Bust Weekend

oopes last night i loaded up the unedited unpunctauted version...

I logged on to the preschool blog to find a dialogue featuring my husband and youngest child. The same child was recently featured as part of a rock band comprised of four short little boys with bossy older sisters. Their signature tune seemed to be Bye Bye Miss American Pie with a kind of punk grit. My kid’s active blog life combined with my actually having custody of a functioning computer inspired me to re-enter the blogosphere. This is also a weekend that features the elementary school sock hop, final soccer game, piano recital, and a baby shower dinner party for thirty-eight so there might be stuff to write about.

The sock hope has been conquered although four Lerdau men from the ages of 4-83 were done long before Rebecca was ready to leave, and we had to leave her with another family to bring her home later. Luckily only one of the Lerdau men expressed himself by lying down on the floor of the library and kicking and screaming. Next year our big PTO fundraiser should be selling moonshine on the playground. I would have happily paid $20 for a beer or shot of tequila by about 20 minutes into it. The excitement of the actual dancing is only exceeded by the scholastic book fair, for which each child has already created a wish list. While I was in the library earlier this week helping the kindergarteners I was especially thrilled to find that the most popular literature choices were Barbie, Make me a Beautiful Princess and a biography of Justin Bieber. I’d never heard of him, and he appears to have no relationship to the 17th century Biber whom I familiarized myself with while preparing or my comprehensive exams in graduate school.

Rebecca is playing her own composition on her piano recital, and it comes with many glissandos, dissonances, quirky little minimalist patters, and, most importantly, dramatic gestures. In addition to this precocious little number, she’s also developed some rather poor practice dkills. She is especially proud of having read harry potter while learning Gavotte and couldn’t understand why I didn’t think her piano teacher would find this impressive. She also, unfortunately, figured out how to cram. When I am out of town very little mail is opened and very little practicing is done. When I returned I said she had to play the recital piece ten times a day. The results of one day of this prompted the piano teacher to congratulate her on her effective drilling of the hard parts—oops.

Eli and Manuel’s dialogue is below. For the full effect imagine Eli “helping” Manuel push his collectors’ item 1980-something orange mountain bike (a gorgeous orange Stumpjumper Sport with original Shimano friction shifters [ML]). He would have been wearing either saddle shoes or red cowboy boots—the only footwear he wears these days.

dialogue between Dad and Eli...
Eli: Daddy, I'm a pwe-schooler
Dad: Yup
E: Do you know why?
D: No, Why?
E: 'Cause I go to pwe-school
D: Oh. That makes sense
E: Daddy, I'm a Jew.
D: Yup
E: Do you know why?
D: No, Why?
E: 'Cause I go to Jew school