Now My Husband Hates Mice Too

I bought a humane trap at Lowes last weekend, but so far the mouse has avoided it. The better performing Havahart trap is in the mail via the wonderful world of internet shopping. And for a few days, we even thought that maybe the mouse left or one of our animals caught it (ha). ("Arent' cats and dogs supposed to be predatory animals?" said my husband. "Not ours," I said. "Ours are housepets.")

Last night we cleaned the kitchen and settled down for a small amount of TV. A small amount is all we get these days. When we got back up and went into the kitchen again, there were mouse droppings all over the kitchen counter.

"Did the mouse come in here just in the time we were watching TV?" said my husband. "I guess so," I replied.

I think we both had a similar vision. It involved the mouse getting on the counter, seeing that we were watching TV, doing a superiority dance like the gopher in "Caddyshack," and proceeding to crap all over the counter while laughing a sinister mouse laugh.

In addition to being grossed out by mouse droppings in our food preparation area, we resented the mouse's little dance and its laughter. We also found that it had chewed another hole in the birdseed bag. "I thought that other hole had just happened," said my husband. "You aren't very familiar with mice, are you?" I said. "Put the birdseed in a big plastic container, like the dog food."

My husband still wants to use the humane trap, but he has stopped referring to the mouse as "cute" and seems to be using the word "rodent" more often.

Recent Reading

Travels of A T-Shirt In The Global Economy. (I was going to have a picture of it, but Amazon won't play nice.)

Back in 1992 I was a graduate student at the London School of Economics, and one day just for fun an American friend and I went to see Michael Palin speak. He had just made another travel show for the BBC (Pole to Pole) and he welcomed us all to a "shameless attempt to flog more books." He showed slides of his trip accompanied by delightful off-the-cuff commentary. He was every bit as funny as you'd expect.

But the funniest thing for us wasn't something he said, it was a slide he showed. He showed a picture of a man in Africa, and the man was wearing a t-shirt that said "When I die, don't send me to Heaven, just send me to Myrtle Beach." This was before Myrtle Beach, SC, had re-invented itself as a land of golf and family-friendly vacations, and more when we thought of it as the land of spring break and drunken debauchery. The sheer strangeness of sitting in a theater in London watching a member of Monty Python show a picture of a man in Africa wearing a Myrtle Beach t-shirt just seemed to sum up our London experience. The whole world was in London. Here was proof.

And while I found "The Travels Of A T-Shirt In The Global Economy" fascinating and educational, it did ruin a little of the magic of that memory for me. I found out why that guy in Africa had the t-shirt. He bought it in a secondary market of American used clothing. You know those clothes you gave to Goodwill that they couldn't sell? They were re-sold in Africa, in pretty much the only free market for clothing. (Yes, Goodwill still made money off them).

I'm not an anti-globalization person, or even an anti-commerce person. Though my politics tend to the left, I have an MBA and tend to be a free-trade type. But this book really opened my eyes both about the extent of government regulation of trade, and about the strange ways that government regulation actually sometimes creates an advance in the industry.

Plus, this book was a light, easy read, which is nice when my time for reading is limited. It reminded me a bit of Freakonomics in that it was reasonably analytic, but clearly written so my foggy night-nursing brain could slog through it. It helped me feel I still could think, though if I really could think I'd probably be more articulate in recommending it.

Did I Really Need A Quiz To Tell Me This?

You Belong in London

You belong in London, but you belong in many cities... Hong Kong, San Francisco, Sidney. You fit in almost anywhere. And London is diverse and international enough to satisfy many of your tastes. From curry to Shakespeare, London (almost) has it all!

What European City Do You Belong In?

I'm out of PG Tips, and it has been almost two years since I've been to London. We took S. when she was about 9 months old. It was wonderful. We went from park to park and she crawled in all of them. I've been to London at least once every two years since I went to graduate school there, and at least every 3 years since my first trip in 1986. But I think it will be a lot longer this time. It is just hard to travel with two little little kids.

I miss travel. I miss that sense of accomplishment I always got from just functioning in another culture. I miss that surreal pseudo-night feeling when the lights are dimmed on the plane and you know you will wake up in another time and another place.

