In closing

Friends, "Noted and Blogged" has languished long enough with neither frequent updates nor an official closing. Here, then, is its official closing. I have loved this as a place to write about my lovely offspring in their earliest years... which, as everyone will tell you, Go By So Fast, so you must Treasure Every Moment. And they did, and I tried to, and we're all happy and well and at different stages now... which I will continue to write about elsewhere (please email thesandwichedlife at yahoo dot com, or contact me otherwise, if you are interested in where). 

Rest assured that while this particular blog is wrapping up, the tedious midlife crisis continues -- although I'm starting to wonder how long I can continue calling it "midlife" with an increasingly lined straight face. 

With my girls no longer little but not fully grown, my parents getting on in years, and my own self evolving as one does, I certainly have more to write. I hope you'll join me over at the new place. 

Whatever other changes occur, my shoes will still be sandy.

Best,

sandy shoes

Movie night, tween style

As I type, my tween (!) Bean is downstairs hosting her BFFs for a Hunger Games movie "marathon" (there are only two of the films, but at almost 2.5 hours each, watching them both constitutes a marathon) and sleepover. I've been popping down there to check it out from time to time.

Have you ever tried to watch a movie with a room full of 12 year-old girls who've mostly seen it before? They talk. Constantly. Mia knows the movies by heart and loves them, and is quoting every line, about a half second before the line is said. Audrey doesn't like scary parts, creepy parts, or tense parts (did I mention these are thrillers set in a dystopian future?), and is watching through her fingers, asking if every scene is over yet. Olivia talks all the time under any circumstances, so she's talking, all the time. And my quiet, steady Bean is just laughing her goofy laugh and loving all of it. They are awesome.

They have also consumed about a half pound of M&Ms, each. So yeah, I get Mom of the Year.

Mr. Sandyshoes is down there with them, maybe on account of the M&Ms. I can hear him asking the girls, "wait, who just got killed?" from time to time. They are patient with him and explain everything, which makes me smile. When he asks questions while watching a movie with my brother and me, we always admonish him in exasperated unison: "JUST WATCH!" (He asks a lot of questions. Sometimes we have to pause the movie.)

Where's the Peanut? Glad you asked. She would not like this movie at all (it's not set in space, it's not a comedy and/or about sports, and nobody has superpowers -- so, three strikes). Fortunately she's pals with Audrey's younger brother Colin, so our families swapped daughters for the night and the Peanut's sleeping at their house. She and Col are going into 5th grade, so, I suppose, are running out of time for innocent Lego-and-Star-Wars-focused sleepovers. It didn't occur to either of them that there's anything odd about it, but they both know not to mention it to their friend Kyle. Kyle was over at Audrey and Colin's house one day earlier this summer when the Peanut went over. He hadn't expected to see her there, and reportedly blushed, went quiet, and couldn't finish his lunch in her presence. Yikes.

We're having a great summer... when bedtime matters not, and friends can just stay over. Hope you are enjoying yours too!

The what?

The past couple of weekends, we've had some family over to help Mr. Sandyshoes install insulation in the addition we are (that is, he is) building on our little house. They've worked hard and been generally awesome.

As they packed up to head home yesterday, I said, "thank you so much for all your help!" and Mr. Sandyshoes said "the force multiplier was tremendous!"

Such is life with a physicist.

Just lucky, I guess.

So I've been writing professionally, a little bit.

A very little bit. Nothing Mr. Sandyshoes can quit his day job over. But it's a start.

And what do people say, when they ask what I do for work, and I tell them that I write? An astonishing number say something like "hey, how do I get hooked up with a gig like that? Because I could write, too."

Am I alone in finding this to be pretty rude? Actually, the rudest thing someone said was "oh wow, that sounds sooo boring!" I don't know what that person does professionally, if anything. I'm going to assume she's a glider pilot, or a spy, or something.

Some of these people probably can write. Most of them probably can't. I don't know and don't care. I'm just a bit amused at having dipped my little toe into a profession, felt some pride at having my work pretty well-received, and now finding that all of a sudden everyone I talk to could do it just as well as I can, if only they had the time/inclination/connections.

I suspect writers hear this sort of thing a lot.

