PunkKittyDiddy

Attack of the Man-Eating Pony

That very first pony ride is one of those universally beloved rites of childhood.

Unless you're dealing with carnivorous ponies, it turns out.

Yesterday we took Z. to a petting zoo that offers pony rides.  Z. went on a pony ride.  Z. understandably reached the conclusion that pony rides are awesome.  She wanted to go AGAIN.  Immediately.  We postponed putting her right back on another pony because we wanted her to hang out with the pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, cow and so forth, and take in the full petting zoo experience. 

Besides, the pony rides cost extra. 

Ah, but Z. was still drawn to the cute ponies, and kept gravitating in their general direction.  She was petting the nose of one pony in particular when it suddenly grabbed her thumb and chomped down pretty hard.  It didn't seem to want to let go, either.

After it was extracted from the mouth of the carnivorous equine, Z.'s thumb was now cut and bleeding.  It was a surprising amount of blood for a pony-inflicted wound. 

In approaching the staff about this, we were just looking for a sink and some soap where we could wash the cut.  We know accidents happen, and animals bite sometimes.  We didn't approach the proprietor in an angry manner, an accusing manner or a highly litigious manner in which we threatened to take them for everything, including their last bale of hay and their very last flea on their very last chicken.  We weren't out for blood (unlike a certain pony).  We just asked if there was someplace where we could wash the bite. 

But the proprietor (after handing us a solitary wet wipe) says to us, in an incredulous manner, "What was her hand doing near the pony's mouth?"

She was so incredulous, I temporarily forgot about the sign out front that had lured us there in the first place.  The big ol' honkin' sign emblazoned with the words, "PETTING ZOO."  (Key word: petting.  Petting.  P-E-T-T-I-N-G).  We explained that the pony had taken a nip, and we know these things happen.  Now, I've seen the overzealous parents who want to behead anyone even indirectly responsible for a slight affront to their child.  We weren't being those parents.  We were being damn cool about the whole thing, I gotta say.  Whereas the proprietor was still relatively indignant.  We felt like we'd done something wrong.

We had another ticket for a pony ride, and frankly I wanted Z. to use it.  Because of all the childhood phobias she could possibly suffer from, I wasn't about to have her traumatized by ponies.  Clowns, sure.  Broccoli or creepy ice-cream-van-driving men, understandable.  But ponies?  Uh-uh.  No way.  Besides, there's that whole cliche about getting back on the horse that throws (or attempts to eat) you.  We were gonna nip this phobia in the bud.

With a little trepidation, she got back on another pony.  And she had a pretty good time.  Then the ride ended, and she got off the pony, and started crying some more about the other pony that tried to eat her.  I wanted to get her cut properly cleaned and put some ointment on it, anyway.  It seemed like a good time to leave.

On the drive home, I grew pretty indignant about how the proprietor was indignant about the incident.  And I had one of those "Hey, wait a minute...." dawning realizations.  Actually, several:

1. When we paid for admission to the place, they were eager to sell us those styrofoam cups filled with food for the animals.  And I guess we had this crazy notion that we ought to aim the food in the general direction of the animals' mouths.  Sure, we're city folk.  We don't deal with livestock on a daily basis.  Maybe farm animals operate differently than the domestic cat-and-dog kind we're familiar with.  Even so. Also, just a thought - if you don't want kids putting their hands near animals' mouths, maybe it's not such a good idea to sell food for the animals, and encourage the kids to, uh, feed them.
2. Z. wasn't poking, or prodding, or chasing, or shrieking at the pony.  We've raised her to be a good friend to animals.
3. For a place that caters to kids, it's a little strange that they didn't have a first aid kit on hand - or at least some band-aids and antibacterial ointment.  Or, you know.....a sink and some soap.
4. Would it have killed the proprietor to show a wee bit of sympathy?  Even if she felt we were in the wrong by letting Z. pet the pony at the (ahem) PETTING ZOO, it would have been nice for the lady to be....well....nicer.  "Say, is that bleeding wound OK now?  Poor thing," would have gone a long way toward mending fences.

