Today's the Day the Teddy Bears Have Their Picnic

When I was a kid, my mom bought me a bunch of tapes.  Most of them were geared towards building my self-esteem (because my mom failed to realize that was fine, it was my esteem for others that was lacking) but one of them was just a normal children's tape.  Regular kids' songs to sing along with in the car and that sort of thing.

That tape was the source of one of the great terrors of my formative years:  Track number six.  I always knew it was coming, lurking just beyond the ominous silence that followed the joyous sounds of The Hokey Pokey, but I was still never quite prepared for the disturbing falsetto or vaguely menacing lyrics of The Teddy Bear's Picnic.  I can't, for the life of me, figure out who thought that was a good idea to sing to children, but he or she is clearly a genius because scaring the shit out preschoolers is hilarious. 

The concept alone, toys that come to life, is creepy enough.  They're clearly up to no good, too.  Innocently intentioned teddy bears would not need to be so sneaky.  And the line about all the "marvelous things to eat and wonderful games to play," shortly followed by the outright threat, "It's lovely down in the woods today, but safer to stay at home," can only be interpreted one way:  The bears obviously consider hunting the children a fun activity prior to eating them.  Let's not overlook the creepy carnival music.  And the positively gleeful tone of someone who clearly wants to see stray kids massacred by Satan possessed balls of stuffing.  Then it's all nicely rounded out with jarring shifts between lighthearted frivolity and sinister warnings.  Awesome. 

I'm not even kidding, I'd lie in bed for hours, watching my stuffed animals for any sign of movement.  At one point, I started removing them from my bedroom before I fell asleep.  My mother, unaware of how terrified I was, would stumble across them in the hallway, assume I'd simply left them out, and bring them back in.  I'd wake to find them staring at me through glass eyes, no doubt waiting for just the right moment to tear open their mouth stitches and reveal row after row of needle sharp teeth.  No wonder I had so many childhood nightmares.

Apparently, it doesn't have the same effect on Pie.  We've been listening to that song on repeat for the entire week.  The theme of her drama camp is--you guessed it--Teddy Bear's Picnic.  And that is her favorite song out of the whole set.  (On a side note, she hates Bare Necessities.  Who the hell hates Bare Necessities?  There is something wrong with my child.)

Anyway, you'd think twenty-five years would be enough time to come to grips with this.  You'd be wrong.  Since starting her class, Pie's taken to sleeping with teddy bears.  Yes, that is supposed to be plural.  Yes Pie is still in my room.  Moving on.  The minute she's unresponsive to me poking her and asking, "You still up?" everything stuffed is cast straight into the hallway.  Because, you know, a hollow door is totally effective against Satan's minions when they finally do choose to make their presence known.  Still, it makes me feel better, at least until I wake up to pee and find them all right back in my bed.  My family seems to find scaring the shit out of me almost as hilarious as I find scaring the shit out of preschoolers. 

Her show is tomorrow, at some ungodly early hour.  Unrelated, but definitely worth mentioning, the program has been an amazing experience for her, and the instructors could not be more wonderful.  She also has a solo that she is insanely excited about and I'm so happy for her!  The whole thing is adorable beyond words and we'll definitely do it again.

But yeah, super early and I really do need to talk myself over that pile of bears in the hallway and back to bed.  If I never post again, it's because I've been dragged off to that torture chamber beneath the trees.  Don't come looking, it's safer to stay at home.

Wish us both luck!

Vacation!

Several years ago, I worked at TGI Fridays.  I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned that at some point and I'm also sure that no one reads this anymore anyway but there it is again.  At first, I loved my job at TGI Fridays, however, after about a year I decided to give sobriety a chance and realized my job at TGI Fridays was actually some special form of hell.  It was worth it because I actually met two of my very best friends there (yes, real friends, this isn't about me talking to myself again) and I probably made a good amount of money, but I drank most of that so it doesn't count.

It's also, as my friend, Friend, reminded me, where I discovered "vacation".

I'm not talking about tropical beaches or interesting museums or neat little cafes or other things normal people think of when they hear the word vacation.  This is a special vacation.