Here's what I don't say, in response:
"Well geez, how do I get hooked up with a gig like yours? Because I could sell houses/run toddler playgroups/manage an office, too."

What I do say:
"Oh, just lucky, I guess."

(Couldn't be, y'know, working at it. That's crazy talk.)

Back on it

Well, the new school year is fully underway, and all the things that resume in September have resumed. Soccer, band, homework; packing lunches, packing backpacks, packing it in too late and getting up too early. I'm piecing a schedule together though and even regular sleep should resume before long. Unconstrained over the summer, I got into a 1:00 AM - 9:00 AM pattern that Has. To. Stop.

And it shall. Just as soon as I finish this blog post.

One of the activities I've resumed this year, though I arguably have less time for it than ever, is volunteering in the school library. We volunteers check books in and out, reshelve the ones that come back, and help the kiddos find what they're looking for.

This week I was there for a class of kindergarteners. It was their first week in their new school, and their first day in the library. They were awesome. They chose books and lined up. I readied the bar code scanner to check out their books, and we got going. "Hello, it's nice to see you!" I'd say. "Can you tell me your last name please?"

Well, no, actually, several couldn't. But they all told me their middle names in case that would help.

The kids with older siblings at school already are much more confident, as you'd expect. They march right up to the desk. "I'm Emily. You probably know my brother, Scott?" Hee! No, I don't. But I'm glad to know you, Emily.

One boy told me his name was Isaac, and I checked his books out. Then he showed up again with different books and said he was named Caleb. I was so confused, and a bit frustrated, because he insisted his name was Caleb even though he had moments ago told me it was Isaac. You see where this is going, even though I didn't: Identical twins, with identical haircuts, dressed identically. I had to apologize to Caleb when I figured out there really was an Isaac. Neither of them had mentioned a brother! And I thought, um, parents? Identical twins in the same class and you give them identical haircuts and dress them identically in the first week of school? That is some sense of humor at work there. But it worked out. I will figure out a clue, or their teacher will give me a hint, how to distinguish them. Or I'll guess, and be right half the time.

My favorite kid so far is the little girl who strode up to the desk with a pile of dinosaur books in her arms. She plopped them down. "Phew! Hi! I'm Shannon! I'm going to be a paleontologist when I grow up!" A little voice chimed in from the back of the line: "She knows all about dinosaurs already. She's going to be a great paleontologist." Excellent. Some of my favorite people are paleontologists, and it makes me happy to see newly self-declared ones.

So I am reminded that I love volunteering in the library, even though I don't have time for it.

Now if I could only fix my bedtime problem...

What a difference a year+ makes, right?

Actually not so much. Life continues to be really good, thankfully.

The Bean just turned 11. She got a new bicycle, and pre-ordered the next Rick Riordan book. It comes out on October 8; she'll have read it a half dozen times by Halloween.

The Peanut, earlier this month, realized that 1) it is, in fact, August, and 2) September is next. She did a little fist pump/victory dance thing in the kitchen. That is how psyched she is to start fourth grade.

This morning, I asked them to finish up their "Dig Into Reading" logs for the public library so that I could turn them in for them when I went down there later. (The logs are due today, if you want to participate in the ice cream social/puppet show event that marks the end of the summer reading program). The Bean handed me a log with attachments, saying that she only wrote down books that she actually liked or would recommend. She is a reading machine.

The Peanut has been reading a lot, as well. They are both enthusiastic readers. It's the accounting for it that trips the Peanut up, a bit. She doesn't like to have to keep track of these things. Tell her to read a book, and she's happily absorbed for hours. Tell her to write down what she read and for how long, and she can't find a piece of paper, or didn't look at the clock, or doesn't remember the author. You see how it goes. Anyway she sat at the kitchen table, pencil in hand, trying to come up with a list of things read that's respectable enough to turn in to the library.

She wanted to know if the subtitles from the part of that X-Men movie* where the evil guy is in Russia might count as summer reading? "Probably not, but I did read them, Mommy."

Can't argue that.

Evidently our vacation has been more cinematic than literary. We watched all the X-Men movies. And for the record, there are also subtitles in part of Star Wars.**

She also wrote down that every week she reads all the police reports in the local newspaper. Our recent favorite is one in which a man walked into the police station early on a Saturday morning to report that someone had stolen his pants the night before. Said pants were later discovered in the bathroom of the man's house.