The worst part is that Z. now seems slightly obsessed with the concept of man-eating ponies. She wanted to talk about them for the rest of the day yesterday - despite our attempts to make light of it.  When I put her to bed last night, she claimed she wasn't tired, and I tried to teach her about counting sheep. 

She wanted to know if the sheep were going to eat her. 

So - I now have on my hands a child who is fine with werewolves and vampires, but who is scared of ponies.

Go figure.

Adventures in Netflixing: "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans"

So tonight I wound up watching a portion of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans with my almost three-year-old daughter. 

Not on purpose, exactly.  It was just one of those moments of weakness that pops up along the path toward parental enlightenment (or maybe it's the path toward dog-tired submission.....I get those two states of being confused sometimes).  At any rate, it was one of those times when I have already said (for the fiftieth, or the seventieth, or the hundredth time):  "How many more times am I going to have to tell you to get back in bed?!!"

This eventually becomes a rhetorical question.  The Toddler has already done the math.  She likes her odds.  She knows I can't bring myself to say, "How many more times am I going to have to tell you to get back in bed?" for the fifty-first (or seventy-first, or one hundred and first) time.

So she walks into the living room right in the middle of a vampire versus lycan smackdown.  Her eyes get HUGE.  Not in a terrified way.  More like in a "You have been holding out on me......this is WAY better than Elmo!" way. 

And she asks, "What is this?"

I could have, and probably should have, told her, "I'm not going to tell you again......"

Instead I say, "It's werewolves versus vampires.  Level with me.  Which do you think is cooler?"

She pauses, watches a few more moments of footage, and appears to actually consider her response.  After a minute, she says, "Werewolves."

I ask her:  "Why?"  (Because kids say the damnest things.  It's true.)

And she says:  "Because the wolves go:  GARRRRRRRRGH!"

There are loads of debates going on in assorted horror fan chat rooms and message boards right now this very second, in which this exact same topic is being dissected by completely grown adults.........

......and I can assure you that, ultimately, her answer is no less legit than anything a person ten times her age can offer up.

True story.

Stuff I'd Rather Not Find On A Babysitter's Resume

An Open Letter To The Complete Strangers Whose Profiles I'm Now Trolling Through (In Nauseous Trepidation) On Various Babysitter Referral Websites:

Hey, I'm finally getting over my significant over-attachment issues!  This is a huge money-making opportunity for you.  Well, maybe not HUGE.  We don't get out much.  Once every couple of months would be a pretty accurate description.  Mostly we're OK with that.  BUT we're actually missing the Boosh tonight - my comedy heroes - when they've gone to the trouble of crossing an ocean and everything just to be in the same city as me.  Words cannot describe the level of disappointment we've sunk to over this.  Although "fathomless, disconsolate melancholy," or "abject, soul-searing agony" might come somewhat close.

See, we're apparently only one of a handful of parents on the planet who don't have grandparents living within a six hour commute.  And the few friends we know who also have kids in the greater L.A. area have tethered their sitters to a stake in the backyard, because it turns out that great babysitters (and by "great," I mostly mean "sane, without any priors") are a rare commodity. 

SO.  I stumbled across your profile on one of those babysitting websites upon which you introduce yourself to otherwise desperate parents.  Some of those sites offer background checks, at least.  That seems as good a criteria as any to start with.  Have you been to prison?  No?  Let's talk.

Now, I'll own up to the fact that I've possibly watched one too many episodes of Law & Order and CSI.  Which has taught me that even the seemingly calm, good-natured, mature and loving babysitter types inevitably have ties to Estonian child-slavery crime rings.  You also have to watch out for the quiet ones.  And the tall ones.  And the short ones.  And......

