Random bittids (which is tidbits, only cut in half and reversed):

Sunday night I was working in the nursery with an exceedingly small group of kids. Normally I have thirteen Not Close To Walking-, Almost Walking-, Walking But Unstable- and Able To Walk And Therefore Also Think Can Climb Walls- children that take up every available brain space because have you ever tried to anticipate the amount of trouble thirteen pre-preschoolers can get into within a four hour period? No? Okay then.

But Sunday night brought only Natalie and her rambunctious older brother Micah (he of the ‘Ribbit’ fame) and little Charlie, a self-proclaimed vegetarian at the tender age of 2.7. Charlie was early and his mother left a dinner of peas and carrots and cheerios and half of a parmesan sandwich for his eating delights. Personally, of all the choices displayed, I would have gone for the cheese sandwich and maybe some carrots. But this kid shoved his grubby fist into the cup of english peas and unloaded them unceremoniously into his mouth, kind of what I would do with cheetos if it was at all socially acceptable and had no bearing on my daily caloric intake.

Dinner complete, Charlie and I played with the beach ball until Natalie and Micah showed up, and then Charlie abandoned me for a playmate that didn’t creak with age when standing up for the bazillionth time to retrieve the beach ball that had been thrown with really good intentions but had yet again lodged itself in the far right corner.

Charlie and Micah are within three months of each other and are normally all BFF until one of them thinks about that pubescent hair that’s going to get lodged in their ass and smacks the other one with whatever hard plastic object seems to be lying around. But Sunday night was relatively uneventful, and they managed to chase each other around the room, making intermittent high-pitched growling noises at each other, avoiding the hard plastic hit-able objects.

Natalie, being eleven months and of a generally Chill persuasion, sat happily on my lap and watched the two boys act a fool, making cute oooh, aaaah noises that I’m trying to form in to Rah-been. Say: Raaah-beeen, Natalie-bug. Raaaah-beeeeeeeeen.

Towards the end of the night, Micah came over to my chair and absentmindedly pulled on the two small stretchy headbands I had wrapped around my wrist. Both were about an inch thick and black, and I immediately thought about how wicked cool these boys would look with a little Rambo-esque headband. So I held them both still while I slipped it over their heads and told them both to go play Rambo. Only I guess there’s a bit of a generational gap there because they thought I said RAINBOW, not RAMBO and spent the next forty-five minutes screaming RAINBOW! GRRRRRR! RAINBOW!

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I bought a Ricky Martin CD in 1998, right before he came out with that Livin la Vida Loca song, the one where he made that video that showed a super hot girl pouring hot wax on his chest and we were all too enthralled with his Latin-ness to notice that those leather pants? Just a smidge too tight.

I originally heard Por Arriba, Por Abajo in a Mexican restaurant in Texas and I’m sure the waiters were ready to stab me in the heart for asking who was singing the song on their loudspeakers (much how I would react if a German tourist heard Tell Me Whatchew Want, Whatchew Really Really Want on the radio and begged to know who sings that delightful little song, and I’d have to grudgingly tell them that the Spice Girls sing it and then go home and cry because those German tourists, they just didn’t know any better, bless their hearts.)

I brought this album before I’d taken any Spanish and I have to say that I wish more American singers would take after Senor Martin. I don’t even speak the language that well and I can repeat back to you what he’s saying, rather than Garble Garble Hooker Ho Bag Garble Mumble Mumble. Whatever the problem is with Americans and enunciation, I’d like to know. I mean, maybe it’s that fake-platinum grill (or is it grille?) that hip hop artists feel obliged to sport. Or the lackadaisical allmywordsruntogether sound of SoCal. Or they could be like that girl, Cassie I think, that sings a song entitled Me and U, which from her song alone I can tell you she’s younger than 25 because I don’t see a lot of people nearing thirty that name a song with singular letters. Anyway, this kid Cassie could not possibly sound more bored. As in so bored I think it was just too much of an effort for her to open her damn mouth and get a sound out that doesn’t sound like it came straight from a Casio keyboard, circa 1987.

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Yesterday I wore the skirt that mother once paid me two hundred dollars to never wear again, except to Wal-Mart. Because it’s okay to look like a bag lady at Wal-Mart. But the thing is, it has big deep pockets. And it’s all big and flowy and a nice greenish beige color, which doesn’t sound like a nice color but really is. So I may or may not have broken our deal by possibly wearing it to work yesterday but it’s been over a year since that deal was made and I wasn’t making any money then and I think the deal was made in an effort to make sure her daughter had more than tuna and ramen in her kitchen cabinets.

After work I met up with Amanda in the furniture department of Dillard’s, because we had an hour to kill before nursery time and they were having a sale. I’ve been looking for a couch for over a year now and I’ve come to equate couch shopping with the Prince Charming fairy tale. I keep thinking that when I see it, I’ll just know. Unfortunately this has not worked out for with the whole couch shopping thing. Or the Prince Charming thing. Which is why I’ve decided it’s a fairy tale because OBVIOUSLY the perfect couch does not exist. It still doesn’t stop me from shopping for it, however.

So as we’re leaving the store, another furniture shopping expedition thrown to the dogs, I was walking up the two flights of stairs that lead up to the parking lot. Maybe I was tired from the day or maybe that skirt is longer than I think it is, but about halfway up I got my foot caught in the front of my skirt and apparently tried to rip it clean off. Thankfully, my ass got in the way.