It's cool, living in a town where so much of the crime is imaginary. It's also frequently the best part of the newspaper.

So that's been our summer. We've swum at the lake, played with friends, done Camp Invention and archery camp and summer basketball and generally whatever else we felt like doing.

Mr. Sandy has been working flat-out on a very exciting scientific proposal. He surfaces for meals, and to oversee plumbers and such. Someday, our addition will be done. Someday.

Me? I tried stand-up paddle-boarding for the first time, which was really fun. I sprained my ankle playing backyard badminton, which was really not. I've been writing professionally a wee bit, which is excellent. I need a new computer, which is not. All is well, on balance.

Still a few weeks' worth of fun to fit in before school starts. I wonder if there are any subtitles in the Batman movies?


*X-Men: First Class
** It's the part where Greedo the bounty hunter finds Solo in the cantina in Mos Eisley. But you knew that, right?

The words that don't fail say this:

A friend's husband died unexpectedly this week. Dave was 46, very fit, ate a vegan diet. He was a beloved father, husband, and friend. He coached Little League baseball and little girls' basketball. He was a handsome man of energy and good humor.

He and my friend were supposed to be celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary today. Instead, she's planning his funeral. There is no rhyme or reason to the world sometimes. 

Their children are the same ages as mine. I imagine each of our friends is taking a private mental stroll down "If That Were Me" Lane. It is unfathomable. I can't help but think I couldn't be half the things to our girls that Mr. Sandyshoes is to them. I can't teach them what he'll teach them, can't be the role model he is, can't, can't, can't. So much he does, I can't.

But that wouldn't be the point. Our partners are irreplaceable, period, as are we. It would be an unfixable break, an unfillable hole. A little girl is going to grow up saying "my Dad died when I was 8," and it's just dumb luck that it isn't my own little girl. We are, all of us, any given heartbeat away from our lives turned upside down.

Love like there's no tomorrow, people.  Yes, it's impossible to sustain that energy, that urgency, through every interaction with our dearest ones, let alone with every other human we encounter. But do keep perspective. Do remember what matters and doesn't. Be good to each other. Plan a long life, sure! - and fill each day of it with words and acts of love, because plans go awry, and all you really have is now.

Hands up all who'd rather save sleep than daylight.

I do not appreciate Daylight Saving Time, and not only because of everyone calling it Daylight "Savings" time all over the place, as if I need another thing to correct.  The semi-annual sleep adjustment is a little burr under the saddle I'd rather have removed, is all.  I just want to leave time the hell alone. 

Even the Bean needed waking up this morning. She's usually up before anyone, and on her most helpful days, she makes breakfast, puts the water on for my tea, and lays out all the ingredients for me to make lunch for her and her sister. That Bean is awesome. You tell her she's awesome, and she says, "I know," but you can tell she's trying not to grin.

I think maybe this will be my new candidate litmus test. Promise me you'll do away with time changes... I don't care whether we stick with daylight saving or standard time, just pick one and don't change it... and you have my vote.

That, and don't appoint any more wacky originalists to the Supreme Court, ok?  OK.

I don't think they're sugarplums.

Cripes, I hate it when the Peanut wigs out in her sleep.

We still keep a baby monitor in the basement for when we're watching a movie and wouldn't be able to hear the girls if they called us from two floors up. One night we were watching something... a thriller, I wish I could remember which... and I heard the Peanut call "Mommy! MOMMY!" So up I dashed, and when I reached her, she was standing in the middle of the room, completely still, eyes wide open but unfocused. She turned her head to me, unblinking, and whispered, "something's coming... closer... closer..." 

Yikes. I have read enough Stephen King and watched enough creepy psychodrama to be thoroughly freaked out by this. "What's coming, Peanut? What is it?" No response, just those huge open eyes. I put her back to bed. She had no memory of it the next morning, but of course I will never be able to forget it. She's talked in her sleep since she could talk at all, and her sudden utterances can be jarring, but that's one for the record books.

As a toddler she used to wake up in the middle of the night in tears, unable to explain why she was awake or upset. Other times she'd wake furious and insist something was wrong with her toe, or her foot. Probably it had pins and needles from how she'd been lying on it. This kept happening from time to time, always her foot hurt, and there was no making it better. You just had to wait till she drifted off again.