I have a hard time finding people who know how I feel. A friend from high school visited yesterday and was looking at a couple of pictures I have on the wall; scenes of Austria and Thailand and Belgium. "I guess you travelled a lot in your old job," she said. "Yeah," I said. "I've never been out of the country," she said. "You should go," I said. "Go somewhere easy, like London." I didn't even get into the other countries my husband and I love, like Japan and Thailand.

After our trip to London with S. I was talking to a woman in playgroup. "What's been going on with you," she said. "Well, we went to London," I said. She looked at me with such incredulity you'd think I'd just said we went to the moon.

On the other end of the spectrum, my cousins haul their kids all over the planet on a regular basis. One cousin works for an American school in Southeast Asia and they take their 2-year-old on long haul flights to China, the U.S., France, everywhere. Another cousin works as a physician on an AIDS project in Africa and hauls her 4-year-old and 2-year-old back and forth often. Perhaps if I had my kids on planes regularly it would be easier, but the once-a-year overseas trip seems too hard to be worth it.

In the meantime, I have to mail order my PG Tips rather than pick them up in person, and dream of the day when we can take the kids to see the world.

I Hate Mice

There is a mouse in the house. I hate mice. I picture them creeping through the house and crawling across my kids and nosing around looking for crumbs. This is our second mouse in our 2 1/4 years in this house. The first one my husband thought was "cute" and insisted he'd call the mouse "George." He demanded a humane trap, so I borrowed one from my dad. Eventually we trapped George and he was moved to the woods behind our house.

The sad thing is that our cat and dog are lower than useless with mice. I've had my cat almost 10 years, and in that time she has brought one mouse in the house. By the time I found it was so dessicated that I couldn't determine cause of death. It could have starved.

When George was in the house we actually had the opportunity to expose both animals to him. He was sitting in the middle of a room so we brought in the dog, who seemed genuinely frightened by the little rodent. Later we had a chance to bring in the cat, who just didn't notice George.

Sometimes the cat likes to pretend she is a hunter, but I know her prey are having a good laugh. She seemed to be hunting the mouse tonight, but I'm not expecting any miracles. Something had her excited enough to be scurrying around the dining room.

In point of fact, I had realized we had a mouse in the garage a couple days ago, and asked my dad for the humane trap again. He suggested we might want to invest in our own at this point, and I hadn't done that yet. Then my husband announced "I see a rodent" as he was doing his stretching exercises. So I've been desperately searching the internet trying to decide if I should mail order the trap or go in search of a local hardware store that has it. Tomorrow will be devoted to mouse trap hunting. I want that critter out.

Dinner Last Night #2

Tortellini with Tomato and Bacon Sauce

OK, it wasn't exactly last night, but I've gotten a little behind on these.

Instructions:

(prequel)

a) Return from evening hike and instruct husband to put water on the stove while you are nursing the baby. Nurse baby.

b) Finish nursing and discover that husband put water on the stove in a midget saucepan. Move water to a large pan.

(actual assembly)

1) Assemble the following:

1/2 a package of bacon
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes (I used Hunts Petite Diced)
about 1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper
about 1/2 teaspoon oregano
tortellini - your choice. I alternate "healthy" whole-wheat tortellini with "husband preferred" regular tortellini

Also set out some paper towels on a plate for bacon drainage.

2) Chop up the bacon and saute it. While it is sauteeing chop the onion and garlic. Drain the bacon and fry up the onion and garlic.

3) Start the tortellini cooking.

4) Add the bacon back to the onion and garlic. Add the tomatoes, red pepper, and oregano. Turn the heat down and cook until the tortellini is done.

Mix it all together and eat! Sometimes we add a little feta cheese or goat cheese if we have it around. This takes about 20-25 minutes, and makes enough for two people to eat for dinner and at least one and possible both of you to eat for lunch the next day. This was originally based on a recipe on Epicurious, but when I looked back at the recipe I realized I've now drifted a long way from the original.

