Nobody Knows Anything

Now even chocolate milk is good for you. Hear that, Rob and Nina: chug! chug!

The big highlight of the past few days has been the Endless Sixth Birthday Celebration of someone who can’t possibly be 6, because didn’t I just take her home from the hospital?

(I could not get her to smile for a photo. I took lots of solo pictures of her, and in every one she looks more solemn than this. Most of the time she has a smile as bright as the sun on her, but apparently not for pictures Mommy takes.)

Sophia is 6 now, as she will be happy to tell you. In fact, her birthday has been the main subject of her conversation for the past two weeks. (Didn’t I used to have a little girl who’d run away at the sound of “Happy Birthday” being sung? Those days: over.) She’s wearing one of her new dresses to school today (”So that everyone can see how pretty I am”).

We had Birthday Week around here, because Sophia had last week off from school (and for some reason I hadn’t written Winter Break down on my calendar…errrrgggg), so we hung out together and did lots of things, including lots of things she wanted to do. On Friday, her actual birthday, I asked what she wanted for dinner, provided it wasn’t Chicken Dinosaurs, because that’s not a food for a family dinner. She announced she wanted roasted chicken legs, baked potatoes, and asparagus. She didn’t eat much of it, but I was happy that she knows enough about our dinner requirements to ask for those things. She didn’t even seem to mind that I didn’t have cake for her for after dinner.

Which was fine, because on Saturday we had her birthday party at Bamboola (an indoor playground place, with an arcade, a kid-habitrail, dress-up area, make-up area, water play area) with friends from Kindergarten and friends from preschool, and she seemed to have a complete blast. Periodically one of the kids would stop by me and ask, “Where’s Sophia?” I’d shrug and say, “I think she went thataway.” We had pizza and ice cream cake and everyone seemed to go home very happy.

Today is her party at school, so in preparation I made cupcakes — yes, from scratch. Sophia helped me. Well, she helped me a) taste the cupcakes, b) frost the cupcakes, and, oh yes, c) taste the frosting. In pretty much that order too.

I wanted to try out my new cake decorating kit, which is why the chocolate frosting is in a swirl, whereas the pink frosting has been ladled on. I made pink, purple, and blue frosting for her to decorate with, and before I let her loose with the cupcakes I wrapped her in my cooking apron. I expected she’d slather each cupcake with tons of frosting (see “frosting: tasting of,” above), but instead she’d put a reasonable amount on a cupcake and pronounce it done. She was so excited that her friends were going to get to have her cupcakes at school.

She’s writing (a lot — I gave her her own journal and she writes sentences in it), she’s painting, she can’t wait for us to assemble her birthday bike so she can ride around. (The front fork of the bike we bought at Target is too narrow, so I couldn’t put it together. We have to take the whole thing back. I said, “Hon, can we go to REI and buy one that’s already made?”) Most of the time she’s a great friend and playmate to her little brother, who thinks the world of her. Her kindergarten teacher says that not only is she very bright, but she’s one of the nicest kids in the class, friends with everyone. In fact, the teacher often pairs her with one of the kids who’s the most difficult to get along with, because Sophia deals with him just fine.

Currently, when she grows up, she wants to be a teacher and a mommy, and if you don’t think I’m seriously flattered by that, boy, do you have a lot to learn.

Six! My little girl is six! The years are so short. There are definitely times I wish my kids had a dial, so I could dial them back to when they were just little babies, to experience that once again, but since I can’t, I’m extraordinarily happy with the kids I have today. Even if one of them won’t smile for the camera.

You can view one guy’s idea of how things should work between the missus and him at the Smoking Gun. It has to be read to be believed.

I’m not sure which is more bizarre: that someone not only thought this up but sat down, wrote it, and then handed it to his wife to sign (evidently she didn’t), or that he managed to get someone to marry him in the first place.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m addicted to RSS feeds now — if a blog doesn’t have a feed, I don’t read it. I currently have something like 320+ feed subscriptions, and I’m trying to get it under control, but it’s such a great way to keep up with blogs.

One great side benefit is that, with NetNewsWire at any rate, I can see editing changes between versions of the posts. It’s interesting (to me, at any rate, the queen of minutiae) to see how some writers go back and reword their entries. I was just reading Glenn Greenwald (the go-to guy for info about the NSA Scandal) and his entry “Erasing the Cold War from history” had several edits. The substance of the post didn’t change, just the phraseology. It’s neat to see the editing part of the writing process — a big, important part that’s not taught nearly enough — in action.

Let me show you a short example:

But beyond the these self-evident factual errors in Captain Ed’s post argument is a more fundamental and pervasive falsehood which is being peddled with increasing frequency to justify the Administration’s law-breaking. It is the notion that restraints on the Executive Branch generally, such as those mandated by FISA or ones prohibiting the incarceration of Americans without due process, are now obsolete because they were the by-product of some sort of peaceful, enemy-less utopia enemy-less, utopian era which we no longer enjoy.

exists.

It’s a little hard to read, but if I found it too distracting I could always open the entry in Safari or something.

Of course, sometimes this side effect of RSS feeds can be hilarious, when you see giant swatches of a post that have been crossed out, complete with secret information that obviously the writer thought twice about sharing with the world. In case you didn’t know? Caught by an RSS feed once, caught forever.

