Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

world domination

Lego Batman – The Career Path

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Magoo recently told me that he wants to be Batman when he grows up. I can only assume he means Lego Batman because that’s the only version of the super hero he’s really been exposed to. He was real coy and shy about it. He said he wants to save people.

“When Bad Guys go into their houses at night, I’ll just go in there and say, ‘Wake up Bad Guys! I’m gonna take yeh to jail.’”

So, I guess the Bad Guys just go into people’s houses at night to find a place to sleep but since they are BGs and also trespassers, that earns them a trip to the joint.

I decided to use a teaching moment and explain that what I like about Batman is the fact that he doesn’t hurt good people and he doesn’t even kill bad people most of the time. He wants to help so he just ties the bad guys up and lets the police deal with them.

“Yeah,” Magoo replied looking thoughtful, “But I don’t even have a hat yet.”

Lesson learned.

We were sitting in the Safeway food court the other afternoon slamming some corn dogs when Magoo noticed some slightly-swarthy farmer-types sitting at a table next to us. He eyed them suspiciously.

“Are there any bad guys in Our City?” he asked, never taking his eyes off the farmers.

“Yeah,” I replied honestly, “There probably are.”

“No,” he said simply, “Bad Guys are only in Bad Guy Town.”

I might add that they are also made of Lego.

St. Patrick’s Day Non-Proliferation Treaty

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Dear Parents and Leprechauns of the World,
Stop the madness! Today I am begging you, BEGGING. YOU. To stop this senseless St. Patty’s escalation and let the rest of us get back to our old traditions of making green pancakes and wearing a button that says, “Kiss Me! I’m Irish!”

Why are you all making it so hard for me to live up to the expectations of Leprechaun Mania? So a couple of years ago they turned the milk green. Now they’re leaving gifts, candy, new green clothes, actual pots of GOLD for the children???? When will it end?

Laylee comes home and tells me about all the insane gifts being enjoyed by her other friends on this day of days and wonders why the Leprechauns hate our family so much. Maybe it’s because I refuse to create one more holiday of needless, money-wasting, gift-giving insanity. Maybe it’s because I’m heartless. (I think it’s the first reason.)

I mean, come on. Pretty soon we’re gonna be doing scavenger hunts on Flag day where you have the chance of finding A NEW CAR – compliments of the flag fairy or kids will be expecting money under their pillows left on President’s Day Eve by the ghosts of their favorite dead presidents. If Benjamin Franklin thinks you’ve been good this year, you get a hundred. (Okay Rebecca! He wasn’t a president but he’s on money and I’m Canadian so what’re you gonna do?)

COME ON! Join me today in a holiday non-proliferation agreement. Do we need a magical gift-bearing mascot for every blinking day of the year? What about the Solstice Gnome or the Green Earth Day Gomer? Make it stop. Only you can help prevent my daughter bawling her brains out because even though she left out a long note and a monetary offering to the leprechauns, they left her nothing but some green milk in the fridge and today sucks – it sucks and it “doesn’t even feel like St. Patrick’s Day.”

“Maybe we need to make our own magic,” I suggested.

She’s not buying it… because all the other kids are going to show up to school with heavy-laden pack mules bearing their bounteous leprechaun harvest and I’m the one who pays the price.

Love, Sincerely,
-Kathryn
The Grinch Who Stole St. Patrick’s Day and is Proud of It

The Librarian of the Apocalypse

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My house is filled with books. Like Elizabeth Bennet fictionally before me, I do not consider myself a “great reader.” I just love books. I love to buy them, check them out from the library, smell them, attempt to write them, touch them, look at them and occasionally dive in and read them. My house is filled with books.

My house is filled with books and there are over a hundred I have yet to read. I will find myself at a bookstore, online, at a garage sale, in the grocery store, staring at a book and it will pull me in with its tractor beam of knowledge. “I will be so much smarter, more interesting, happier, taller if I own that book,” my self says to myself. I then purchase the book and hold it and pet it and love it and put it on the shelf or in a pile by my bed where books go to die. My house is filled with books.