Road Trip Report

We took our first long road trip with two kids this weekend. We went to Manassas, VA, to see my cousin and her daughter, who is only about two months older than S. It takes about 4 1/2 hours to drive it with no breaks. Naturally we took breaks.

Things that worked about the trip:

• Kids' CDs. S. loves the Best of Elmo (she calls it "Elmo Songs") and also enjoys Toddler Tunes and Burl Ives sings (she calls this "Animal Songs"). The only problem is that is our whole list of CDs, and when the CD would start over she'd yell NOOOO and demand a different CD. I've just put in a new order to Amazon, for Sesame Street Kids Favorite Songs, Sesame Street Kids Favorite Songs 2, and the Mary Poppins soundtrack. It was kind of a binge, but I think it will pay off in summer beach trips.

• Books. I didn't really think I'd be able to read in the car, but I did a lot of holding the book up and reading it anyway.

• Computer backup. Even though I'd just been reading all the comments on Blogging Baby that seemed to imply that using DVDs on a car trip would rot my kids' brains on the spot, I brought my DVD playing laptop and our very fine collection of Scholastic DVDs so I could be secure in the knowledge that if things really got bad I had my own personal zombifying device available. We didn't use it, though.

• Our Lands' End beach blanket with built in pouch. We carry this thing in the car all the time. It is so nice at rest stops, where we can put it down and have a place for the baby to roll around and not pick up a cigarette butt. I can lie down and nurse, and we have a big ole changing area. It is very high on my "baby tools I wouldn't have thought of" list.

• Only going to one destination, and making everyone else come to us. We have lots of friends and relatives in the DC area, and it is tempting to try to see everyone. My husband's brother lives in Silver Spring, MD, and on our last trip we drove there with S. It was miserable. The DC traffic never ends. In addition, my brother-in-law and his wife like to keep their kids very heavily scheduled, so we wound up driving around the greater Silver Spring area as we followed them from Russian class to Taco Bell to home back to some pageant at the kids' school. S. never got to run around and she wound up in the car for more than 3 hours and she was very unhappy. This time we had my aunt and uncle come to us (from West Virginia) on Saturday and had my brother-in-law and his family drive down from Silver Spring on Sunday. It wasn't the shortest drive for them, but it made things much easier.
  

Things that didn't work about the trip:

• Fast Food. I'm not anti-fast food, I'm one of the 1-in-8 Americans who has worked at McDonald's and it was a fine experience. But on the way up we stopped at a rest stop, then as we approached Manassas we realized that we were starving. So we stopped at the most miserable Burger King in the history of the universe, where the wait was interminable and they did not give us all our food and both kids melted down while were in line. Then we ate it, and things got worse. I kept thinking of the salt lick we had for the goats when I was a kid. It was a large brown brick of solid salt. I felt like I'd eaten that salt lick. On the way back we stopped at McDonald's for play as it was raining, and S. and L. had a good time, but I again felt like I'd eaten a salt lick. A smaller salt lick, not quite full brick size, but salty just the same. Has it always been that salty? Maybe I've been eating less salt, or it just is hitting me more these days. Next time we have got to pack some grown-up food as well as the kid food.

• Trying to fit my tush between the two car seats. When it got hard to entertain the kids (especially L.) I crawled on back there and tried to fit between the seats while the seatbelt holder ground into my hip. Meanwhile my husband seemed to have confused the Richmond-Petersburg section of highway with the Indy Motor Speedway, so we went whizzing between lanes as I gained additional bruises. I look forward to having both kids forward-facing so entertainment is easier.
  

All-in-all, though, it was a good trip. It was wonderful to see S. playing with her second cousin M. They were so cute together. They had whole conversations, which I didn't expect. The cutest moment was when they got their Easter baskets and my cousin said "say 'Thank you Easter Bunny'" and M. said "Thank you Easter Bunny" and S. picked up a stuffed bunny from the basket and said "You're welcome."

A Quiz For Every Age

So we came back from our first road trip with both kids last night and found a message on the machine saying that L.'s 9-month check-up was scheduled for this morning. Oops! I thought it was next week. In addition, S. had a temperature of 102.7, so I hauled her to the doctor too. Ordinarily I'd wait and see if the temperature lasted, but since I was there we checked it out (it was just a virus).

