Classic quotes, Vol. 34

Here's a selection of quotes from the past few months, from my 4-year-old daughter M-, my 7-year-old son D-, and my infant son E-:

M- (excitedly, pointing to a Bud Light truck parked near us at the gas station): Daddy, I see the waaater botttttle truuuuuuck!

D- (drawled slyly, while doing his homework, as if idly asking about the weather, or some other not-remotely-related topic): Hey Dad, what's forrrrrrty-three plus thirty-six?

M- (using her Important Announcement voice at the dinner table): This hot dog BUN is too hot! (asked if she's sure) ...No... the thing that's inside it. (asked, "You mean the hot dog??") Yeah, the hot dog.

E- (whenever he deliberately pushes or drops things off his high chair, with the detached tone of an innocent bystander): Uh-oh.

M- (very matter-of-factly, about a song she made up): It's a very long song... I can't sing all the words in ONE day...

Me (after our shared laughter at my wife apparently stopped by quite so funny): No, no, I'm not being mean-- I'm laughing WITH you, as we both laugh at you!

M- (very excited, and distinctly unfazed, regarding the corpse of an unfortunate mouse, victim of our cats): We should save it, and when it turns to bones, I can study them! Because when I grow up, I want to be a vegetarian, and help animals!!

A conversation between M- and D-: You gotta watch out for those zombie ground squirrels

The following is part of a Monty-Python-esque conversation my 6-year-old son D- and 3-year-old daughter M- had today with their noses pressed against the patio doors, watching the frolicking of the new litter born to our thirteen-lined ground squirrel friends "Nibble Purple" and "Sunflower Stripehead".*

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of asking my wife aloud if a little thing near them in the grass was a dead sibling. The flies shortly confirmed this suspicion, and the kids then became intensely focused on this one instead of all the unbearably cute and very alive ones.

M- (trying desperately to find it): Is that the dead one?

D- (patiently): No, it's the one that's not moving.

M-: Is that one it? ...No, it's moving. ...Is that one it? No, it's moving, too.

D- (authoritatively): All the ones that are moving are dead.

M- (buying it, but just trying to make sure she has it straight): All the ones that are moving are dead?

D- (as if she misheard him): No, all the ones that are moving are NOT dead-- they're alive. All the ones that are NOT moving are dead.

M-: Oh.

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* Guess who named them.

A blessed St. Squarepants' Day be upon you

So here we are again on this holiday beloved by young children and alcoholics with equal vigor.

I just wanted to share that yesterday, my 4-year-old son D- asked my mom, "How come we all wear green on Spongebob Day?"

She had no idea where on Earth this came from, until I pointed out that even in my limited knowledge of the world of Spongebob Squarepants, I know that his best friend is named Patrick.

So in that distinct way that only a child's brain works, patching knowledge gaps with basically anything that springs to mind before moving on to the next thought, we have christened a new holiday.

I'm sure Nickelodeon will be as pleased as Hallmark about this development, but I just want to know how he even knows this fact to connect it, since he has only watched the show twice in his life, 2 years ago.

Maybe Nickelodeon had leprechauns put something insidious in those Spongebob Band-Aids of his...

A conversation with J-: Manic Monday

To give you a sense of how a quite-anxious J- and beyond-tired I passed the time while waiting for her to be wheeled into surgery two weeks ago, please enjoy the following conversation I later recorded on a notecard I just found in my coat pocket:

Me: You know, you'll be sleeping the whole time-- I'm extremely jealous.

J- (immediately, giving me a blank look): I'd trade places with you in a second.

Me: I would, too ... (makes Movie Magic sounds while wiggling fingers between us)

J-: (just blinks in confusion and resumes fretting)

Me: We'd better make sure not to touch any potentially magic inanimate objects at the same time. If we do, though, we definitely can't lose it, because I do not want to have a period. Or teach special ed.

J-: Whyever not?

Me: They both involve a lot more involuntary bleeding and discomfort than I'm willing to accept.

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Click to read past conversations I've posted with my wife J-, my 4-year-old son D-, and my nearly 2-year-old daughter M-.

Origami es mi amigo?