OK.  I could probably try harder to get over my rampant paranoia.  But meet me halfway, would you? There are a couple of things you could do to help put my mind at ease.  Here's what I'd rather NOT encounter in the profile or resume of a would-be babysitter:

• Glamour Shots:  I appreciate getting a visual on the person who is offering to keep my daughter safe.  Generally, a lack of prison ink will go a long way toward reassuring me about a candidate's viability.  On the other hand:  I don't really need to see you pouting suggestively, or displaying your (admittedly impressive) boob job, either.  Yes, this is Los Angeles.  Yes, there's the chance that you might get picked to babysit for some wealthy producer's kids and be discovered.  Am I being an uptight jerk here?  Maybe I'm overlooking the advantages of hiring a well-endowed sitter such as yourself.  I suppose if there's a flood - and I mean a massive, Biblical-scale one - those tits can be used as a flotation device, and my daughter can cling to you for life until I can commandeer a Coast Guard boat and make my way back to you guys.  In which case, I'll eat my words, and learn a Very Important Lesson about discriminating against large-breasted blonde au pairs.  Until then.......thanks, but I'm going to concentrate my efforts on perusing the profiles in which the less sexually-aggressive-looking women - you know, the ones who are cuddling babies and stuff - are featured.     
• Variations of Phrases Like "Thanks To The Economy, I Can't Find A Job Doing What I REALLY Want To Do, So Here I Am, Trying To Make The Best of Things!":  What?!  This wasn't your all-time number-one first choice of what you wanted to be when you grew up?  Join the club.  Now - put that piece of information in the vault, and seal it.  Or at least aim for a resume that is a tad less like a Real World confessional session.  When you are in a job interview (or attempting to land one), unless you're in a Monty Python sketch, you're probably not going to win anyone over by admitting you'd rather be a lion tamer. Although I'd like to grant you points for candor.  I really would.  Perhaps you aren't any worse than a person who will insist she loves kids - right before she locks them in the closet so she can watch The Bachelor uninterrupted.  Nor any worse than the person who insists that he or she loooooooves kids - and has the priors to prove it.  Which brings me to my third gripe.
• Going To The Other Extreme, And Insisting That You Love Kids SO Much, And That You Get "Really, REALLY Attached In A Short Amount of Time," and That Kids Are ALL You Think About!  Ever!:  Babysitter? Or Baby-Snatcher?  It's a fine line.  No, I shouldn't have watched that 1992 Lifetime movie starring Veronica Hamel.  But I did.  

Wow.  We're not leaving the house for another decade, apparently.

Never mind.

Signed,
A Bummed-Out Boosh Buff

The Toddler Who Ate San Fernando Valley

Is it normal for a nearly three-year-old girl to have the appetite of a power lifter or trucker?  Or is it just mine? 

This morning the Wee One washed down a six-egg omelette with....some macaroni and cheese.  It's the full trucker feeding frenzy experience, too.  The grunting sounds......the adversarial relationship with utensils........the appreciative belching.  (And I believe I've already addressed her penchant for tattoos.)

We are soooooo not getting in to the "good" preschool..........

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme........An Earplug! Or A Stiff Drink! Something!

I thought it would be a culturally beneficial thing - or at the very least, a benign thing - to introduce the Wee One to the musical stylings of ABBA.  Z. seems to be melodically inclined, and it's nice to broaden her musical horizons beyond "Itsy Bitsy Spider."  Besides, you can only listen to so many rounds of "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (Knees and Toes!)" before you consider having all of those items violently dismembered in an effort to distract yourself from the mental anguish of hearing fifty more rounds of that very song.  And, in the scheme of things, little nuggets of old-school pop perfection seem like a harmless enough progression after the alphabet song.

Er........ now that Z. is parading around everywhere singing, "Looking out for another, anyone will do!" with zeal at the top of her lungs, it seems slightly less innocuous than before.  Though it's still impressive that she has committed most of the ABBA oeuvre to memory before the tender age of three.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know.  I could have been teaching her Latin.)

Alas, toddlers have that thing about relentless repetition.  She is slowly killing my affinity for ABBA by demanding that Mamma Mia (the movie) be in constant rotation.  And worse, now she's gonna grow up expecting to partner up with someone as good-looking as Dominic Cooper who will express all of his emotions, via song, no less.  (This is at least a decade's worth of therapy in the making, right?)

