I'm tweeting now, for whatever that's worth -- but not under any names anyone might be familiar with. If you're interested in following me, send me an email, and if I know you I'll tell you how to find me.

So, there was a hurricane (which the BG charmingly kept calling a "candy cane"). But I'm so used to the late summer thunderstorms in DC, and Irene didn't have a whole lot of thunder and lightning (I guess maybe hurricanes don't?), so it was kinda anticlimactic. (Also, we are fortunate enough to live in a part of town where the power lines are all underground.)

In other news, Neil Gaiman and Armistead Maupin had a beautiful Twitter conversation:

NG: Oh bloody hell. That's an actual cock crowing outside the window as I try to get to sleep. #welcometothecountryside
AM: @neilhimself Some of us enjoy an actual cock at bedtime ;)
NG: @ArmisteadMaupin I think you need this: instantrimshot.com
AM: @neilhimself I will NOT make a rim pun, I will NOT make a rim pun ...
NG: @ArmisteadMaupin I love and miss you (as does Amanda), and I am proud of you for not making a rim pun.

Finally, the BG started real, live public school on Friday (I know!). Her teacher seems awesome so far -- she has a real knack for putting kids at ease. Also, she said the BG is "a joy." ::beams with pride:: (Also also, she said the BG is "a talker." Ahem. Score one for nurture.)

The other day I was sitting in Starbucks at lunchtime, not too far from the spot where people wait to pick up their drinks. There was a couple standing there, and the way they were standing/speaking, I could hear his side of the conversation clearly, but hers was like the teachers in Charlie Brown specials -- wah wah wah. So anyhow, this is what I heard:

man: How'd everything go?
woman: Fine, wah wah wah wah
man: You picked up the car?
woman: wah wah wah wah
man: No sign of the police?
woman: wah wah wah wah

Maybe it's just me, but I can't figure out how a conversation featuring the question "no sign of the police?" could possibly be discussing something completely legit and above-board.

IF you declare Saturday a TV amnesty day and allow your three-year-old to watch multiple back-to-back episodes of "Wow Wow Wubbzy," and

IF you stay up past your bedtime reading a shit-ton of Gabriel/Sam Winchester slash,

THEN you just might find yourself, as you stagger bleary-eyed through the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning pouring milk in a sippy cup to soothe said three-year-old back to sleep, pondering how one might vid Supernatural to Wubbzy's theme song.

(In case you're wondering: Walden is clearly Castiel, and even though I initially assumed Wubbzy would be Dean, lyrics-wise Widget must be Dean, which means Wubbzy is Sam and Daizy is Gabriel.)

A month or so ago, we bought the BG some sneakers. They light up with each step she takes and they have Spiderman on them (or 'Fiderman, as she likes to call him), and she LOVES them.

Except apparently some unnmamed kids have been telling her that Spiderman shoes are for boys, not for girls.

So we've talked about how you don't need a p@n1s to wear Spiderman shoes, you just need to like Spiderman.

And we've talked about how, even though most of the kids she sees wearing Spiderman shoes are boys, there are plenty of girls who like Spiderman.

But she hasn't ever *met* any of those girls -- which is where y'all come in.

Shamelessly copying from that mom whose daughter likes Star Wars: If you are a girl or woman on my f'list who likes Spiderman, can you comment here? And if you know a girl or woman who likes Spiderman, can you ask her to comment here?

I'm NOT looking for this to go viral or move off of DW/LJ -- I just want to be able to point to this screen and say to the BG, "See, every one of these little pictures here belongs to a girl or woman who likes Spiderman, just like you."

Just got back from a week on the Outer Banks, and it was AWESOME.

There were three families with a total of 4 kids, ages 3, 5, 7, and 10. The BG was the youngest, and the only girl, and she had the time of her life. The oldest kid makes these amazing guns out of paper and tape, with parts that move (e.g. magazines that can be removed and reinserted), and they all spent HOURS creeping up and down the stairwell and jumping out from behind corners and "pshiewing" each other, as the BG likes to say. Plus there was a POOL, and then on top of that the BEACH. Literally the first thing out of her mouth one morning, practically before she opened her eyes, was, "Can we go to the beach?"

