slaps them around a little, as it’s bound to, they’ll be able to slap back. I think pugilism as a child-rearing philosophy could really take off.
Pat, Aaarrrrgghh! That’s excruciating! I’m certainly going to remember not to tell them I was a virgin when i got married!
ElizT, better not to have the brains of a clever rat than a dim rat, i suppose. I think.
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