The best part of the doctor visit, though, is fast becoming the "Ages and Stages Questionnaire." Apparently these are now required for Medicaid patients and most doctors are now doing them for all patients. We first saw it at L.'s six month visit, when it asked if she could pick up Cheerios with a pincer grip and I thought "haven't tried that, since I'd worry that she'd then choke on the Cheerio."

This time the questions are getting even more bizarre. My favorite is "Does your baby poke at or try to get a crumb or Cheerio that is inside a clear bottle (such as a plastic soda-pop bottle or baby bottle)?" Since my child is not actually a monkey, we hadn't tried that.

I had question marks on a couple of others, like "when holding a toy in his hand, does your baby bang it against another toy on the table." My baby only sits at a table to eat, so we hadn't tried that one either. Therefore my baby got a big "question mark" on her score sheet for "problem solving." There were no questions for the problems she does solve, like "does your child body slam the cat so she can play with the cat's tags?"

I'm told the questionnaire is intended to start discussion on potential developmental problems. I assured the doctor that I'm not worried about L.'s problem solving; end of discussion. I also notice that the questionnaire is designed to be taken home and filled out (so you can try the Cheerio game, apparently) but I don't know of any doctors who do that, because getting parents to bring homework in is probably just totally unrealistic.

I also told the doctor that one of the questions made me laugh out loud, and she knew immediately which one it was. She said "wait for the 15-month questionnaire." Hmm.

Dinner Last Night #1

Miso Glazed Salmon,
Broccoli with Black Bean Sauce,
Rice







(Can you tell I'm not a food photographer? Yeah. I was hungry so I only took one shot. Sorry about the fuzziness.)

Except for the broccoli and the miso, this is entirely a meal of foods I had in the pantry or the freezer.

Game plan:

1) Put rice in the rice cooker, because it takes the longest (15-20 minutes). I love my rice cooker! I also keep rice around all the time. I buy the 25 pound bags at the Asian grocery. This is Jasmine Rice.

2) Defrost the salmon, because I failed to plan ahead. My new "stock" item is the frozen wild salmon sold at Whole Foods. It is about $7-8 for two 6-ounce pieces, which is as cheap or cheaper than the salmon in the seafood case, and it is wild which is supposedly better than farm raised. Plus I can keep it as a freezer item so I don't have to plan ahead. When I buy fish fresh I usually try to use it that day.

3) Nurse the baby because she is shreiking. This was not in my original game plan, but what can you do?

4) Mix:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon yellow miso
(bought at the Asian grocery, lasts several weeks)
1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
(also from the Asian grocery in a large vat)

Line a metal pan with a piece of foil and put the fish in (ungreased). This is a technique I always use, because the fish skin will fuse to the foil and you then can remove the fish without the skin and throw away the foil with the skin. Plus there is easy clean up!

Put the mixed miso sauce on top of the fish. Broil for 10 minutes.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will mention that this is a simplified version of a Cooking Light recipe which is excellent if you have time for it (it has this salmon and some very yummy mashed potatoes.)

5) Cut up the broccoli and crush a couple cloves of garlic over it. Saute it for a few minutes, then add about 1/4 cup of water and let the water steam off. Add about 1 tablespoon black bean sauce and about 1 tablespoon of low-sodium soy-sauce.

That's it! If not for step (3), it should take less than 25 minutes.

On a side note, I keep a list on the refrigerator entitled "Foods S. will eat." It is for my husband, who thinks she will only eat yogurt, cheese, bread, and fruit. My mother was here one day standing about 10 feet from the fridge, and interrupted the conversation to say "you misspelled broccoli." It took me a minute to even figure out what she was talking about. And I had misspelled it as brocolli. Brocolli still looks more normal to me. I had to look it up for this post. But I also thought "so that is where I learned to be so obsessive-compulsive about editing errors."

