Kabob. Last night my mom invited me over for supper and was very excited about the fact that she made kabobs. The more I said the word, the more I laughed, and the more I laughed, the more I needed to explain my reasoning behind my opinion of the word (this was after Cabana Boy asked if I could collect social security based on my “condition”…heh, I wish “odd and poorly timed sense of amusement” was in the DSMIV; sitting around being kooky and laughing at words I find silly would be a nifty alternative to teaching preschool and hearing the Wiggles make more money than I ever will using words that don’t even exist).
I have decided that kabob, when you think about it, is a rather dissapointing word. It starts out with the “ka” part which would lead one to think of some great, action-packed word like “kaboom” or “kapow” or “kablam”….you know, like those great sound effect word bubbles they used in the 1960’s Batman starring Adam West. But then it ends in “bob.” Such a let down. What a great prefix “ka” could be! You can practically feel the potential energy in it, only to have it taper off into a whiney, mundane “bob.” KA-bob….meh.

So, that is how I feel about the word kabob. If you keep saying it over and over it sounds pretty funny too. Of course, I’m probably the only freak who has actually taken the time to linguistically analyze the auditory connotation of the syllables in the word “kabob.”

I guess it’s something a rabbity type person does.

purposeful glare at whoever had the final say in my daemon transmogrification

I don’t know who did it, but I went from a fox which was pretty sweet, to a weasel which was absolutely awesome….to a….rabbit. A rabbit! Ok. My audience has spoken. Hopefully my daemon will not be attacked and/or consumed by someone else’s super cool fox or weasel daemon.

grumble

“Korie, I broke your bones?”
“Nah, that’s a wire. I have a bra on…like mommies wear.”
“You wear a bra?”
“Uh huh, and the wire is poking out of this one.”
“Korie?”
“Yeah?”
“I broke your boobies.”
“Can you just sing Twinkle Twinkle like the other kids are doing?”

“Kowie!”
“I’m busy cleaning up, are you going potty like I asked you to?”
“Kowie, come heeeah.”
sigh, quick wipe of the table, enter bathroom
“Yeah? What’s up?”
“Where’s the part where the peepee comes out?” (this is a boy speaking, fyi, all the better to establish a mental picture with, fair readers)
“Um, it’s there. Just, when you sit down to go pee, sometimes it sort of gets, um, it gets, uh, it hides under the rest of your skin.”
“Oh look!” child pulls back skin “There it is!”
“Wait! Point it back down before you….”
“Oops.”

Quick Disclaimer: Today I had a white T-shirt on and I guess the kids could see the design on my bra through my shirt. These kids have known me for over a third of their lives and sometimes get sort of touchy feely. So one of the kids next to me noticed the pattern under my shirt and went to touch it and I grabbed her hand before she did so and told her it was ok to look, but not to touch my chest. Another girl was sitting there too and she initiated the following conversation. Y’know, just so you don’t think I run around the daycare topless giving free anatomy lessons to the kiddies.

“Koooorie”
“Whaa-aaat”
“I can’t touch your nipples?”
“What?!”
“I can’t touch your nipples?”
“No, see, there are some parts you can touch on other people’s bodies, like holding hands or hugging. But there are some parts you can’t touch on other people’s bodies, like nipples.”
“I can touch my nipples?”
(If it keeps you from trying to poke mine or anyone else’s )”Sure kiddo, go for it.”

All I know is, y’know how some people say that people should take classes before being allowed to be parents? Some days feel like a crash course, full immersion, no holds barred lesson in all the strange crap that parents have to deal with that no book ever has the answer to. And while I do sometimes get exasperated in how I have to weave my words to fit the mind of a young preschooler, I also realize that I’m now more prepared to have a child than half the parents whose kids I take care of. Go figure.

