Me:  Banana?

Ada:  Manamana.

Me:  Would you like a banana?

Ada:  Puppy manamana.

—–

Ada, pointing at a gallon jug of bubbles:  Ba?

Me:  Yes, bubbles.

Ada:  Ba ba?

Me:  Bub-bles.

Ada:  Bobbles.

Me:  Yes!!  Bubbles!

Ada:  Puppy bobbles?

Me:  No, just the regular kind.  Bubbles.

Ada:  Puppy bobbles?  Puppy bobbles?  Puppy?  Puppy?  Puppy!

—–

In bank drive-thru.

Teller:  Hello!

Me:  Hello!

Ada:  Hi puppy!

Teller:  There you go, anything else I can….

Ada:  PUPPY PUPPY PUPPY PUPPY MOMMY PUPPY PUUUPPPPPPY PUPPY PUPPY

Vehicle next to us:

So, I’ve started randomly yelling THANKS OBAMA whenever somebody complains.  As wingnuts on Facebook have taught me, it really does fit into any conversation.

—–

Driving a very cheap rental Impala down a 14% grade in Arizona.

GL:  Why can’t I shift into 1 or 2?  What the hell?

Me:  THANKS OBAMA.

GL:  Yeah.  He just HAD to save Chevrolet.

—–

After clearing security at Phoenix Sky Harbor.

Me: Freedom won today, GL. Freedom won.

GL: So which amendment was it that guaranteed your right to carry a duffle bag full of rocks onto an airplane? The 14th?

Me: THANKS OBAMA.

GL:  Before him, only men could travel with rocks.

Gate C4: ~stare~

—–

Seated on airplane.

GL:  This guy standing next to me?  He’s brushed his butt against my head three times now.

Me:  THANKS OBAMA.

—–

See?  It’s fun.  Try it.

—–

I had a couple of disappointments this week that left me sitting on my couch, Ted Mosbying about how it should be, how it’s supposed to be, all kinds of stupid things that are stupid and therefore not even worth detailing.  And because life is life, these little stupid bits of disappointment were bracketed by actual losses for my friends and family, so, you know.  Perspective.  I needed some.

Also, that was a pretty rough transition from Highwayman to a Ted Mosby reference.  Needed something more solid than a bunch of dashes.

—–

This week I also rolled my retirement account out of my former company’s plan and set up my own thing with my financial guy.  It took more paperwork to do this than it took to take Ada home from the hospital.  The whole process just felt incredibly grown-up and not me.  My retirement account is like the one thing I ever did right, responsible ‘n shit – I opened it when I was 18 and that feels like yesterday but turns out it was almost fourteen years ago.  As I signed form after form and went over the eleventy-billion options and slightly smaller subset of recommendations for what to do with my new accounts, I thought “I wonder if this guy knows that I have never once opened the envelope or read one of my statements.”

They will be emailed to me now.  I might even read them.  Like a grownass adult.

—–

I was sitting at the table with Ada this morning, eating breakfast, and she started sneezing.  I watched her closely and realized that she was trying to blow a kiss, right before she’d sneeze, every time.  She’d wrinkle up her little nose and clearly needed to sneeze, and thought that what she needed to do was blow a really really dramatic kiss.  So it was like MWWWAAAAH AAAHHH CHOO.  And then a giggle.

—–

For all of you reading in Reader right now, at least we have until July.

Take Your Daughter to Work Day is going to look awfully boring to her now that she’s experienced Take Your Friend’s Daughter to Work In Your Jet Day.

A couple of weeks ago, when I did the Peggy pictures for Ada’s 17th month, I had a lot of conflicted feelings because it was the first time Ada had ever shown emotion towards Peggy of any kind. She was ecstatic to see her, running around hugging her and waving her around in the air, screaming, jumping, playing. Peggy!

It was nearly impossible to get a photo.