Second, Choose a Topic

When I created this blog I spent some time choosing a name. But I didn't think as much about writing topic. I am in awe of other blogs I see where they seem to have come out fully formed. I saw one the other day that hadn't existed much longer than mine and already had won an award.

I've decided that I've done too many Mommy rants, and I want to introduce two new topics. First, I'm going to try blogging my meals, because I have a lot of friends who ask me what I cook for dinner. If that works, maybe I'll spin it off into a secondary blog. Second, I'm going to try blogging what I'm reading, since I like to talk about books.

With luck these topics will also make me post more often.

No More Baby Showers

After this weekend, I've resolved to only attend showers for very close relatives or friends. Like my grandchildren. That sounds about right.

We had some great showers for S. We had no showers for L. since she came along so quickly after S. So perhaps I'd forgotten how gruesome showers could be. The best shower for S. was thrown by my husband's co-workers, who had never been to a shower and had no preconceptions (so to speak). They googled "baby shower" and picked the games they found the funniest. The best one was a game where contestants put vaseline on their nose then stick their face in a bowl of cotton balls and try to see how many remain attached when they lift their head up. I don't know what it had to do with babies, but it was damn funny to watch. There is nothing like winning a prize because you have a dozen cotton balls stuck to your face with vaseline.

We also had a great shower thrown by my sister's mother-in-law and sister-in-law, where all the guests were good friends of mine and we had wonderful food and laughed a lot.

This shower Sunday was neither of those showers. It was a shower thrown for a woman in playgroup. I knew three people there, none well. No one introduced me to the other people, though the grandmoms were polite enough to introduce themselves. Discussion topics included:

1) How fast several of their labors were, and how they did not have time for an epidural. Since I had a c-section after 48+ hours of labor, I could not contribute to this discussion.

2) Home shopping parties they have known and loved, including the one with various mixes for speedy food, home clothing purchase, and of course Pampered Chef. I'm not big on home shopping parties, probably because I don't much like to shop. I like to buy quickly and move on.

3) How much they love their houses. Why their house is the perfect house for them and is their forever house. I like my house fine, but it is definitely our 5-to-7-year-house.

4) Why gambling is wonderful and how Vegas casinos are so much better than Riverboat casinos, which are smoky. Since I do not believe I can win at gambling, I do not gamble, so again I had nothing to contribute.

5) How cute the gifts were.

We moved in lock-step formation from the food to the games (the string game and one where you unscramble baby words, if you are interested) to the gifts to the cake. The invitation had specified 12:30 - 3:00 and at 3:00 the dogs were removed from the doors and we were dismissed.

My time away from the kids is so limited. Next time I'm just going to do some errands!

Let's Talk About Food

I'm thinking about food for a couple of reasons. First, I'm a little tired of reading Mommy Blogs non-stop. I liked them for a while when they were new and I found some people who seemed to think like me, but after a while the endless discussion of "Mommy Wars" got to be a little much. A lot of them are more articulate at discussing it than me, but after a while you can only agree that "there is no war" so many times. Second, I like food. Food is one of my major focuses after childcare. When I first quit work I had an absolute festival of cooking all the time and trying all the recipes I'd been meaning to try for years. I still cook for relaxation, though not as much as I used to do. I do eat a lot, especially given the pregnancies and the lactation. I had no idea what breastfeeding did to your appetite, but believe me it creates a hungry monster much bigger than the pregnant hungry monster. Some days I could eat anything.

So now I've been reading food blogs. Food blogs have pretty pictures and good recipes. I tried this recipe for oat squares recently because I had a boatload of jam around and I don't really eat a lot of jam. This disposed of it nicely, as long as I don't think about that cup of butter that went into it.

I was reading a Mommy bulletin board recently and the discussion topic was "what is your major indulgence?" People's replies were things like "a latte every day" and "a pedicure." I didn't answer, but if I did I would have just said "my groceries." I rarely buy lattes (I like them, just not enough to haul both kids to Starbucks). I'm neutral on personal services, though I do like to get my brows waxed. But I like to buy good groceries. I like to get exactly the herb I want for a recipe, and more and more I like to buy local and organic foods.

