Losers sweepers!

And that is all.

So it’s day 12 of the South Beach Diet.  I have been doing incredibly well; I haven’t really cheated except for going out for dinner last night.  We went to a murder mystery dinner and the choices were chicken with pasta or brisket with mashed potatoes.  I opted for the chicken (far healthier than brisket) and only ate about 3 forkfuls of pasta, leaving the large majority of it on my plate.  I also ate most of my piece of cheesecake which was a definite no-no but I was able to get back on track right away.

I’ve been careful to explain to the kids why I’m eating the way I am - for example, I love bread too much, so instead of eating one healthy piece of bread I’ll eat the whole dang thing of it, which is not at all healthy.  And I’ll have to top it with a bunch of butter because I just love butter on my bread, so you do the math, it’s just not a good thing for me.  So no bread for now until I get things under control a bit better.

But somehow, they’ve heard that I’m “on a diet”, even though the couple of times I’ve heard them say it I’ve corrected them and explained that I’m just trying to eat healthier because my eating habits got kind of out of control for a while there.  They seemed to accept that just fine.

So today we have been out of the house all day and at about 2:45, B realized we hadn’t eaten lunch yet.  We headed over to the local pizza place on base where they were going to have a big pizza and I was going to eat from the salad bar.  However, 2:45 is Spanish lunchtime so it was packed.  Frustrated, we decided to go to Subway instead (I’d have a wrap).  We got there and again, there was a long line.  So we walked down to the Commissary and they bought pre-made sandwiches and chips and I bought a box of cherry tomatoes and a small plate of meat and cheese cubes.

As we settled down to eat - finally! - the base commanding officer walked by.  He is generally a pretty friendly and likeable guy and I’ve worked directly with him a few times so he knows who I am by name, so when he walked past he said, “Hi, LN1!  How’s it going?”  And my daughter responded directly to him by piping up with “My mamma’s on a diet!”

He chuckled as he walked past, and the rest of us maintained relatively straight faces until he was out of sight, at which point we all erupted in laughter.  My daughter is the Queen of Good Timing.

In my job, I occasionally have to communicate with Spanish people who speak little to no English.  I speak only a small amount of Spanish, and it’s even harder for me when I’m having to speak over the telephone and don’t have the benefit of hand gestures and little drawings to explain myself. 

Today I spoke with a gentleman who was one such Spanish person that spoke only limited English and needed to send me an email.  My name is hard enough for Americans to spell or say, but this poor guy had a really hard time understanding the letters over the phone, and every word, I could think of, including the Spanish letter ese, wasn’t helping him - Sierra!  Sam!  Spam! - and then I thought, “Duh! Spain!”

“Espain?  E?”

“No, S, Spain. ”

“OK.  Espain.  S.”

“Yes.  S-I-”

“I?”

“Yes, I.  Italy.”

“OK, OK, I.  S-I.”

“G, Germany.”

“OK!  Espain, Italy, Germany!”

And on it went through the Ukraine, Roma, Dana-mark, Sevilla, Sevilla, and I guess O he got without help which is good because seriously, is there even a country that starts with “O”??

B: So what were you doing at your friend’s house, Isak?

I: We were playing Pokemon and trading cards! <goes back to eating his hot dog>

B: You know, when I was a kid, we used to trade soccer cards.

Me: You know, when I was a kid, we used to stop the police cars that would drive down the street and ask for baseball cards.

I: Nom nom nom

B: Really? That’s cool. Why don’t they do that anymore?

Me: Probably because someone didn’t get the card they wanted so they sued the police.

I: Nom nom nom

B: No, someone probably got a papercut so they sued the police.

Me: No no no, someone probably sued the police because the guy on the card got the DUI and interpreted that as an endorsement by the police of drunk driving.

I: Nom nom nom

B: No no no, someone probably didn’t get the card they wanted so they went out and got drunk and drove home and killed someone and sued the police because they were the ones that made him go get drunk and kill someone.

Me: You’re so right.

Anja just woke up, stumbled down the hall and snuggled into my lap, pressing her nose against my cheek.  Finally learning that when it’s dark, that means everyone is sleeping, and we don’t talk at our normal volume, which for Anja is 50 decibels.

She whispered into my ear, “Mamma, what is the capital of the United States?”

“Washington, D.C.,” I whispered back.

“Mamma,” she whispered, “I know what the capital of Texas is, you know.”

“Oh yeah?  What’s that?”

“Honolulu.”

I bet I can some cheap flights going to Honolulu, Texas!
Which reminds me:  When I first woke up and checked my email, I got a flickrmail from someone I hadn’t heard from before asking me if I had seen this: 30+ Useful Websites from the website, Dumb Little Man.  That picture has turned out to be my most used photo from flickr from the creative commons license agreement.

“Mamma, when I grow up, do you know what I want to be?”

“Tell me.”

“I’m going to be a shopper and a cooker.”

“Oh. What’s a shopper?”

“A shopper is a person who goes shopping for stuff and people give you money so you’re not poor.”

“Oh.”

“But then I’ll have to get a job, huh.”

“A job, huh? Like what?”

“I’m going to be a person who takes carts back and a cook.”

“You’re going to be a cooker and a cook? What’s the difference?”

“A cook cooks everything. Like dessert.”

“Mmmmm, okay.”

“And I’m going to have four jobs, I’m going to be a teacher and a lifeguard who blows their whistle at people who jump off the diving board when they’re wearing goggles. ”

“And what are you going to do with all your money?”

“I’m going to buy stuff like presents for people who, and, uh, other stuff.”

Getting our daughter to do chores is harder, literally, than pulling teeth.

See those 4 missing teeth? Yeah, they weren’t wiggly. Well, that’s not entirely true. One was at the very beginning of wiggliness. It went from barely wiggly to tooth out in 0 to 60. The first time, she came to me after losing both of her top teeth and asked if any of her teeth were wiggly. Wanting to give her hope, I declared one was just starting to be wiggly, even though in reality it wasn’t but she clearly wanted another answer than “Sorry, no.” An hour later, she came out of her room with blood all over her fingers and her teeth and said, “Mamma! Look! It’s going to come out!” And sure enough, it was hanging by a thread.She freaked out and refused to allow B to help her, and went back into her room. I heard her start freaking out, all by herself, going, “Eh! Ehh! Ow!” and then the thump-thump-thump of her running to the living room shouting, “It fell out! My tooth fell out!”

Right.

So the Tooth Fairy came that night and gave her the standard $2 donation for the tooth registry, and then? She was hooked.

After she wiggled the 2nd non-wiggly tooth out of her mouth, my neighbor asked her why she did that. She said, “Because the Tooth Fairy gives me $2!” My neighbor said, “Couldn’t you just…um…do some chores?” The look Anja gave her translated to “What planet are you from?”and she said, “Nooo, I can just pull out my teeth!”

So now we’re up to 4 teeth. The first that she pulled out over a month ago still hasn’t even so much as come to the gumline yet. I’m not sure what she’s going to do for money next - I wouldn’t be surprised if the hospital called to see if she was allowed to donate her plasma.