City Mouse

One thing that I still find mind-blowing on a daily basis, is Gigi's ability to tell me about her view of the world and how she thinks this crazy world works. Seriously, that kid makes my head explode by making mah poor poor brains working overtime each and every day. Throw in some over-the-top tantrums that come outta the blue and you've got one momma with a huge head'plosion.

Recently she went to the park with her dad where they discovered an injured mouse. They stood over the struggling creature, who couldn't walk very well according to SB, and talked all things mouse. SB was trying to figure out a way to put the mouse out of it's misery without permanently scarring our daughter anymore than we already have with our particular style of parenting called CHAOS RULES. But he couldn't.

That's one of the many things I love about SB: he thinks of ways to make the mouse comfortable, yet when he mentioned an injured mouse to me, I think about the likelihood of that damn mouse giving my kid lice or ticks. He is a ying to my yankeedoodledandy OCD.

Anyhow, there was more to the story that didn't involve the mouse and I promptly forgot about the rodent-portion of the park recap.

That night, I pulled the short stick and took first shift for the over-the-top, elaborate, completely out of control bed-time routine Gigi has trained us to follow. We need a Nanny 911 intervention of the cosmic kind STAT. Thinking about bedtime makes me curl up in the corner and rock uncontrollably. Worthy of a post but I'm too tired to write it.

So yah, it was my turn to go more insane. We read a pile of books, discussed this week in politics, dissected the most recent episode of Make Me A Supermodel (I want my girl to be well rounded or at least neurotic and superficial), before moving on to "This Day In Review" portion of the sleep(less) routine.

As I lay next to her she brought up the injured mouse again. Suddenly she leaned in towards me and asked how the mouse became injured. I hesitated - I didn't know the story and what if she was recording this conversation and I somehow implicated myself in the assault of this rodent? I watch 48 hours and Dateline when I'm too lazy to locate the remote and I've seen what can happen to a few misplaced words.

I took the safe route and said I had no idea because I never saw no stinkin' mouse (double negative? So I saw the stinkin' mouse? I'll never tell - or never not tell - confused? so am I, welcome to my world). But this answer did not satisfy her. Again she asked, how the mouse came to be injured.

Against the advice of my lawyer (the one who sits on my shoulder and sings dirty limericks to the tune of CCR songs into my ear - between dispensing of legal advice), I hazarded a guess about the mouse's physical ailments: maybe he fell off a rock or maybe he was caught by a cat (always blame the cat).

She shook her head while saying "no" in a hushed tone. She looked me straight in the eye and said "Clowns Mommy, it was clowns".

Once again, definitive proof that SHE IS MY CHILD. Clown hating is apparently genetic.