Updates on Story Times, Egg Events for Kids, and Our Dinner Conversation

First, three pieces of business:

Some of you are fans of my friend Pam’s Friday morning story times at the Mohawk Commons Barnes & Noble.  Pam’s left and, as far as I know, they’re stopping story time there, but beginning in mid-September, Pam will be doing Story Time at The Open Door Bookstore on Fridays at 9:30 am. Yay.

Tickets to shows from The Egg’s Family Wonders Series are going on sale tomorrow, Tuesday, August 23rd.  They include Eric Carle stories in puppetry, Dan Zanes, the Golden Dragon Acrobats, and a Zucchini Brothers holiday show.

I’ve gone through the entire What About TODAY? page, eliminating old stuff and double-checking current events. I feel so much better now that I can cross this annoying task off my To Do list. I did not go on a crazy hunt to locate new regularly-scheduled events, so if you know about something that isn’t listed, it would be a favor to all of us if you’d tell me about it, either in the comments for via email. Thank you!

We had a fairly hilarious dinner tonight. Cute W has a quirky sense of humor. He goes with a lot of sarcasm and yanking of people’s chains. He’s well-known for making babies and small children cry, largely because he jokes with them as if they’re adults. He also occasionally drives me crazy. After twenty years, you’d think that I’d be immune, yet I’m not. There are times when I’ll say to him, “I know that you’re just doing this to bug me, but it’s still really bugging me.” And I’ve tried to fight fire with fire and yank his chain right back, but somehow it never works. I’m just too sincere, apparently, to pull it off.  So my attempts to drive him crazy only end up making him chuckle with an equal measure of affection and condescension. And then I get even angrier. I’m resigned to live with this situation for a long time.

But lately I’ve discovered secret weapon. M has it. She’s got the same sense of humor and tonight she battled Cute W like a champ. He’d launched into a long explanation. He often does this, especially at dinner. Out of nowhere there will be discourse on, say, how an electric circuit works or the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. Tonight it was explaining the difference between a free market and fixed pricing (this because of the $1 Wal-Mart watermelon that we were eating–don’t judge me!).  At some point, he tried to use M as an example of one of many consumers and the products that these consumers may or may not crave, and the conversation went something like this:

Cute W: So, say you want American Girl dolls. . .

M (interrupting): I don’t want American Girl dolls!

Cute W: What are you talking about? You love American Girl dolls!

M: But I don’t want them.

Cute W: You’ve got them lined up on your shelf. . .

M (interrupting): Exactly. I don’t need any more.

K (trying to help, not realizing, yet, that M is yanking Cute W’s chain):  So, I think you’re saying that you’d rather have clothes and accessories at this point, right?

M: Yes.

Cute W: Okay, so, but that’s a perfect example, because there was a demand for the dolls, and suddenly that demand has dropped off, and if I’m producing the dolls, I don’t know when you’re going to stop wanting them, so I. . .

M (interrupting again): Of course you know. I just told you.

At which point Cute W began to sputter and I high-fived M, because it was so wonderful to see my husband get smacked down with his own weapon. He created this monster.

Shortly after, we turned to some new entertainment: staring down my throat with a flashlight. I’ve had a sore throat for a couple of days, and when I mentioned it again, Cute W fetched a flashlight and was appalled to see my hideous throat. It was so revolting that the girls gleefully took turns look down everyone’s perfectly normal throats, then looking down into my red-veined, white-spotted monstrosity. I tried to put the camera into my mouth to record it for your entertainment, but my skills do not extend to medical-textbook level photography. You’ll just have to use your imagination.