When I got too frustrated or pissed off or overwhelmed from having to talk to people without the assistance of alcohol, I would get a tall glass of soda water.  I would take my soda water and go stand in the back corner of the takeout pick-up area, and close my eyes and hold it right up to my face.  The carbonation would pop against my skin and I would pretend I was somewhere else, preferably where TGI Fridays didn't exist.  On particularly bad days, I would put ice in the soda water and blow in the glass a little so I'd get the effect of a nice, cool breeze/

One day, Friend caught me doing this.

Friend:  What are you doing?
Me:  STOP IT I'M ON VACATION! 

This became common enough that people would ask Friend what I was doing.

Friend:  Oh, she's just on vacation.

For some reason, vacation never caught on with anyone else, but it always made me feel better.

Eventually I stopped working at TGI Fridays and with it, my limitless supply of soda water.  I haven't been on soda water vacation in years.  Don't be sad, though--I didn't stop vacationing altogether.  You may remember this one.  My latest vacation (which is usually the result of my family talking too much about things I don't care about) involves going in the bathroom and turning on all the shower heads as hot as they go and just sitting there by myself.   It's fantastic!

I think tomorrow I'm going to try that with soda water!

I Woke Up This Morning

Apparently.  And that's a great thing, at least for me, maybe not so much for my family or neighbors, but I'm always glad to find I haven't accidentally knocked myself off yet.

Anyway, I woke up and I was thinking to myself, "Self, why don't you blog anymore?  You should really do that!"  So that's what I'm going to do, at least until I run out of things to talk about again.

This plan would be a lot better if I had things to talk about now.

Maybe that's why I don't blog anymore.

Nothing particularly interesting has happened since I last blogged, but what the hell, lets talk about it anyway!

--I bought a tablet.  I tell people this and they get all excited to talk about our tablets until they realize I didn't buy an Ipad or something like that, I bought a Wacom tablet and they don't know what the hell that is.  In the words of George, it was a way to spend several hundred dollars to learn that I still can't draw.

--Also, our good computer is broken, so I can't even use it right now.  It's only been broken for about a week and it's just the power supply, but it makes me hate living.  Rather than look on the bright side (some people would be entirely computerless and/or not be able to fix it themselves) I choose to complain.

--That's because I love complaining!  I've realized how much I love complaining!

--George has started playing Magic again.  He has people over at ridiculous times of day.  Like right now.  It's 6:20 in the morning.  I bake them cookies or cupcakes or whatever and then they get confused thinking he has an awesome wife and he's all, "Seriously, you've never had to listen to her complain."

--My little brother is getting married.  I really, really love my future sister-in-law, but hot damn, George thinks he has to listen to someone complain!  My little brother also graduated college, so that's outstanding!  He's a chemical engineer.  Hooray for him!  And hooray for me because he makes paint for work and booze for fun and can give me both for free!

--I need a lot of free paint because one of our tenants turned out to be a crazy hoarder and we had to evict her.  Unfortunately, we didn't realize that until she'd destroyed the apartment.  Our other tenant cut his work hours to chase his dream of becoming a rockstar.  This didn't mesh with his ability to pay rent.  At least he realized that before also destroying the apartment.

--I need a lot of free booze because most days alcoholism sounds like a good goal.

--I'm turning thirty in September.  I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

--Pie turns five and starts Kindergarten in the fall.  We're homeschooling.  Pie is probably completely shit out of luck.

--She's also decided she's actually a princess and I'm some sort of villain.  That would probably be cute except she tells anyone who will listen all about it. 

Librarian:  Are you making that for your mommy?
Pie:  Oh, that's not my mom, that's my wicked stepmother. 

Stranger at the supermarket:  Aren't you just a little princess?
Pie:  Told you everyone else knows.  You're gonna get in trouble for kidnapping me.

She also refuses to wear pants.  It has to be a dress at all times, regardless of activity.  This is good because revoking her dress privileges is more effective than any other punishment we've tried.  She starts drama camp tomorrow and I can't wait to see what new stories she comes up with.  That might give me something more interesting to blog about.

--Holy shit, it's my dad's birthday.  I literally just realized that, so I guess I have to go shopping today.

Happy Sunday!