So now you know what his first name isn't

Real conversation in the car ride home from school:

AB: Mommy, I don't really like my name. It's weird.
APL: It's not weird. It's popular in [other country], and your daddy and I think it's a great name.
AB: Well, I think it isn't very good.
APL: (sighing) Well, when you turn 18, you're free to change it legally.
AB: Good, I want to be called "Bullwinkle."
APL: You're going to change your legal name to Bullwinkle [LastName]?
AB: (laughing) Yes.
APL: Sounds good.

Insert your West Virginia jokes here*

Actual conversation with Angry Boy over dinner the other night:

AB: Mommy, you should have another baby. A little girl.
APL: (laughing) Ooooooh, no. It's just gonna be you and [Angry Linebacker]. No little girl.
AB: (laughing incredulously) But Mommy! I can't marry [Angry Linebacker], he's a boy!!!
APL: (confused pause) Uh... You think I need to have a little girl so you can marry her?
AB: (less sure now) Right.
APL: No, honey, brothers and sisters can't marry. You wouldn't be allowed to marry your sister.
AB: (laughing incredulously again) So, what, I'm supposed to marry a complete stranger?!

*No offense, Kenju.

P.S.: Seriously, y'alls, how much would I pay to see footage of Pat Summitt putting the beat down on a raccoon? Daaaaayum. (And to protect her dog, too--what a good woman.)

APL -- Now content-free!!!

Sorry, I have nothing to say. Here are some photos that AB took with the digital camera we got him for his birthday recently:

His toy dragon (one of them):


Angry Linebacker:


Portrait of the artist as a very young man:

The Women

There were three women I idolized growing up.

Singer/songwriter Bonnie Raitt. Aside from the singing, she apparently drank a lot and had a lot of sex, and I thought she was cool.

Playwright Wendy Wasserstein. She wrote witty dialogue, and I thought she was brilliant.

Actor/writer Carrie Fisher. She was Princess Leia, she married Paul Simon (albeit briefly) and she wrote like a combination of Dorothy Parker and that voice inside my head. I wanted to be her.

My mother took me to see Bonnie Raitt for both the Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw tours. And she took me to see Wendy Wasserstein at the Smithsonian.

And a couple of nights ago, she took me to see Carrie Fisher's show Wishful Drinking. (Kenju's blog, Imagine What I'm Leaving Out, which is on my blogroll, is named for a line in the show.) The show was great, hilarious. Some of the lines I recognized from her books, but they were funny all the same. I brought a few of my books on the off chance that she'd be out signing books after the show: (1) a respectable, clean hardback of Postcards From the Edge, (2) a dogeared, slightly marked up (read: underlined) paperback of Postcards, and (3) an embarrassingly underlined, total fangirl-wrecked paperback of Surrender the Pink. Alas, we did not see her come out right after the show. All in all, it's probably for the best. Although I managed to speak coherently to Wendy Wasserstein when I met her, I doubt I could've retained my composure in front of Carrie Fisher. I would've been all fawning and babbling and "My senior yearbook quote was from Postcards!" It would have been humiliating and she no doubt would have gotten a restraining order on me.

Both my boys are going to wind up living at home

Because I haven't taught them anything about money yet. I was just at Parent Hacks, and there are more than 100 comments on the "how do you teach your preschoolers about money?" post. Preschoolers? Craaaap. My oldest in in Kindergarten, and he just has a vague idea that stuff costs money. I've never even taught him the difference between quarters, dimes and nickels. The only thing he can tell you about the bank is that, at ours, he can get a lollipop OR a cookie. (I always take the cookie.)

I imagine our money management talks with the boys will occur much later. NSAH will sit the boys down and it'll go something like this:



[Job update: Still in the honeymoon period, I realize, but I LOVE it. Very exciting goings-on. Feel like I'm helping America, yadda yadda.]

"I like him more!" "No, I like him more!"

This blurb from the local police blotter exemplifies why I love living in the DC area:

August 28, 11:30 p.m. A husband and wife had a verbal and minor physical confrontation over loud talking during the Obama acceptance speech.

Little bullies

First day of Kindergarten didn't go well, and I'd love to hear from you all:

When I picked up AB, the first thing he told me... FIRST THING... was that recess didn't go well. I asked what he meant, and he said he came in last in all of the races and that BoyIDon'tLike won every time. I said it's OK and I explained that sometimes people are first and sometimes they are last.

AB: But [BoyIDon'tLike] won EVERY race. And I lost every time.
APL: Well, [BoyIDon'tLike] is older than you, and bigger than you. And it sounds like he's very fast. That must be something he's good at. What's something you're good at?

I figured I'd try to distract him, if that was all that was bothering him. I know losing sucks, but at some point (hopefully sooner rather than later) all kids need to learn that the world won't end if they lose something. I fear for kids out there whose parents try to protect them from that. (I recall reading a story that was about academic redshirting where a first-grade teacher said something like, "I've got seven-year-old kids who've never lost a board game before.")

But AB wasn't ready to be distracted from his day of woe, and he then complained that when he and BoyIDon'tLike were fighting, Precocious Girl was rooting for BoyIDon'tLike. Uh, what? So I tried VERY CALMLY and NONCHALANTLY to grill him (cross-examine him, really) to get the details of this supposed fight. I told him in no uncertain terms that if BoyIDon'tLike wants to pick a fight with AB, AB should just walk away.

But what I really want to do is tell BoyIDon'tLike to stay the hell away from my child. By the way, I'm calling him BoyIDon'tLike because this isn't our first issue with him. About a year ago, he and AB were briefly in the same class, and he would pick on AB then, too. And I want to say, yeah, you little punk, AB is almost one year younger than you. Big whoop. Now go bother someone else.

So, anyone else been in this position? I'm not worried about AB's safety right now (even despite his comment about "fighting"), so I'm not sure I'd want to raise it with the teacher at this point. And I'm not concerned that BoyIDon'tLike is acting jerky toward my kid (if indeed he is) because of some bullying at home. I've seen his mom at school, and she is very nice and polite, and NSAH says his dad seems mild-mannered and nerdish, too. I just have no idea if there's anything I should do, or if I should just sit back and see what develops. I'm leaning toward the latter.