transvestite_rabbit's Xanga

THE ARTIST AS A CHILD

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:03:33 GMT

It's a techie week for Tigger. She's taking a Digital Photography class in the mornings, followed by a Web Design class in the afternoons. I can't help but notice that those options were not available to ME when I was a child. Harrumph.

Some of her photographic efforts:

What is this? I do not know.

Yes, there is a fish in the sidewalk. I do not know why.

A study in perspective. Or a wry comment on religion. Or simple
astonishment at the unexpected appearance of the sun in Seattle.

Penguin. Not his natural habitat.

Little green dude in Tigger's size 8(!) crocs.

Self portrait.

SWINGIN' SUMMER EVE

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:55:40 GMT

The suburb I live in throws a party in the park near my house every summer, complete with live music, inflatable bouncers, a used book sale, and firefighters selling hot dogs. Tonight was the night, and I loved this event, as I always do, in all its hokey glory.

This year's party featured a disco revival band. Don't laugh. They had Boogie Fever, and they were Stayin' Alive.

The whole neighborhood turned out, including a group of developmentally disabled men who Partied Like It's 1999. It gave me a sweet community feeling to see those guys out in Funky Town dancing with the boomers, with toddlers and dogs running underfoot. They had Night Fever! And who doesn't like to bend their arms to make YMCA? Not even a Macho Man.

I brought my girls, of course, because We Are Family. I bought them each an "unlimited ride" wrist band, so they could go down the giant inflatable slide All Night Long. They had to wait a long time to get into the bouncer, though, because the ride operator let the toddlers go first. She was a Super Freak.

Next year I'll try to remember to bring a lawn chair in which to relax while the kids play, because That's the Way (Uh Huh Uh Huh) I Like It.

Now get your arms up, people. You KNOW you want to. It's great exercise--you want to be a Brick House, don't you? Make those letters like Greased Lightning. And while you're at it, Play That Funky Music, White Boy.

KIDZ BLOGZ

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:10:42 GMT

Many of you have asked when my 11-year-old, who indeed has a great deal to say, will start a blog of her own. Some of you I suspect are motivated by voyeuristic curiosity. What will Tigger say about TR? Is she really what she claims to be? Will there be Mommy Dearest-like revelations?

Well you’ll just have to wait for “the rest of the story.” Tigger is not allowed to blog yet.

It’s not that I fear the revelations. Well, maybe I do, but not a lot. I’m banning blogging for the time being for two reasons:

Generally speaking, social networking sites like this one here set a minimum age of 13. Tigger is only 11, and we wouldn’t want to break the rules, now would we?
The internet is chock-full, crawling with, indeed infested by weird nasty creepy people. Present company excepted, of course. (Side note: MS Word does not want me to use “excepted” there. It would prefer that I used “accepted.” But that’s not what I mean to say, is it? Stupid MS Word.)

I do not want my daughter having conversations via comments or any other method with said weird nasty creepy people. Even though, as she indignantly points out, she knows not to give out any personal information and not to trust anything anyone says online, she just doesn’t need to be there waiting to be contacted by someone weird, nasty and creepy. It’s bad enough she watches youtube videos. God knows what depravity she’s encountering there.

So, sorry peeps, you’ll have to wait a couple more years to hear Tigger’s version of events in the Rabbit house. Though I may offer her a guest column sometime. If I do, and you happen to be one of the weird nasty creepy ones, please don’t comment.

I’ve been having trouble with endings lately. I can’t find the ribbon and bow with which to wrap up the post. So envision your monitor with a nice wide silk jobbie in the color of your choice and tied with a real bow, not one of those fake ones with the sticky stuff on the back. Thank you.

UPDATE ON MY SUPER COOL TWEEN
Warning: if you don't have kids of your own you might find this story schmaltzy, but that's just too damn bad.

While I'm on the subject of kids growing up and gaining more freedom, check this out. Just yesterday Tig was granted the privilege of walking up to a local shopping strip (less than a mile away) all by herself. To earn it she had to prove to me that she could get there and back without any assistance (I trailed behind her), which she did without a hitch.

As I expected, she elected to exercise her right today. "Mom, can I go up to Bartell's and get a soda? Yes I have money, and yes I know it counts as dessert," she handily countered any objection I might raise.

"Ok," I agreed. "Go!"

I tried not to look out the window anxiously too often.

Forty-five minutes later she returned with a Dr. Pepper and a big grin. Unbeknownst to me, she had something in her pocket too. She disappeared for a few minutes, then found me in the kitchen and handed me an envelope.

She'd bought a thank you card along with her soda. Inside she wrote:

Dear Mom,
Thank you for giving me the freedom to walk places on my own. Not only that, but you did it well--by keeping me safe by making sure I knew the way, but not being overprotective.