One recent evening, my wife J- was rigorously preparing for a lesson in origami, which is tied to a book her class has been reading, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. She's got to earn that big-time teacher's salary, with its infamous golden parachute and "consulting fees", somehow, right?

As she happily found out, gone are the dark days when you had to rely on boring old written steps to work magic with paper. No, folks, now we have the wonder of full-motion video at our fingertips 24 hours a day.

So now, whole fractions of an hour later, J- is a largely self-made expert in this ancient art. I know she would be more than happy to know I am passing on the lessons I learned by watching her study under her master sensei.

I've decided it's most appropriate for me to impart my learning in a format as cryptic as a 7-minute video called How to make an Origami Crane in five minutes.* So without further adieu, here are just a few of the pearls of wisdom that my wife was so gracious to hand down to me:

• Alright, I'm starting over.

• The f***???

• Wait, what??!? How??

• Fold this, a**hole! Slow down!!

• This... is not a crane.

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* In all fairness, I think the extra two minutes were the pumpkin pie breaks and requisite loud chewing, and since the value of those moments is unquestionable, I won't push my critiques any further for fear they might get edited out.

Book Review: I Went Walking

As a blogger with most of the word literary in my name, I think we can all agree I'm a logical choice to review books for the masses not so terminologically blessed. Whether or not you defy me by not readily agreeing with my assertion, a presumably large number of book publishers and authors' representatives do agree.

After recently becoming inundated with review copies of books*, I decided it was time to stop ignoring my cultural mandate. To this end, I figured I would begin by offering the world some unsolicited but obviously very welcome reviews.

Thus, I offer you my inaugural book review here at LiteralDan: Sue Williams' I Went Walking:

Now, if you're like me, you can't help but be struck by how horrendously grotesque the drawing of that child on the cover is, and you're too terrified to open the book itself.

I'm sure it's a very nice story.

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* One copy** is enough to validate this statement-- every flood has to start with a trickle, right?

** It was not this book... I'm still preparing to read the one I was sent. It's only been a month: it's still good, it's still good!

North Dakota on my mind

In a footnote yesterday, I suggested that I might compare* the U.S. state of North Dakota to a state of near-death.

You must understand that I say this based on the fact that it's the only U.S. state from which I haven't yet recorded a visit to this blog. Every other state has sent me anywhere from a handful to well over a thousand hits, and in fact half the states have visited at least a hundred times, along with 53 foreign countries, but between the two Dakotas, I'm holding steady at 1 visit in almost 8 months.

What gives, Dakotas?!? We must have some common interests or interpersonal connection that might trick you into coming here. Given that you have the highest percentage of churchgoing citizens in the U.S. (according to Wikipedia**) and your highest point is something called White Butte, I feel sure it's a temptation when I suggest you can stop by once in awhile to yell at me for being a "filthy, godless, America-hating, city-slicking, Obama-loving, liberal hippie!" Sound good? You know it does.

Actually, the most cutting of criticisms would be that this whole post is just a ploy to attract an unsuspecting hitchhiker or two wandering the Google turnpike from up Dakota way. This, however, is not remotely accurate, and furthermore: "Gov. John Hoeven", "Mt. Rushmore sucks", Sioux, departing, "Western Meadowlark", "flights out", Minot, "how much longer till I can leave", and "Who needs Mt. Rushmore, anyway... we're just not that showy".

Whatever you wanna say to me now, funny-talking folks, fire at will-- my comment board is open as always!

In closing, it is a distinct honor to disappoint you, my likely-incensed casual North Dakotan drop-ins. I'd love you to stay, but if you simply can't, I ask only that you leave a tiny piece of your Very Upper Midwest souls with my friends at Google Analytics on your way back out the door, so I can finally finish coloring in my cool map of the U.S. various shades of green***.

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* In case you were born/raised in North Dakota, or you have family there, or you'd just like to defend a physically large state containing only almost exactly 10 times the number of people as the minor Chicago suburb in which I live, please note the supremely artful and undeniably endearing hedging of my phrasing^ here. I'd appreciate it if instead of cursing at me, you just chuckled lovingly and suggested I go into politics. ...Okay, go ahead now.

** This is a disclaimer that must always accompany any fact taken from Wikipedia-- new rule.

*** They don't call it "Anal-ytics" for nothing!

^ Or alternatively, you could just admire my extensive and arguably excessive use of adverbs and gerunds.