Usually every month, I take Peggy down from her special secret lair seven feet off of the ground, we take some pictures, she gets put away again. I want Peggy to be available for high school graduation pictures, you see, so I’m terrified of her getting something spilled on her or eaten by the dog or whatnot. I’m too scared to let Peggy be loved. Until now, it wasn’t a problem, because Ada didn’t seem that interested. But putting Peggy away after the last batch of pictures absolutely broke my heart.

The fix? Stunt Peggy.

God freakin’ bless google image search and Amazon.com!

Stunt Peggy has been a pretty big hit. She has gotten almost as much lovin’ as Hugsy the Bedtime Penguin Pal, and I don’t even wince when she flies through the air or gets trampled or stuffed inside of other toys.

Bonus photo:

“Grandma and Grandpa did NOT just leave for the hockey game without me, did they?”

Friend:  How do you from Skylor ClayAnne (omg!!) to…. Mary Elizabeth?

Me:  You think they ever yelled MaClay or Mary up the stairs and the other one thought they were yelling for her?

Friend:  Yeah, especially because I can’t imagine a scenario in which parents who choose a name like MaClay are not totally hammered and slurring their speech.

Me:  Like my grandma always said, don’t procreate with rodeo queens.

——

I’m a slacker who missed two really good prompts.  Here are some better posts about advice, given, received, ignored or heeded.

I remember these things:

• We collected salamanders in a giant igloo cooler once.  A lot of them.  A lot.  
• He has a cast in every memory.  A broken arm or leg every summer.
• In 2nd grade, when he was in trouble in school, he lifted the lid of his desk and put his head inside of it and shut it.  I thought it was a pretty awesome response, actually.
• My house had a large hill in the backyard.  Our neighbors at the bottom of the hill had a split post wooden fence.  When you went sledding on the hill, you could zoom right under it and not get hit in the face with a board, as long as you didn’t sit up to check where you were.  Blaine always checked.
• We lived so close to the school that the street between our houses was the border of who was allowed to ride the school bus.  I could ride.  If Blaine wanted to ride, he had to pay.  (I don’t know, I don’t get it either, I think it was only that one school year because it was kind of a failure.)  I had to cross the street, to Blaine’s driveway, to get on the bus, because that’s the direction the bus drove up our street.  So most of the time, I walked with Blaine.
• There was a rabid skunk in the school yard one day and the janitor took off after it with a gun (‘Merica).  Blaine and I walked home that day and found the skunk, shot dead and left in my backyard.  He poked it with a stick while I hid in the house.
• We got into an argument about the Beach Boys song “Kokomo”.  I insisted it was a race track in Indiana, he argued it was a tropical island.  I wasn’t wrong, I’m just sayin’.

—–

Today’s prompt: Tell us about your childhood best friend. Are you still friends?

I let them go for a few weeks, until they had really angered everyone else around us, until they had gotten very comfortable in talking about people right in front of them. And then I turned around and responded to them in Oppish. Boy, did that ruin their fun.

I don’t remember exactly when my dad started teaching me Ob Language/Obbish. What I do know is that I was always better at it than my brother or my mother, and much like my 5th grade classmates, this made it all the more fun. I remember long car trips where my father and I would read interstate exit signs to each other in Obbish (particularly fun in Wisconsin) and my mom would get paranoid that we were talking about her.

I also haven’t ordered a chimichanga at a Mexican restaurant since 2005 without remembering my dad and I, several margaritas into the day, at a restaurant in Las Vegas trying to say chimichanga in Obbish.

I am fluent in English and Ob Language, I know what little I can remember from two years of high school honors Spanish, and if I had to pick a new language to learn today it would be French.

—–

Today’s prompt: What languages do you speak? What languages do you wish you spoke or intend to learn?

This post was written in response to a prompt from my writing group. More posts from this prompt here:

The February writing challenge contained more challenges than I expected – but in a very good way.  My group is just going to roll it over and keep going, as we can, the same no-rules-no-pressure group of lawless rebels that we are, so you’ll still see some posts written here with prompts.  But this is just some random life notes.