Yet it's vaguely irresistible when Z. shouts, "Look, Mom!  It's the world's first girl-powered band!" as the "Super Trooper" scene queues up.  And she's newly excited by that.  For the hundredth-millionth time.

That's right.  The hundredth-millionth time.  Funny.  Prior to parenthood, I was usually hopped up on vodka whenever "Dancing Queen" would pipe through the sound system of whatever club I was in.  (I didn't go to the cool clubs, OK?)  Maybe that's why it always seemed like the greatest song in the world at the time.  Maybe I need to plunge myself back into a vodka-fueled stupor in order to salvage some appreciation for those singing Swedes whom I once held so near and dear to my heart....and whom I now do not wish to find within a thousand yards of either eardrum. 

My liver's well-being, or my sanity?  Tough call.

Some Babies Are More Bad-A$$ Than Others.....

Wee Zee's favorite accessory?  NOT elaborate, starburst-themed hair scrunchies.  Or a Hello Kitty handbag.  Or plastic Disney princess shoes encased in feather tufts and plastic jewels.  All of which are also in her arsenal, but.......the obvious suspects aren't topping her list of must-haves for summer fashion in all its bare-armed, summer sundress-ed glory.

Baby wants tatts.  Lots of 'em.  At her request, I started plying her with ink (well, the water-spawned temporary kind, anyway) this morning, but she was not content with one.  Or two.  Nooooo.  She wanted the whole sleeve experience.  And she started getting biker-chick ANGRY when I pointed out to her that we were running out of available body surfaces.

I am so proud.

This ties in with a broader theme of delinquency that has been emerging.  Last night we went out for Mexican food at one of our favorite local haunts, which is sparsely populated on weeknights.  Every time the waiter turned his back, Zee went and raided the candy stash that was kept on a shelf inside the (abandoned) hostess podium.   Sure, this might have been a good time to teach her about how stealing is wrong, but I was too busy canvasing the joint and keeping an eye out for the authorities waiter.  We made a good team. 

She split her haul with me, so at least she picked up a valuable lesson about sharing.

How Our Dog Was Freed From the Pesky Perturbance of Diaper Rash (But Not Tan Lines)

Yeah, so....yesterday, when I had my back turned, wee Zee decides to slather our new wonderdog Zack in diaper rash cream.  In her defense, she didn't realize it was diaper rash cream.  She had mistaken it for "sunscream."  Dog likes to sunbathe on the patio sometimes, and what with the temperatures rising ......well, you know.  Zee thought she was doing him a favor, I guess.

Alas, in my panic to remove the diaper rash cream from Zack's entire torso region (even though, in retrospect, were it indeed a toxic substance, pediatricians would probably be less encouraging about slathering it upon baby bottoms), I very stupidly neglected to take a picture of said spectacle.

(A footnote:  Zack still (foolishly?) follows Zee around everywhere, so the experience couldn't have been too traumatic for him.......)

But if you're wondering exactly how easily Desitin washes out of fur, the answer is:  "Not very."

Non-Operational Car = Non-Operational Brain? A Theory.

I.G.'s truck is in the shop.  Again.  And by "again," I mean in the "fourth time in three months" sense of the word.  We're being bilked by shifty-eyed con men, and they're not even smooth-talking shifty-eyed con men.  They leave his truck parked out on the curb in front of their shop for a week at a time, undisturbed.  In plain view.  On a major thoroughfare.  This time around, the vehicle has been almost wholly encased by a massive cobweb, and a small band of drifters seem to have taken up residence in the truck bed, yet, when I.G. calls them up to ferret out how the "repairs" are going, the "mechanics" insist they're working on it. 

How?  Telekinetically? 

I've lost track of the number of times it has been recommended to us that we just buy a new car already.  While I appreciate the well-meaning attempts to guide me through the linear thought process (old car = non-operational; new car = operational; operational car = shimmering, sparkling, rainbow-straddling unicorns enjoying happy fun time...YAY!  Ergo, replace old car with new car!  Problem solved!), it's not like I was unable to take that leap on my own.  It's just that it's easier to take such a leap with the accompanying income to acquire and insure said new car.