Once upon a time I went to the Outer Banks annually, but this was my first visit since Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and the northern towns (Duck and Corolla) are WAY more developed than they were. It's all right, I guess, but now that they've taken on a life of their own, I miss the days when Nags Head/KDH was the center of the Outer Banks. Plus, so many of the houses are just freakishly luxurious. (Our house had 6 TVs, including 4 plasma TVs. IDEK.)

I did get to watch actual HDTV, and I discovered that (to my eye) it gives everything an immediacy (I guess that's the word) that makes it seem taped, rather than filmed. I also realized how much I've internalized the idea that film is superior -- because we'd be watching a decent movie (OK, The Jackal -- so not art house fare, but Willis and Gere and Venora and certainly Poitier aren't complete hacks), and I'd have these weird moments where it reminded me of a soap, and that seemed like a bad thing.

1. The other day on the way to school the BG reminisced about grandpapa's cat that died, and then observed that our cat will die at some point. (The cat's almost 21 and very frail, so this is something we've discussed.) And I said something like, "Yep, everything that's alive eventually dies, people and animals and plants."

And she said confidently, "But not me!"

And I turned to RM and said, "What do I say to that?"

And he said, "Hell if I know."

So we left it like that.

2. Several times on vacation we've had access to a pool, and the BG has really enjoyed playing in the water with me. So when I saw a Groupon offering a discounted membership at a nearby pool, I decided to sign up. We've been to the pool five times since Memorial Day, and she can already dog-paddle all the way across the pool in her floaties!

3. Thursday I zipped my dress up most of the way and waited for an opportune moment to get RM to zip it the rest of the way. But that moment never came, and I forgot all about it, and went to work, and went to some meetings at work, and talked with a bunch of coworkers, and then as I was getting ready to leave work I realized it had been unzipped ALL DAY LONG.

I'm not horribly embarrassed only because I am very sure that 90 percent of the people I encountered would have told me if they'd noticed it, so I figure it must not have been terribly obvious. (It was unzipped to just above my bra strap, and I had my hair down, so maybe it looked like a V back or something.)

I will post the random things Ive been accumulating to post:

--The other day I was reading online and someone said "OMSBJ." I was unfamiliar with this internet acronym, so I called out to my colleagues, asking if anyone knew what it meant. Then I hastily explained, "It might not be safe for work, I found it in Alan Cumming's blog," to which one of my colleagues replied, "Then the BJ might be an issue." Meanwhile I was googling it and discovered it means "Oh my sweet baby Jesus," and both of us had to laugh at how utterly off the mark we were.

--Random quote I love from Ke-dollar-sign-ha: "… come on, brushing your teeth with Jack Daniel's: what girl does that? People are like,'Do you really advocate brushing your teeth with bourbon?' I'm like, 'Yes, actually, I do, every day, for everybody. Especially eight year olds.' I mean, what are you talking about? Of course I don't. Come on."

--The BG has been watching a lot of Kai Lan lately, and OMFG, I hate that show. Every episode has some incredibly heavy-handed lesson, and more than half the time RM & I actually disagree with whatever the lesson is. (For example, when Tolee feels left out after he's eliminated in the first round of musical chairs, the show's solution is for everyone to play a different game. RM and I agree that losing a round of musical chairs is not a problem to be solved, it's something Tolee needs to learn to handle. If he can just be patient until the next player gets eliminated, the two of them can play together.) Her preference for wrong-headed, didactic television aside, the BG continues to be *awesome*.

... explaining to my colleague that I first learned of Osama Bin Laden's death via The Rock's twitter feed (which I was checking to see if it had his reaction to Fast Five's awesome box office performance).

Last night we watched episode 2.10 of Justified.

( Ramble about the role of women on the show; not terribly spoilery, but cut to be on the safe side. )