In the middle of February, I quit the job I’ve had for 13 years.  I replaced it with a couple of jobs (some part-time, some freelance, all much more flexible things) and I’ve never been happier.  And I’m not just saying that.  I wake up every morning grinning and filled with ideas and excited about going to an office filled with people who appreciate me and where I feel like I’m making a difference already, or signing into Twitter and teaching people how to connect with their customers and build their business in fun and different ways.  It’s been a fantastic move for me.  As terrifying as it was, and as unhappy as I was, there are times when I barely remember how it used to be because I’m just so damn happy now.

I used one of my workless days to hit the Chicago Auto Show with GL and my brother, and it was a blast.  Wags did a lot of research into which cars would be the best fit for his McDonald’s-dashboard-stain habit and pretend hot-rodding.

We gawked at all the completely unimaginable toys beyond the velvet ropes.

Visited the new Subarus.

And the new Ms.

Checked out all of the Jeep things (we didn’t understand, of course, because they were Jeep things).

And Wags shared his teaching plans with us on the bus on the way to find epic burgers.

Ada has been doing really great. She is more active and more verbal and more hyper than ever. She jumps around on furniture and tries to open doors and other things that big kids do that I was somehow not prepared to deal with. I mean, just look at this tiny adult.

Our Daytona 500 party at the race shop was a huge success. Something like 40 people were there, and we had a ton of fun. They put the bleachers up and everything – 6 years later and the bleachers are still holding strong under the weight of drunk NASCAR fans.

Ada accidentally gave her aunt Ammie a black eye with 4 laps to go, when she arched herself backwards trying to wiggle free. I’m going to have to put some kind of warning label on my kid. She’s so cute you never expect her to take out an eye.

Next week, I turn 32. The following weekend, I’ll be in Cedar Lake, WI for the midget show at the Sandbox and hope to see some racing friends there. Life is super great and that’s my little update. I hope you all are having a fantastic 2013 so far.

—–

Ham on a bun with butter:  My Grandpa Don called it funeral ham.  I didn’t notice until he said it, almost every funeral I’ve ever been to has been followed by a luncheon in a church basement with little ham sandwiches.  Including Grandpa Don’s.  At the most recent funeral, I half-cried, half-grinned when presented with funeral ham.  Then of course, the coffee and bars and the chatting with relatives you only see at funerals.  The trip to the cemetery for the burial, the peculiar feeling of high heels sinking into soggy grass.  My people die in the very early spring.  More coffee, more bars.  I swear, I have only ever eaten Seven Layer Bars at funerals.  I had a cup of coffee and a bar at a party a few weeks ago and I felt odd, until my brain adjusted, realized I wasn’t at a Lutheran funeral.  Uff da.

My latest read from the BHBC is Alex George’s A Good American.

This is the story of the Meisenheimer family, told by James, a third-generation American living in Beatrice, Missouri. It’s where his German grandparents—Frederick and Jette—found themselves after journeying across the turbulent Atlantic, fording the flood-swollen Mississippi, and being brought to a sudden halt by the broken water of the pregnant Jette.  A Good American tells of Jette’s dogged determination to feed a town sauerkraut and soul food; the loves and losses of her children, Joseph and Rosa; and the precocious voices of James and his brothers, sometimes raised in discord…sometimes in perfect harmony. But above all, A Good American is about the music in Frederick’s heart, a song that began as an aria, was jazzed by ragtime, and became an anthem of love for his adopted country that the family still hears to this day.

My reading list has been too short on multi-generational books that span decades. I didn’t realize that until A Good American. A number of my favorites fit this description and while it didn’t crack the top ten list or anything, I really enjoyed this book.

It’s kind of a miracle I made it through this book without eating sauerkraut though.  There were passages that made me miss my grandmothers and the food of my childhood so much it ached.  For more on that, check out this week’s discussion at BlogHer:  Gastronomic Mosaics and Culinary Roadmaps.

This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.