I first started thinking seriously about how food is prepared shortly before I left corporate wonderland. Our executive vice president's assistant had the New York Times magazine on her desk and said "here, you'd find this interesting." It had this article about beef production in the U.S. It is a great article. The number one fact that impressed me from it is that it used to take 4-5 years to get a steer to market, and now they have it down to 14 to 16 months using corn feed, hormones and antibiotics.

After that I read "Fast-Food Nation," which will convince you that the processing of food can be a very dark place, and that while fast-food created a monster it also has the power to effect change. The meat you buy from McDonald's may have gone through a safer processing facility than the meat you buy at the grocery store, because McDonald's has the power to make demands.

After reading those two works, I started buying a lot of grass-fed and hormone-free beef. When we can we get grass-fed at farmer's markets, and when I'm strapped for time I buy the hormone-free version at my local supermarket.

The next step in my food decisions was a copy of an Organic Food magazine I read in the doctor's waiting room while pregnant with S. It had a link to this list of foods with the most pesticides and foods with the fewest. It is a great list, and convinced me to go out of my way to get organic apples. I also wish I could get organic grapes, as S. is a big grape fan, but they are even hard to find at Whole Foods.

The list of foods got more play in a recent (February 2006) Consumer Reports report which referenced the same foodnews.org study.

Then shortly after S. was born I saw a documentary called "The Corporation." I was a little disappointed in the documentary, as I'd been hoping for an analysis of the kind of group think that leads a corporation to bad decisions. Instead I got a guided tour of various corporate crimes of the last 20-30 years. I'd already heard many of the stories. However, there was one story I hadn't heard before. It was the story of two reporters in Florida who tried to do a story on rBGH, a hormone given to cows to increase milk production. The hormone is banned in Europe and Canada. They were fired; a summary of the story is here under "The Price of Whistleblowing."

So I started doing a little research into rBGH/rBST (Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone / Recombinant bovine somatotropin). I think those two terms are equivalent, at least for this discussion. There is a lot of information out there, but I thought this old article from (of all places) Penthouse gave a pretty fair summary. rBGH/rBST is pretty much in all milk except organic milk or milk labeled as free of it, but interestingly as this article says: "U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended that any label that says the product is rBST-free should appear in the proper context with accompanying information, such as 'no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows.' " So companies can say their product is rBST free, but if they don't say the "no significant difference..." phrase they can be sued for libeling rBST!

My. They are sure anxious to tell you this stuff is safe, even if Europe and Canada ban it. Anyway, I decided I'd like to avoid it where I can though I'm not obsessive about it. We buy organic or hormone-free milk and cheese if we can, but sometimes we can't.

My newest step in the evolution of my food buying is to work on buying locally. We already like to get goat cheese from Celebrity Dairy, the site of my wonderful wedding. We buy at the wonderful Carrboro Farmer's Market when we can, as Carrboro requires that farmers be local. And this year I'm looking at buying a share in a farm (a CSA - Consumer Supported Agriculture). There is a great list of CSAs at Local Harvest.

OK, I've run out of time so that is enough on food for now. I have more thoughts, though!

High School Is Not Actually Over

The names in this story have been changed to protect the paranoid.

We have a pretty nice playgroup. Most of the mommies are in their late 30s, and I like being with mommies closer to my age. Then I don't feel so old. Most of the kids are right around 2. Several of the mommies were nice enough to bring us meals when L. was born. We were on the front end of second babies, but now a lot of the mommies are having second babies, so get-togethers have been a little harder to schedule.

I know that some of the mommies have other connections and other playdates, but I don't really feel excluded. Some of them center around music class, which we couldn't go to because S. went through a phase of yelling during group singing (NO MOMMY) even though she likes singing herself. I know I've been in at least one subgroup too, as we were part of a subset of playgroup invited to one birthday party.

So we've been trying to organize for an outing to a local farm event. Ever since our original organizer, Kathy, got pregnant with twins we've all sort of taken informal turns organizing things, and if no one steps up to the plate it just doesn't happen. No one seemed to be stepping up for the plate for this until I got a call from Tina saying she was organzing a group including people from our group and other friends. I said I wanted in. She asked about other people from playgroup; I said I thought Kathy's son was in pre-school so she was out.