My house is filled with books and every so often I think it’s time to part ways with a few of them. Some have been sent to me to review and once I started to skim them, I realized that I was not interested in reading them. I don’t feel right selling a book that was sent to me for a review but went unreviewed because I did not think it would interest my readers. I don’t want to make money on that kind of booty so I keep the books. Some I think might be interesting to someone, somewhere, sometime and deep down in my heart I want to be the one to provide that perfect book to the person who wants it. In my pre-child bearing life I was a librarian. My house is filled with books.

My house is filled with books and I have truly convinced myself that I need to keep the collection going so that in post-apocalyptic Washington, my house can become the town library. I will sort and label and catalog all the books, even the ones I don’t like, because others on my street might like them. Should I keep the book on animal anatomy? Well. There’s a vet on my street and he might be post-apocalyptically interested in my animal anatomy book, especially if his books are all destroyed in the blast. My house is filled with books.

Today I made a decision.

Any book that I am only keeping around IN CASE I find myself in the position of being The Librarian of the Apocalypse is no longer welcome in my home. Today my house became filled with about 60 fewer books. When the apocalypse comes, you’d better have your own copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting because mine’s heading out the door. And also, what you can actually expect when you’re expecting during the apocalypse will probably not be covered in the edition I currently have on tap.

I Plan to Become a Millionaire

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This morning I was spending some sweet quality time with my squishable water-filled newborn. Sunlight was filtering in through the window of my cozy bedroom and I was sitting next to her on the bed. She looked so precious and perfect except for a bright red gash, newly carved into her pudgy cheek.

“Stop scratching yourself baby!” I urged, “I think we’re gonna have to start calling you Scar Face.”

I’ve filed her nails. We’ve tried the little mittens and the pjs with the fold-over sleeves on the ends. She gets the mittens off like a fat little cross-eyed Houdini with dark duck down for hair. She spends her life trying to punch through those fold-over sleeves. They are a great burden to her.

Looking at her latest injury, I thought of the perfect solution – plastic face shields like you can buy for your PDA but made for babies! I know, right? Best idea ever. They would stick onto the baby’s face with a light, dermatologist-tested adhesive, completely covering baby’s face except for the eyes, mouth and nostrils. They would be transparent so you could still see your baby’s face, although it would look a little like you were viewing it through a window that it was being smooshed up against. But who doesn’t think it’s cute when tiny little kids smoosh their faces up against windows? Tell me. Who?

Then the baby could scratch and scratch all she wanted without doing any damage. She’d be happy and ready for her next photo shoot at a moment’s notice.

If anyone’s interested in buying this idea for mass production and sale, please email me. Serious inquiries only.

¼ Cup Pea Chopstick Challenge

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Laylee’s been talking smack. She’s learned how to hold a chopstick recently. Now, I’m not saying she’s learned how to hold chopsticks or even A chopstick correctly. No. Not so much. She has opposable thumbs and she can use them along with her other phalanges to keep a chopstick from falling out of her hand.

She thinks this is really something. Every once in a while, she successfully stabs something with a chopstick and manages to zip it into her mouth before it falls off. She’s even been known to use both sticks together to awkwardly pick up a lump of rice and shovel it in.

Now normally, I’d say, “Cute. She’s learning,” and I’d encourage her and try to teach her better technique ala Mr. Miyagi. But when I offered to help her, she told me she’s already too good. Yep. She informed me that she’s better than me, she’s better than Dan, she’s better than that one Chinese guy who works at your local Chinese restaurant and patiently teaches lame white people how to maneuver a pair, while laughing at them on the inside. She slaughters that guy at chopsticks.

