Pass The Box Elder Please

Someone held the door for me at the gas station this morning. Nice way to start the day considering how often I seem to get smacked in the face by the oh so many self-absorbed assholes multi-tasking on their cell-phones these days. The worst is, at least those cell phone dips have an excuse. Stupidity really is better than plain old rudeness, and rudeness seems to be contagious lately.

I have a parent-teacher conference this afternoon. Parent-teacher conferences are a funny thing when your kid’s in elementary school. It’s like we all act so serious we've forgotten we’re talking about 'Goosebumps' and really advanced addition (or ehem, geometry), not college admissions. But they make me nervous anyway. I want to make a good impression on my kid's third grade teachers so she can go and tell all the other teachers that her student's mom is really cool. You know, so I have another two years where at least someone admires me.

Anyone check the news? Texas and Ohio are either going to make my day or ruin it. Wait, that's tomorrow. Ignore me.


Ode of the day: To Box Elders

I’m pretty sure now that Box Elders are an alien species. Little science-bots or observers. They’re very calm, terribly hard to crush and don’t seem to mind being flicked a couple feet. Beat them up and they come back just the same, sort of clueless. And Box Elders sure love humans. You can always count on finding a couple hanging around just inches from whatever warm body happens to be in the vicinity; staring, furiously wiggling their little antennae like they’re reciting an alien reciting Ulysses. Oh, and they have no compunctions about walking all over you. Creepy.

The little black and orange flappers are everywhere. I went to pee earlier and had to share the bathroom with a little guy who seemed to be having issues stabbing the porcelain tile on the wall with the stabby little hairs on his feet. He couldn’t stabilize, and kept sliding down a tiny bit for every half-inch he made it up the wall. And he kept wiggling his feelers at me, like he wanted my help or something. Really, it’s bad enough I have to share the bathroom with my two male children.

I’ve flicked them off my arm in bed. Out of my green tea. Off my dark chocolate. They seem to like all the same things. Um, maybe they’re studying me.