Alas, our ownership of a non-operational auto coincides with our ownership of one moderately-operational house.  Yup.  The fixer house needed more fixin'.  That is a whole other, separate anecdote - a story so far-reaching and convoluted, it requires its own zip code.  Sure, I could bore you with details of an old, also non-operational A/C system, and us living in a locale in which the sun squeezes out tangible streams of magma in lieu of rays during the summer months, but....... that's another senseless blurb for another senseless day.  Even though I'm not going anywhere, and have all the time in the world to tell you about it (from the confines of my now well-air-conditioned domicile).

Since at the moment I'm a home-based freelancer, and one placed in charge of a toddler with no firm social or academic obligations, it makes more sense for I.G. to have the one remaining operational vehicle.  For now - until I land more freelance clients, or an actual, real job - we're trying to suck it up and adjust to life as a one-auto household. 

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd the cabin fever has been ratcheted up a few notches around here. 

The thing is, I have a pretty high tolerance for social isolation.  Up until recently, I've not been the least bit concerned just because my coiffure is a tad Unibomber-y, and it hadn't felt that unusual that the only other human companionship I enjoy during the day is provided by a person who believes that canned ravioli is the height of both human culinary achievement and avant garde fashion.  And yet......sometimes when Z. starts rapidly swinging her head back and forth in order to see how many times she can smack herself in the face with her own braids, instead of pointing out to her that that's NOT sane behavior, I just laugh, because it's the funniest thing I've seen all day.  (OK, it's the only thing I've seen all day.)  And maybe it's a bit feral-Jodie-Foster-ish that wee Z. and I communicate almost solely via Boosh crimps.  Maybe outsiders would even find it a bit creepy that, when I ask Z. what she wants for lunch, and she says, "Future sailors, cyborg sea-dog, tell me what you dream of..............," I know that she really means, "Hot dogs," but......

Wait....where was I going with that?  Did I have a point?  Could I even make a point if I wanted to?

You see?  The part of my brain that used to facilitate linear thought process is suddenly looking a lot like I.G.'s truck, sitting on the side of the road, untouched, and with grim future prospects. 

Yikes.  I should get out of the house more.  Oh........ that's right.  I can't.  So, if my rants here continue to deteriorate and are soon lacking not only cohesion, but also discernible, identifiable, real words....

Phferrerminix!  Aspuhl nadot wesleyhead.  Juop quor?

(Crap.  Too late.)

A Triumph in Logical Thought Progression

So, did I mention we got a dog?  I'll have to tell you more about him later, but now must share one of our very first anecdotes, posthaste, before it escapes me.

So, wee Z. and Zack (the fabulous canine companion in question) were hanging out in the backyard this afternoon.  I'm trying to teach Z. to stay away from Zack while he's having a poop.  Mostly because I don't want her dancing it in, smearing it upon her person in some sort of cryptic, age-old toddler ritual, or otherwise interacting with said fecal matter in a manner that will result in it subsequently becoming inadvertent interior home decor.  Anyway......

So, as I go for the pooper scooper, I'm constantly yelling at Z.:  "Stay AWAY from the poop! I mean it!  Stay AWAY from the poop! Did you hear me?"

Today Z. was standing on the patio, and then suddenly and very obviously started straining to fill her diapers with poop.  Zack started to approach her, and Z. got reeeeeeally mad at him.  She started yelling:  "Zack!  Stay AWAY from the poop!  Did you hear me?  Stay AWAY from the poop!"

Maybe you had to be there, but I thought it was freakin' hilarious.  Why do I never seem to have a camcorder on hand for such exchanges?

Great Gobs of Gibberish

Yesterday wee Z. put up quite a fight - both verbal and physical - as I attempted to slather her with some SPF goodness before going outside to face a semi-blazing sun.  She is not a big fan of "sunscream," as she likes to call it. 

Then again, if it were actually called "sunscream," I would probably be a little afraid of it myself.