Daryl tagged me with the Four Things meme that I’ve seen around. So here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had:

1. Shill in a magic act
2. Book shelver at the Stanford Graduate School of Business
3. Technical writer
4. TV show intern

Four movies I can watch over and over again:

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark
2. Casablanca
3. Amadeus
4. The Wizard of Oz

(Wow. This was harder than I’d thought it would be. I had to sit here for a while and really think about what movies I wouldn’t mind watching over and over again. I don’t actually watch movies over and over again, though, except for movies that the kids want to see. And currently one of those is the Wizard of Oz, which I haven’t minded rewatching a few times.)

Four places I’ve lived:

1. West Hartford, CT.
2. San Francisco, CA.
3. Mountain View, CA.
4. Sherman Oaks, CA.

(You may notice a trend there…)

Four TV Shows I love:

1. Battlestar Galactica
2. Arrested Development (alas)
3. The Backyardigans (yup, still love it)
4. Yikes. That I really love? Okay, I’ll go with Scrubs, even though I only watch it by accident, when Darin does

Four Places I’ve vacationed:

1. Cozumel, Mexico
2. Ireland
3. Israel
4. Poland

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. Creme brulée French toast
2. Oatmeal
3. Lamb chops. Mmm, lamb chops.
4. Any sweet petite treat from Fleur de Cocoa. Or Sweet Lady Jane (sigh).

Four blogs that I visit daily:

1. Firedoglake
2. Digby
3. Miss Snark
4. Born Again Gym Bunny

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Paris
2. New York
3. Grand Cayman
4. Bonaire

(Hm. This is a toughie, because it is “right now” as this very minute? Or in general? Because I don’t want to be in NYC if, say, there’s a freaking blizzard going on. And Grand Cayman during hurricane season? Not so much.)

Four bloggers I am tagging:

1. Pooks
2. Sage
3. Tamar
4. Toni

(Alphabetical order, in case you’re wondering.)

No particular reason. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t been posting: no particular reason.

I’ve been running a lot. I want to start running even more — get these ol’ legs in shape for a marathon. I went running on Saturday with Nina at the PG&E Trail at Rancho, and I did loads better than I did last time. For instance: there was no bee stinging me in the head this time. Yay, team. All that climbing really had an impact on my legs, though: yowza. Keep doing the PG&E Trail, and I’m going to have the best butt in Santa Clara County.

Sophia has been sick. For a couple of months now she’s been complaining of stomach pains. But there are no other symptoms, like vomiting or, er, anything else, and she’s not using it to get out of anything, except possibly eating dinner, and that’s SOP anyhow. She gets up, groans, goes to school.

Darin’s car went in for a tune-up. They found a few things wrong with it. Guess how much it cost. No, more. No, more than that. Seriously. My first reaction was: “We have to buy a new car, right?” Right after our Christmas purchase of a new TV (a flat-screen LCD thing). Augh.

The weather has been beautiful. I realize everyone in the Northeast wishes I would crawl into a hole and shut up right about now, but it’s been fantastic here the past few days: mid-70s (or higher), sunny, mild. I’ve taken the kids to the park because these were clearly park days. In February. And you wonder why I love living in California?

And now I see Daryl has flung a meme my way. Off to work on a second post!

Yesterday I found several pieces of writing Sophia had made on the kitchen table. One read, “Mr. Sure is going to a in inportit meting.” Another had a picture of a rocket ship with the legend “rokit ship.”

She hadn’t asked anyone for help on these. She’d just written them, sounding out the words. Evidently “Mr. Sure” is supposed to be “Mr. Star,” which is kind of weird because on the paper with the rocket ship she’s spelled “star” correctly several times. And “a in” is her spelling of “an.” And I have no idea what this important meeting is.

Still: I’m just amazed.

I know, I know: this is what kids are supposed to learn. Those are generic kids. This kid hasn’t done this before. She’s gone from knowing how to read a few words to this in a few short months.

She loves writing and drawing. She leaves writing and pictures all over the place. My supply of printing paper is dwindling rapidly. I bought her some Crayola washable markers and she started making elaborate pictures. It’s funny to watch how her symbols for various things change: hair on girls is now long lines on both sides, even for girls like herself who have short hair.

Didn’t I just bring her home from the hospital?

Because real life is so much weirder than anything you can dream up:

TMZ has learned, director Lee Tamahori was scheduled to be arraigned today, on charges that he allegedly solicited an undercover cop while dressed in drag.

Tamahori, whose directing credits include, ‘Die Another Day,’ ‘XXX: State of the Union,’ ‘Along Came a Spider’ and ‘The Sopranos,’ was arrested in Hollywood on January 8, 2006. According to law enforcement, Tamahori was allegedly dressed in drag, approached an undercover officer who was in his car, entered the vehicle and offered to perform a sex act for money.

Really, the only reaction you can have to this is: WTF? If you read something like this in a Hollywood novel, you’d say, “Oh, what crap, no fairly successful director is going to do something like that. Go down to Hollywood Boulevard and pick up a hooker, sure. But this?” And you’d throw the book across the room.

(I once tried to think up the most shocking thing I could imagine a star doing, and I came up with “brother and sister celebrities openly living as a couple.” Then Angelina Jolie macks with her brother at the Oscars and I was like, Day-um.)

(Via Defamer.)