Yeah, that’s me. I have been called many things in my quarter century on the planet: weird, odd, eccentric, goofy, wise (but I think the friend who said that was stoned or drunk, or both), blunt, dorky, we could keep going with this, but I think you get my point. Anyway, I was told today, yet again, that I was weird (and I totally admit to being weird by the way….I’m not in denial about any of the things I’ve been called….well the ones I listed above anyway) and as usual, I asked why. I’m always curious to know why people consider me weird. So I was told I was weird because I find some things innapropriately funny. I was going to protest, but then a myriad of images from my past hit my brain…namely of times when I have been doubled over-in tears-gasping on the floor laughing for several minutes while everyone else stands around looking perplexed, trying to understand what exactly I found so funny. And really, I don’t know what’s so funny sometimes. Maybe it’s the tone of someone’s voice, like it was today, or maybe it is me expecting one thing to come out of the other person’s mouth, and something entirely different comes out that I don’t expect. I don’t know, but there are just some times where I find myself laughing hysterically over things that, well, just aren’t that funny. Likewise, sometimes I cry for absolutely no sane reason either. I was reading Harry Potter today (and whatever positive or negative comments you have over that, just keep them to yourself….too many bloggers are either bragging about not reading it or standing proud and confessing to reading it….I could care less either way, I just wanted to know what happens)and so far several characters have died. No problem. But one relatively minor character bit it and I started crying. Just like I started crying when Eddie Kaspbrack died towards the end of Stephen King’s “IT”. Like, I had to put the book down and take a break, I was crying so hard. Last night I stayed on Skype with Cabana Boy while he dozed off and after I hung up I really fought the urge to bawl. Can’t tell you why. I really don’t know. I just tend to have these weird and innapropriate fits of emotion.

So I guess it seems, first and foremost, I am chronically innapropriate. For some reason that gives me the sudden urge to go cut one in public, pick my nose and pick a wedgie all at the same time. I guess the question is then, would doing that make me laugh or cry?

Tonight has been pretty nostalgic, thanks to the task of editing on of Cabana Boy’s aquiescence bias papers. Twenty pages of statistical data that comes pretty damn close to looking like, well, Dutch to me, but if I know anything, I know grammar (English grammar and this was in English, if you couldn’t glean that from the context…glean….good word….gleeeaaan). I came home after delivering my grandpa’s electric razor to him in the hospital (infected spider bite…and I’m asking all these super know-it-all questions like I have a real clue from watching Venom ER on Animal Planet and while no one has yet to answer them, I sincerely doubt a black widow or brown recluse hitched its way here in a box of foodstuffs and snuck its way into my grandpa’s house unnoticed, so the sparkly husk of knowledge that I can fake is probably useless anyway) and saw the oh-so-fun message that, if I had the time (of course I have the time Jackass! I had no life before we were together, what the hell makes you think I’d suddenly run off and get one now?), could I please take a look at his aquiescence article. I proof read his papers relatively often and I don’t mind at all. My inner dork shudders with anticipation at the opportunity to slash and burn a poorly written sentence. My Robert E. Cook bred sense of editorial prowess practically salivates at the fresh, juicy meat of a dangling participle. My Bob the Builder instinct sees a misspelled word and when the child choir chants :Can we fix it? I heartily respond: Hell yeah we can!

So I done strapped on my edit gear (translation: took my contacts out cause my allergies were drying them out, tied my hair back cause it’s still an oven in Pittsburgh after sunset, and shed my hoodie because I’m a body conscious asshole that does indeed wear a hoodie in 80 degree weather-at least until I feel light headed) and got to work…on all 15 pages of text (prior to this the average paper was like, 3-7 pages).

About two pages in I got distracted, cut and shaped my nails and came back. That’s when I decided to focus. I muted Lifetime Television, started playing one of my favorite albums, and really got down to the dirty work. And y’know what? I really liked it. Not only did part of me feel sort of super cool like one of those scenes from a hit tv show where the female lead detective/investigator/scientist type is researching the salvation of the world as we know it, but it was also very gratifying to feel like I was, I don’t know, actually doing something. I realize that what I do has a purpose and that I am important to the kids as much as they are important to me, but you have to understand. In the daycare world, especially with kids 3 and younger, things never really solidify. Every day is a meandering through the hours, preventing excessive amounts of chaos, just trying to have the daily routine go relatively smoothly. An art project? The kids scribbles with three colored pencils for about a minute, yells, “I’m done!” and dashes off to snatch a matchbox car away from another kid. Highlights of the day may be someone going pee pee in the potty or another person not throwing a tantrum when dad drops her off in the morning.
With this editing stuff, I feel like an adult with a purpose to finish something. To polish it off and to help it go somewhere. I feel like I used to back in the day, when I was 18 and ambitious and striding towards some bigger, cooler, more adult thing. In my current world of adulthood, the one where I’m always sort of drifting around living from check to check, changing my plans bi-yearly, I think I’m less secure than I was when I was 18. I am certainly working to change my current state of affairs, but on days like today, where time oozed by like the snot from a toddler’s nose, it was good to see that there is some spark of that studious, academic Korie lying somewhere underneath the hectic, distracted, daily Korie that I seem to have become.

Finis!