A few weeks after "something's coming..." we heard "Mommy! MOMMY!" then silence. Again, "MOMMY!" and I went upstairs, sort of dreading it. This time she was still in bed, but propped up on her elbows, eyes open. I checked for all the obvious things... fever, wet bed... nothing. Phew. But she wouldn't respond to me. She'd recoil when I touched her, thrash around like crazy, and yell "MOMMY!" really loudly even right after I said "What?! I'M RIGHT HERE!" After several minutes of this she sat up and said "Mommy! Some people just STAND THERE, when you need them to MOVE!" then lay back down and fell quietly asleep.

It's true you know. Some people just stand there, when you need them to move. 

Last night, I heard her yelling the Bean's name. "Bean! BEAN! BEAN!!!" I got upstairs to find her jerking around in bed, completely agitated, not responding to my voice, though she stopped yelling for her sister and started yelling for me. She'd be still for two seconds and then jerk around and yell again.

I never know whether to wake her up, or wait it out. But the more this happens, the more inclined I am to wake her up as much as I can. She can't seem to shake herself out of whatever has her upset, and it's clearly not fun.

This time I sat her up and talked to her gently but firmly, in a serious voice, saying her name, and to wake up enough to answer. "Mommy! I don't know why I can't keep still!" she said. "I keep having... visions?" (Oh lord.) "It's hard to explain... everything is going really slowly, and I don't know why!" "Are you awake, or asleep, Peanut?" "Mostly asleep..." and she lay back down and was out cold.

Visions.  Something coming closer... closer. I think I liked it better when it was just her foot.

I am the Lorax. I speak for... well, Universal Studios, I guess.

I'm going to be a wet blanket on this one. I don't think a movie should have been made of Dr. Seuss's book, The Lorax. Remember the Lorax? Who "speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please"?  The folks responsible for Despicable Me made a movie of it.

That is, they churned out an uninspired, bland, predictable story to justify charging people to see a movie-length CGI production featuring some elements of the original. They call it "Dr. Seuss's" The Lorax, but it isn't really. It's hard to imagine that Dr. Seuss would've been down with the idea of Lorax-based merchandising. 

the original

I was planning to refuse to see it out of principle; then the Peanut was invited to a Lorax birthday party, so as long as she was going to see it, the Bean wanted to, and I was kind of stuck. 

So here's what it is. Thneedville is a walled community without trees, where fresh air is supplied by a corporation run by an evil little man and his thugs. Nobody minds. Our hero is a kid who loves a girl who paints pictures of trees on her house and dreams of seeing a real one. To win her affection, he goes off to find her a tree, and locates the Once-ler, who in intermittent flashbacks tells the story of what happened to them.

It's boring. They made The Lorax boring. There's very little of the original text in the script, and a lot of nothing added to fill time. Betty White (voicing the hero kid's Grandma) and Danny DeVito (voicing the title role), Zac Efron and Taylor Swift, cool as they are, didn't wow me. 

Adding to the wretchedness:  it has songs. The young Once-ler carries around an electric guitar, and now this is a musical.

They took The Lorax, stripped it of its simplicity, wisdom, and wit, added flat, stock characters and music not worthy of a good advertisement, threw in some obligatory cute animal bits, and spat it back out at a public ready to open their wallets. Universal Studios hasn't missed a trick - the movie contains several sequences that will make great rides in their theme parks.

Remember the villain played by Ken Jeong in Furry Vengeance? Basically the same villain here. Remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Add fins, and you got yourself some Humming-Fish. Thneedville with its bottled air is not unlike the spaceship carrying everyone around in Wall-E. I don't think there's an original angle in this whole film.

If you see it, you won't have a horrible time. It's not actively unpleasant (except for the singing, gah!). You might even like it. My problem comes from setting the bar too high -- from believing that anyone who really read and understood this story, with its message about conservation and corporate greed, would never turn it into something as vapid and forgettable as this, let alone stamp Loraxes on stuff and go "biggering and biggering and biggering and biggering." In an arrangement that busts the irony meter into tiny outraged splinters, this Lorax is now being used to sell cars. I am the Lorax! I speak for the Mazdas!

