Even When the Sun Is Shining, I Can't Avoid the Lightning

Well, this weekend was a benchmark, hallmark, watermark, whatevermark one around here. No, wait, milestone is what I mean. Friday night, The Self attended her first big social/dance. A black number in the style of Stevie Nicks was the chosen attire. Those of you who know her can draw your own mental picture of what those legendary very tight curls look like hanging straight down to the middle of her back. Emphasis on straight. Marsha Brady straight. No curls. Or I'll see if I can get a picture. There are plenty of them with her in the center - they all pack digicams or cell cameras these days and are constantly holding them at arms-length snapping away at themselves with an attrition rate rivaling Grant's at Cold Harbor. Trawl through myspace for any amount of time and you'll see hundreds of pics of teens with big heads and bulging eyes with a slightly asphyxiated look on their faces. She seemed to have had a good time and actually danced with her boyfriend which she described as spasmodic. She and her friend said that the DJ only played rap and hip-hop all night much to their consternation, so they did satirical hip-hop dances in response.

The other milestone is that Super Giant Killer got her first pet - a betta. It's a lovely blue color and is named Harry S. Truman. The whole time I was gathering the fishbowl, food, net, and psychedelic gravel, I was in a complete daze. It was like I was channeling the lives of the millions of fathers preceding me. I could see it all before me and I was powerless to affect a change in the course of events. One morning very soon I will walk in to her room and there will be a floating morass formed from half a can of fish flakes. Every week I will fight with her about cleaning the bowl amid whined protestations such as ick and gross and the words, "I used to wipe your butt!" will form unheard on my lips. I could also hear YHWH's telepathic voice in crystal tones asking me what I was thinking. "I...I just...wasn't," I said aloud, causing heads to turn. And one day I will walk in and he will be floating on the surface and we will bury him in some corner of the yard in a lavishly decorated box rivaling anything the Byzantines ever thought of crafting. I saw all this happening to me, I made the 'you have to take care of it speech', I heard the superlative assurances, saw the beaming look on her face, and nodded my assent. SGK burst into the house and held Harry high in triumph and YHWH looked straight at me with an expressionless face - the face of a fishbowl cleaner - and I just held my hands up in mea culpa and said, "Everyone deserves a crack at it, hon."

Killer's second loose tooth came out today. She still doesn't want to give them to the tooth fairy. After her first one came out, she hid it so well from the tooth fairy, we couldn't find it. This one she put in a ziploc snack bag and wrote 'SGK's Tooth' all over with red and green Sharpies and put it with her homecoming blanket from the hospital.

She and I made our usual Saturday morning outing. We went to Ingrid's for bagels. Then I had a hankerin' to check out some pawn shops, so we visited two or three and I had to explain the complicated nature of short term cashflow problems to a fascinated Killer. She spent most of her time trying to differentiate between garage sales, thrift stores and pawn shops.

I leave you with the poster for the new movie about my life (thank you Grandmother of Europe for pointing it out to me and thanks to The Cinema Trade for the image - hope you don't mind my borrowing it).