Finally, sick of Laylee getting all up in his grill, Dan challenged her to a chopstick-off. The challenge involved ¼ cup of peas for each of them, meticulously measured by an impartial judge named Me. We set a timer. They were off.

Did she remember that Dan served a mission in China Town in New York City? Did she remember that he can speak both Cantonese and Mandarin while using those chopsticks? Did she remember that he has a will of steel and refuses to lose to anyone, a trait which I find simultaneously sexy and frustrating?

He mopped the floor with her six-year-old butt, consuming peas at a rate of 4:1. She didn’t stand a chance. It’s not that she wasn’t focused. Because she was. She didn’t look to the left or to the right. She stared at the peas and even in her pathetic loss, I felt that she was a contender. And she held her head high.

“I will win one day. When he’s old, like as old as great great great grandpa who’s dead was, like right before he died? That’s when I’ll win.”

Okay. So she’s already planning to beat down the helpless 98-year-old vegetable with a pair of chopsticks? Nice.

Facebook Apps Are Scary

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I will come out right now and just say it – Facebook Apps freak me out. I just denied a request from my sister to say we were related on an app. I’ll shout it from the rooftops. I AM SISTERS WITH MEG! But I will not add the “family tree” application to my Facebook page. Not a bit. Her request was denied.

Do you want me to be one of your “best girls,” kill a zombie with you, throw a pumpkin at your neck, join a group to remove the mayor of Anaconda, MT from office, or take a quiz to show how similar we are so we can take our kindred spiritness to the next level? I’m sorry but I just can’t do it anymore.

I’ve done it a couple of times and then I’m always left wondering, “Is that app harvesting all of my personal information for nefarious purposes, the pure wicked evilness of which I cannot yet imagine?”

So now I just hit “deny” every time. It’s not because I don’t like you or think your purple roses to help fight toenail cancer aren’t noble and attractive, I just don’t want to be harvested by the aliens or whoever it is that creates all these apps in the first place.

Sorry mom. I’m still your daughter. I just won’t declare it in a Facebook app.

I also refuse to claim my 1,000,000 inheritance from my long lost Uncle in Sri Lanka. There’s just too much risk to these ventures. I’ve seen Dateline. I know.

Speed Walking Glory

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Best Parade EverDan supervised the kiddie festivities with mildly-annoyed resignation while I walked a 5K in the mud behind some of my running girlfriends. My joints are fairly bad and I once had a physical therapist tell me not to become a runner so I use that as an excuse to walk races with dignity. And I was chock full of dignity on Saturday, speed-walking along the gravel trail past the cows with my stretch pants rolled up to mid-calf to keep them out of the mud.

My original goal was to complete the 3 miles in less than an hour. By the time I finished my only goal was to not let the old lady with the cane cross the finish line before I did. She kept passing me as we walked along the trail and at first it stressed me out. Eventually I just had to face the fact that I was an amazing speed walking athlete and that if an old lady with a cane could pass me like that, then she was the freaking awesomest old lady with a cane who ever lived and thusly a worthy opponent. She was my nemesis and I could not let her win.

Mud EverywhereSo towards the end of the race I ran a bit until I was a safe distance ahead of her and then crossed the finish line with a time of 1 hour and 30 seconds. I was glad to beat my arch rival but a little frustrated that I couldn’t walk 3 miles in under an hour. And then I saw a friendly face at the sidelines so I walked over to chat. After a few minutes went by, someone mentioned that although I had crossed the finish line, my place in the race wouldn’t be recorded until I walked another hundred yards and turned in my number. So yeah. Several people had passed me at that point, including the OLWAC, who was probably laughing to herself knowing that our epic struggle had ended and she had gotten her revenge.

But at least I got a free t-shirt… and a free banana… and some free water… all included in the $25 entrance fee. And I found out later that the clock at the finish line had been set to time a race that had started 15 minutes earlier so I’d actually walked the run in about 45 minutes, smashing my original goal to tiny shards of glory.
Nancy Likes Bananas