Clutteropolis

You know you need to start shaping up in the housecleaning department when a 4-year-old who's as oblivious and messy as any other comes into the kitchen, where you've just loaded the dishwasher before clearing and wiping the counter (and everything!), and he suspiciously asks, "Why's it so clean in here??!"

Let me clarify that his threatened tone seemed to indicate this was somehow a well-established sign that we would be dropping him off at the orphanage later that afternoon.

You might be thinking, "But Dan, I thought you rode the OCD dragon, and thus would have a spotlessly clean house for us to be jealous of?" Well, I assure you that my current roommates douse themselves in dragon repellent daily, so I am easily outmatched versus the controlled amount of the Demon Power I allow to seep through the pressure valve. This is not a force to be easily unleashed and recaged, before you suggest that I let it out to play for a week or so and then go back onto a strict maintenance system.

When living alone or otherwise having complete control over a space, I just keep things in balance by reminding myself frequently that perfection is not possible-- my ideal living area would look pretty unremarkably normal to the untrained eye. I don't like to Clean with a capital C because things can get out of hand for me easily, so I prefer to just live neatly so I don't really ever have to clean.

Moving is not helpful for this, and neither is living with people who just aren't wired this way. Not only do we have stacks of junk and half-filled boxes distributed throughout our house, dating back to just over a year ago when we moved here, but we've actually moved backwards by adding to the collection.

When school ended in June, we were blessed with the arrival of everything that would normally fill a classroom serving 15 special-needs pre-teenagers and the two adults teaching them, plus all the many assorted things that had been disappearing from our house over the course of 9 months.

And the blindsiding left hook to go along with that uppercut is the puppy that followed the other stuff home-- crap from retiring teachers desperate to lighten their own loads* at the expense of anyone naive** enough to do it for them.

A minor sample of the kind of thing we're left with, in addition to the usual boxes of unnecessary toys, old magazines, and if-I-knew-what-was-in-them-I'd-be-obligated-to-put-it-all-away, is as follows:

• Boxes with 20 copies of the same questionably-useful books.
• An assortment of 30-year-old Tupperware bowls with no lids.
• Bags of old coffee mugs/potted plants (mold is a plant, right?).
• Milk crates filled with three-hole punches and other desk junk, inexplicably including four (yes, four) staplers of various shapes and sizes (always advisable with a toddler in the house).
• Half a box of "ladies" shaving cream samples, for the hairier children in school.
• A bunch of stupid signs and posters with cartoon characters trying to teach me things I already know.

All I can say is at least as far as this goes, I'm glad school has started again, because I've finally gotten most of this stuff out of the house now. However, the resulting empty boxes combined with our usual piles still blew the phone repairman's mind yesterday when I insisted to him that we had been living in this very same apartment with a working phone for over a year, give or take a couple of his company's screwups.

All I can say, upon reflection, is that somebody really needs to straighten things up around here. Whatever happened to my live-in maid service?


* Don't think for a second that I blame them for this, nor that J- won't be doing the same thing someday.

** Whenever the universe calls for naivete, you must know that we will be there. You can sleep soundly tonight and all nights hence, knowing that we will always answer this call and stumble foolishly into harm's way.

A conversation amongst all of us: St. Noodle

The following four-way conversation took place one day while J- was feeding M-, D- was milling about after lunch, and I was in the next room typing up some blog posts for the week I spent working.

J- (to M-, continuing some murmured back-and-forth they'd been having): Tell Daddy!

M- (barely intelligible through a mouthful): Ahluvoodoo!*

Me: I love you, too!

J- (in a teacher's gentle correcting voice): She said, "I love noodles."

Me: Oh.

D- (announcing reassuringly while approaching from the dining room): I love noodles, too, Dad.

Me: Okay... good to know.

It's touching moments like these that really make the whole parenting shebang feel worthwhile, you know?


* If you think she may actually be pulling the wool over both of our eyes (pun intended, in my case) and actually professing her love for voodoo, you're probably right. The other day she was hugging her teddy bear and I swear it was getting hard to breathe. This baby will be a Black Magic Woman if I ever met one.