Thank You!

(heart), Tigger

Now if that don't make your hearts go pitter-pat, you are made of stone, people.

THE MONSTER IN THE CLOSET

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:04:08 GMT

My home office contains a large closet, and like large closets everywhere, it is stuffed full of god-knows-what. And so, to set a good example for the other members of my family (read that: to avoid being a big ole hypocrite who makes other people clean up their rooms without dealing with my own mess), I set out to boogie that bad boy.

I’ve done two of ten shelves so far. Things I’ve found on those two shelves:

Items purchased for my children to be used as entertainment on long car trips, stashed in the closet so long they are now too babyish for my 11 and 7 year old kids.
Remnants of my youth, like a rainbow bandana covered with buttons sporting funny, stupid, or political remarks, such as:

Ø Bread Not Bombs

Ø Stop Staring at My Button

Ø God is Coming, and is She Pissed

Etc.

Boxes and boxes of check duplicates, going back a decade. (I don’t use those anymore. Never, ever use check dupes. What do you need them for? They make baby check dupes in the closet when you’re not looking. And when you boogie your closet you have the shred the damn things, because they have account numbers and whatnot on them. No dupes!)
Snapshots, like 4,000 of them, stuffed into boxes. The photos were never sorted, not even to remove the “what the heck is that” and the “thumb in front of the lens” pics. I put the boxes back in the closet because I am not sorting through 4,000 pictures. Not this year.
Old files on 3.5 inch floppy disks, going back as far as college. Are there any computers that use those disks anymore?
19 cent stamps. Anyone remember when 19 cents was enough to mail a letter? Me neither.
My New York State driver’s license, circa mid 1980’s.
Paper coin rollers, which inspired me to package up some of the loose change on my desk. People, I had EXACTLY one roll's worth ($10) of quarters. How often does that happen?

Didn’t actually find any monsters. Yet.

WHAT'S TR DOING?

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:52:55 GMT

Location: The Green Bean
Consuming: coffee, duh
Working on: Self-guided lessons on Adobe Photoshop
Because: If my graphic design abilities matched my mad writing chops, I could take over the world
Odds of success: shut up

NEW NEIGHBOR

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:57:32 GMT

"Mom," said Little Bit, "I think I saw a skunk in the front yard."

I doubted that. Skunks aren't very common around here. But raccoons are. And possums.

She led me to the front porch and said she'd seen a face pop up out of the gap between the concrete steps and the house. "And it definitely wasn't a cat face," she insisted.

Later I was standing on said porch, escaping the toxic fumes produced by the self-cleaning oven, when the not-cat-face made another appearance. Pointy nose, stripy fur, dark eye rings...yep, 'coon.

"Hello Ferdinand," I said. (I don't know, it just looked like a Ferdinand.)

Cute as they are, raccoons make lousy house guests. Ferdinand is not welcome to live under the porch. My ever-resourceful husband set out to remove him.

He rummaged about in the garage and pulled out the party fog machine. (What, you don't have a party fog machine? Pity you.) He juiced it up and ran a tube from the machine into the hole under the porch. Ferdinand responded with a vicious, snarling attack upon the tube. TGeek poured smoke into the hole while I perched in the kitchen window and watched for emerging animal, but Ferd stayed put. Score one for the 'coon.

So I called Critter Control this morning. At this time of year, the nice lady told me, a raccoon holed up under a porch is almost certainly a female with babies. We smoked babies! Heartless, and alas, ineffective.

The critter dude will come out on Friday and trap the 'coons. In the meantime, Ferdinand and I will have to live with each other. Maybe I should charge her rent.

HOW ABJECT IS THY POVERTY

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 01:51:07 GMT

Every time I read a novel set in the southeastern United States, I feel like I’m reading an anthropology textbook. Those people live in the same country I do, but they may as well live on another planet.

In The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Joshilyn Jackson introduces us to DeLop, Alabama, a mining town without a working mine, in which the shacks have big holes in the roof and generations of filthy children spend their days wiping their snotty noses on their raggedy shirts and don’t much go to school, and everyone talks like they're on the Jerry Springer show, only far less cogently. Jackson explains in the acknowledgements that the name is fictional but the town is real.

Is it? Can someone who lives down yonder verify the existence of such places? Because there’s just nothing like that here in Latte Land. For the most part, poor children in Seattle attend public schools, where they receive free breakfast and lunch, and even if they have a deadbeat parent who is passed out drunk or stoned on the couch when they get home, there’s a relatively intact roof over them.

