Miscellanea involving Fabio

Today is not as good a day as yesterday.

Well, let me clarify. Today was a good day but the things that made me happy yesterday have vanished like vapor from your innards on a cold winter morning (which is not what we are experiencing, by the way. Who knew that January in Oklahoma would be a balmy 58 degrees?!)

My kitchen counter is no longer clean. In fact, I have a bag of unopened brown sugar sitting on top of a bulk canister of dishwasher detergent, which probably violates some kind of health code, and the house floors have been assaulted because Maggie's teacher, in an incident of demonic possession, had her class decorate paper bells with silver glitter.

I hate glitter more than I hate swings, which is saying something. Swings at least have self control and stay where you put them. Glitter, on the other hand, emotes everywhere. It taunts you with its little dots of shininess, saying, "Are you happy? 'Cuz I am! I love to sparkle! Whee!"

Glitter was also a source of frustration for Mia this morning when she discovered that the jeans her father picked out for her to wear today were without adornment, simply plain. She said they were ugly brown and she needed to wear pretty jeans with sparkles. The debate escalated. At some point during the hysterical sobbing I might have heard some of the following comments:

"I'd rather have pretty pants than a pretty heart!"

"Daddy is not doing his job right now! He's being mean!"

"Daddy is breaking my heart – and he's breaking my life!"

"Why won't you let me choose my own pants?! They go on my own body!"

I'm having trouble with this. I thought we had a four year old. Isn't this supposed to come in about 10 years? And if it's looking like this now, what do we have coming?! Any suggestions, all ye parents? We need help!

The day did improve, minus the pant breakdown and the glitter explosion.

For reasons I cannot yet explain, we're drinking some crazy juice this semester (no, not that kind. We're strictly non-alcoholic over here, though I often think that parenting would be plain hysterical if I had some hard liquor every evening as they did in the olden days of the aristocrats); Mia is learning a bit of Latin.

We practiced the conjugation of the word "love" today. It works exceptionally well if you shout it while jumping on a trampoline. There are two things I keep thinking as we work on this:

1. That Italian tire shop owner, Luigi, in the movie Cars who insists that Lightening McQueen should have white-wall tires. He says, "No,no,no,no! You don't-a know what you want. Luigi know what you want. Blackwall tires - they blend into the pavement. But-a this...white-wall tires! They say, 'Look at me! Here I am! Love me.'" Somehow he gets that "love" to have five syllables and a deep, sophisticated meaning.

2. Fabio. This may seem a bit out of left field and you may not even realize that Fabio was the hottest dude to grace the cover of millions of romance novels, but there you have it, the mystery is solved. Apparently women who love romance novels love Fabio. (This was before he broke his nose on a roller coaster when he hit a bird. What are the odds!)

Anyway, I took Latin in college and my teacher was Fabio. Well, maybe not specifically THE Fabio of the novels, but it was a Teaching Assistant whose name I do not recall because I called him Fabio in my head. My Fabio was a youngster who spent his time studying Latin (an unspoken, verbally dead language yet constitutes 50% of English vocabulary) and jousting. He would travel to Latin festivals all over the country, dress up in old fashioned clothing, have sword fights, speak latin and participate in other things that may or may not have involved little clothing and oil wrestling. The end.

So, in recap, today was nice but not as nice as yesterday, I really need someone who would just take over my life and start cleaning my house before we die of diphtheria, my child's teacher likes glitter, which causes me to seriously doubt her sanity, my child is living a broken life with a broken heart, and Latin is the language of love in our house.

Oh, and I made a really tasty dip for my tortilla chips, which is bringing me so much satisfaction as I munch on it that perhaps I will have to reassess my evaluation of today and move it up. Hm…

The end.