“If your kids fully know that you’re completely unwilling to follow through on your threats, there’s no way they’ll trust you or do what you ask. I know this with my head but my heart and my laziness sometimes have a hard time laying down the smack. I give too many “chances” and then get frustrated when they whine and beg for ‘one more chance, just one more chance.'”
Around Town
Grocery Store Casting
I saw a woman in the line at the grocery store today who was a dead ringer for Dame Judy Dench. It made sense to me because Dame Judy seems to pop up in all kinds of places. But then I thought, “Why would an older woman with a British accent be required to play ‘woman buying avocadoes at Safeway’?” No, they could have gotten anybody for that role. Heck, I’ve played it before.
Judy Dench should be kept available for playing roles like: persnickety housekeeper, or snobby aristocrat, or hard-bitten head of British intelligence, or The Queen.
Melting Down In the Grocery Store – A Cherished Milestone
It’s time to break out the die cuts and vibrating-uvula-shaped punches because Wanda just had her first full-scale grocery store melt down and I’d like to capture this special moment properly. [Read more at Parenting.com]
Calling All Mixed Martial Arts Fighters
They’ll train us!!!??? This awesome sign appeared yesterday at a major intersection just outside of town. I saw the guy placing it there. I’d say mid-twenties, shortish, dark hair, possibly hispanic. I wasn’t paying too much attention to him. Then today when we drove by and actually read the sign, I wished I had.
Why do they want mixed martial arts fighters? What kind of training do they provide? How big of a piece of their action would I get if I signed up? I am over 21 and I do have a yellow belt in Kenpo Karate. I think I will call and see what their deal is, in honor of POTUS Day tomorrow.
Wherein I Remember Just in Time That I am Not a Ninja
When you’re writing a novel, there’s a blurry line between fiction and reality. I infuse my story with aspects of places and characters I have known. My heroine has characteristics I possess or wish I possessed.
Some of my best plotting comes while I work out. I have a playlist of songs on my Zune I’ve chosen to help get me in the right mood to write and I listen to it and get pumped up, brainstorming ideas and visualizing scenes I plan to incorporate in later chapters.
This week I was out walking with Wanda in the stroller when I noticed a man walking ahead of me wearing a backpack. He seemed out of place in our neighborhood and I felt a strange vibe coming from him. He was going the way we were going but he was walking slightly slower than me. He kept stealing glances behind him, keeping me on his radar. He was slowing down and I was gaining on him. Was he letting me gain on him?
In a psychotic fit of imagination, I thought, “If he tries to pull anything funny when I pass him, he will be so surprised by the beat-down I will give him.” In my mind, I planned out the fight scene and just how thoroughly I would shut him down.
I continued on my way, getting closer, still feeling a strange vibe that something was going to go down when I caught up to him, still imagining how I would triumph.
About 30 feet from him, I had the sudden realization that I was not a character in my book, that I was a very real 32-year-old woman with a baby in a stroller and almost zero martial arts training. This realization was disappointing. I turned down a side street to avoid the confrontation.
Yeah. Maybe plotting should only be done when walking in a controlled environment.
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Wreck-A-Mend
Can anyone recommend a good Auto Body shop on the Eastside? I prefer something with a punny name.
We Know You’re Curious
The women’s restrooms at the Columbia Tower Club in Seattle are pretty wild, each stall containing a large window that looks down on the city below. I guess this has caused problems with the male visitors. Now I want to know what their restrooms look like. Do they even have restrooms? Maybe what the management mistook for curiosity or interest was just the look of a man truly desperate to use the facilities.
Please Don’t Ask About My Mini Watermelon
Please don’t ask me about my mini watermelon. It’s kind of personal, you know?
Dressing the Part
For our anniversary this December, I got Dan a bowtie, a real bowtie that you have to tie yourself and that you can pull lose at the end of the day and it hangs down on either side of your neck, a man’s bowtie.
It was my version of giving him anniversary jewelry. Plus I thought it would look hot on him. Plus it reminds me of the beginning sequence of Up, the sequence that makes every woman in America cry her brains out, where the couple grows old together and can never have kids and then (SPOILER ALERT!!) she dies and (DOUBLE SPOILER ALERT!!!) he ends up wearing bowties.
I thought it would be a sweet symbol of my wanting to grow old together with Dan and (SPOILER ALERT!!) eventually die, but mostly just grow old together and he would look all hot and distinguished and such while we were doing it.
He loved the tie but neither of us knew how to tie it and we didn’t take the time to get our YouTube on and figure it out until a couple of weeks ago.
It just so happens that on the Sunday we learned to tie it and he wore it for the first time, they announced in church that he would be the new choir director. He’d never worn a bowtie before and it looked suspiciously like he was wearing it as some sort of uniform for his new job. Little did everyone know, he was wearing it as some sort of uniform for romance.
Then this weekend Laylee and I walked down the hill from our house to buy groceries. I packed some reusable sacks in our little red wagon and we went on our merry way, holding hands and talking with very little carbon footprint.
On the way back up the hill, or as I like to call it, THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY, we got hot and sweaty. We got so hot and sweaty that my lungs nearly exploded and I had to restrain myself from showing Laylee how to dial 911 if I passed out on the side of the road. Let’s just say the wagon was a teensy bit heavier now that it contained 3 gallons of milk, several pounds of produce and a couple of loaves of bread.
I was stopped for one of our many rest breaks and I got to thinking about how the two of us must look, carting our groceries home from market, Laylee’s hair blowing uncombed behind her, our wagon full of organic milk and vegetables in their cloth sacks. “I’m totally playing the role of earth mother today.”
Then I looked down and noticed I was wearing a tie-dyed shirt, a tie-dyed shirt that I made myself with a group of neighbors under a tent outside last summer, all communal-like. The perfect touch.
Sometimes you dress the part without even thinking about it.
It Starts
I saw my breath when I took the kids to the bus this morning.
My name is Kathryn Thompson and I do not approve this message.