There is a homeless population, of course, as there is in any big city. But the problem is not ignored, as is Jackson’s DeLop. Indeed, endless, caterwauling soul searching about homelessness goes on everywhere, from the government to the do-gooder non-profits to the columnists in the Times. The problem seems quite intractable, but the population is transient, by definition. Quite unlike the trapped-forever residents of DeLop.

It’s not that I really doubt its existence. I’ve seen pictures of rural southern poverty. But somehow in my head that environment exists in the past, before the New Deal and the Great Society and Bobby Kennedy. How could the richest nation in the world have a DeLop, Alabama? And yet, apparently, it does.

HELLO TIGGER

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:36:14 GMT

Now that the water's been mopped out of the basement, my husband has turned his attention to other matters. And Holy Heartstopper, Batman, he posted! On a topic near and dear to his heart: booze. And he might even qualify for inclusion in the Xanga Ladies' Auxiliary Recipe Exchange, except for that not being a lady part. Well, he can borrow my chick ID if necessary.

In other news, my 11-year-old, who doesn't understand why I nicknamed her "Tigger" even though she's Tiggery as all get out, has been reading this here blog. That means I can no longer use, shall we say, colorful language, because there's a jar on the counter where she collects fines for adult verbal malfeasance. She tries to, anyway. The major malfeasor in the house refuses to pay. (No, "malfeasor" is not a real word, but then neither is "felicify," and Tigger had to memorize that in school, so I can malfease if I want to.)

Tig thinks my blog is hysterically funny. This could be because
a. It IS hysterically funny
b. She's weird
c. She's humoring her old mom
d. Let's just go with a., shall we?

KABOOM!

Did you hear that? That was a firework of some sort, exploding somewhere in my neighborhood, with more to come I'm sure. Yes, unauthorized fireworks being set off by non-professionals is strictly illegal around here, and yet, KABOOM, til all hours of the night. Malfeasance run amok!

Well, have an excellent Independence Day, internet friends, and please don't set off any f^&%$ fireworks near my house. There may be fines.

HOW TO FLOOD A BASEMENT ON A DRY DAY

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:39:21 GMT

Be a man.
Go to the toy store with a child and a credit card.
Ignore your wife's exclamations of "have you lost your freaking mind," etc. Wives are always saying stuff like that.
Ignore the distinct not-levelness of the back yard.
Set up the Easy Set.
Fill with hundreds if not thousands of gallons of water.
Allow the child to get in the pool.
Watch the low side of the pool collapse. Oops!

Note: this picture is an advertisement. That is not my family. It can't be, because the water that was once in our Easy Set pool wound up in the basement.

But don't worry. Now that our one-day heat wave is over, it won't be warm enough to swim again until August.

EVERYBODY LOVES A PARADE

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:15:25 GMT

Who doesn’t get a frisson of childish pleasure out of watching a parade go by? The brightly colored floats, ridden by smiling strangers in even more colorful costumes. The marching bands. The baton twirlers. The mobs of people jostling for space on the curb. What’s not to love?

And who are those lucky folks that get to be IN that parade? Yesterday it was me and Tigger.

Seattle’s Pride Parade happens every June, to coincide with the anniversary of Stonewall, and no, I don’t mean Stonewall Jackson. Tig and I marched with the AIDS org I work for. We wore our agency-branded t-shirts, carried a banner, and waved at the throngs of cheering spectators.

If you’ve never been to a Gay Event, I assure you it was quite a spectacle. My 11-year-old admired the elaborate, fruit-encrusted hat of a woman in fancy dress without ever suspecting it was actually a man. The ROTC (Really Outrageous Twirling Corp) marched just in front of us, frequently stopping to perform a routine with wooden rifles that I’m certain the U.S. Military would disapprove of.

Politicians swarmed the area. Hizzoner the Mayor made himself conspicuous. A King County Councilmember was there in a vintage car with a bevy of blond, re-election-sign-carrying supporters. And the Grand Marshal was none other than Washington Governor Christine Gregoire.

Thousands of people lined the streets. They cheered every contingent, even us, even though we weren’t doing anything but marching along. They cheered us for the work we do, and for turning out, and for being Proud right along with them. The whole thing was so happy and peaceful and full of love and music and color I started having 60’s flashbacks, even though I was just a little kid in the 60’s. There was no conflict. I saw no protestors except for one lone dude with a “turn away from sin, something something Jesus” sign (I couldn’t read the whole thing, too many people in the way), and even he didn’t look like his heart was in it.

We went home tired and overheated (92 degrees yesterday. Yes, in Seattle!), only to find our house was Disaster Central. Here’s a mind-boggler for y’all: how did my basement get flooded on a hot summer day without a single drop of rain? Hint: twas not an act of God, but very much an act of Man.

Hint #2: What happens when you send a man to a toy store with a child in one hand and a credit card in the other?