Then Kathy sent a note to our Yahoo list saying "I'll organize, who wants to go." So I sent a note that said "Tina is already organizing, contact her" and I forwarded Tina's message (which went to her private list, not the Yahoo list). Then Kathy sent out an IRATE message saying she was being left out and it wasn't the first time.

So I called Kathy and I said "I hope I didn't contribute to the misunderstanding." She said "no, no, I appreciate your letting me know something else was being organized." Then she said "Tina just doesn't like me."

Oh.

I was a bit stuck for a response. I've actually only met Tina a couple of times, and I wasn't sure many of us knew each other well enough to determine like or dislike. We really tend to just talk about our kids.

Tina then sent an apology/explanation to the Yahoo list, and Kathy followed it with a long "I didn't mean to upset anybody; perhaps I'm just hormonal" note.

I'm a little curious how the excursion will go.

Me, I've never been a very clique-ey person. In high school I had an eclectic group of friends from everything from the drama druggies to the honor students. I liked my one-on-one relationships with each of them, but I knew I could never put them in a room together.

But I can't say I've never been a part of a clique. When I was in graduate school in England I fell in with a group of students who were mostly on grants, and who had a similar work ethic to me, and who all were in the same study session. Since we went straight from our Friday afternoon study session to the pub we became a kind of de facto group. We had little mini-dramas within the group and various friendships outside the group, but we did move as a bit of a pack.

Based on my experience inside and outside, I don't think most cliques operate with the kind of planned malice those on the outside assume. I think a lot of cliques are formed by accidents of proximity, and that a lot of exclusions are pure absentmindedness. Maybe I'm too idealistic about it, but I've never heard anyone say "let's not include her. I just don't like her."

And yet people still fear that is what is being said. I fear it too, on my bad days, but in my rational heart I don't think so.

I'm Sorry, What Did You Just Say?

We went to the new Kidzu Children's Museum in Chapel Hill today. It was great. Apparently they plan rotating exhibits, and the current exhibit was Maurice Sendak. Since S. has quite the thing about "In the Night Kitchen" and "Where the Wild Things Are" she was in seventh heaven. They even had a slide that went down into foam rubber simulating "Chicken Soup and Rice."

I wasn't quite sure about the fact that it is in the very center of Chapel Hill, but as it turned out that was great too, as they work on a "wrist band" system and you can leave and come back. So we left for snacks at Qdoba, and returned when the crowds had eased.

When we went back, the few remaining kids were lined up for the "Chicken Soup and Rice" slide. The little boy in front of S. was fidgety, and his dad told him to sit down to go down the slide. S., ever the parrot, started repeating "sit your bum down, sit your bum down." Suddenly the little boy turned on her and venomously said "b****." I was so startled I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly. His dad seemed unsurprised and said "be nice, she's just telling you to sit down. Now sit down." I was still trying to get my jaw closed, but finally just turned to S. and said "it is his turn S., wait for him to go" and other "be patient" type phrases.

Now I don't have the cleanest mouth, and I'm not easily shocked, but I was shocked. Where does a 2-year-old learn this?

Things I Find In The Play Area #3: Bathtub Mural

S. likes to tell us what to do. She particularly likes to tell us what to do with crayons and playdough. "Make a car," she'll say. "Make a bed." "Make a blanket." "Make a boy." "Make a pillow." Sometimes the things she asks for are a little hard to achieve, like when she asks us to "make night" out of playdough.

I bought bath crayons and I don't like them as they leave little wax flecks everywhere, but S. loves them. And she likes to tell us what to draw with them. She told Daddy to make a car, and then she told him to make the car go. He also had to make the bicycle, and make the bicycle go. I think he added the rocket on his own, but she wanted it to go too.

One thing I've learned from the drawing on command is that my husband is a much better artist than I am. I mean, look at these. You can actually tell what they are! And he drew them hanging upside down over the edge of the tub while she was in it. I'm pretty impressed. My drawings look like I'm about a year older than S.