It's the height of cynicism to have done this, and I hope it's a colossal failure.

That said... what an unusually mild winter we're having!

Yesterday wrapped up February school vacation. We're not skiiers or island hoppers (skiing looks fun, but it's the island hopping I could really envy), so we generally stick around. This week's been warm enough to go on a couple of really great walks. Watching my lovely girls "discover" a shallow pool along a trail through the woods of our town's little nature center took me back about four decades.

For a couple years when I was really little, our family lived in a college town just outside Boston. The college campus had a little pond. One fall day my mother packed a picnic and we sat on the grass by the pond and had lunch, then played around for a while. I couldn't have been more than 6. I distinctly remember the sensations of that day; the "ploop" sound of little stones tossed into the water, the endless circles of ripples they made, rough twigs in my hand and the sounds they made flicking mud and water around, cool damp moss at the pond's edge, brightly colored leaves floating about.  I remember it as a Huge Adventure.

I want my girls to have so many memories like this that they don't seem unique. I hope each of my daughters will walk in the woods as an adult and feel that it's a familiar thing, a thing she grew up doing with her mother and her sister who love her beyond measure, so that whenever she does it it's a comfort on some very basic level.  Assuming we can continue to avoid both poison ivy and Lyme Disease, we appear to be on track for these happy woodsy memories to be so plentiful they blur together.

Yesterday afternoon they came across this mushy puddly place in the woods and pretended it was Degoba and they were Yoda and Luke Skywalker. That's a memory I might single out, even if they don't.

So, how are you enjoying public office?

I always said I wouldn't write here about the particulars of serving on the local School Committee (= School Board, in most states), and these days that's probably a better idea than ever. Still, because many people ask me this in passing... let's just say "enjoy" is the wrong verb. "Regret" is the wrong verb as well, for the record. "Endure" is a strong candidate. Oh, I jest! But it can be frustrating.

It's wrecked my blog, for one thing. I don't give time to blogging any more, and I don't feel free to write publicly about a lot of the things that occupy my (admittedly limited) mental real estate these days. What's left? Who wants to read a post about what an unusually mild winter we're having? Nobody, that's who. If Daniel Craig himself called me up and wanted to talk about what an unusually mild winter we're having, I might hang up the damn phone.

Still, I can't bring myself to take Noted and Blogged down. I love some of the pieces I've posted here, I did enjoy (sometimes it is the right verb!) my intermittent writing hobby, and someday I hope to again.

It ain't all bitching and whining.

This is the Bean's Thanksgiving art project. It's a turkey, and its feathers name things she's thankful for. She ran out of room so decided to go in a complete circle.

The Peanut's is harder to photograph - it's a paper chain with something she's thankful for written on each link. She included a lot of the same stuff her sister did (they worked on these "secretly" together in the Peanut's room the day before Thanksgiving), but with the chain format's limitless space she was able to add "hospitals, books, water, a bed to sleep in, trees, a nice teacher, [eye]glasses, a nice contrey, animals, love, a nice school, hollidays, a house, my stuft animals."

Why can't people leave people alone, part the nth

I guess this is as good a place as any for my rant about how Black Friday is emblematic of everything wrong with American culture these days. It isn't enough now that stores have to open at 5:00 AM... now they start at midnight, or even the night of Thanksgiving. So people who work retail have to cut their family holiday short to accommodate our collective lust for competition to buy cheap crap. Yeah yeah, we're grateful, we gorged ourselves to prove it, now get the fuck out of our way or suffer the consequences. Pepper spray is the new elbow to the ribs.

I know that everyone who shops the day after Thanksgiving doesn't behave this way, and I guess I should be thankful that unlike last year, nobody was trampled to death. Still, the whole concept disgusts me. Pffft.

I have some shopping to do today myself, hopefully while Black Friday lovers are still sleeping it off. Not Christmas shopping, which I plan to do only very locally or online this year -- just for groceries. Yet, even with Thanksgiving still visible in the rearview mirror, I can expect to encounter the bells, the bells, the relentless bells.

So I printed out my little notes for the red kettles, politely explaining that my donations go elsewhere while the Salvation Army maintains its position that homosexual people should not only not be allowed to marry, but should be celibate. 

Hopefully I won't forget which pocket holds which paper.  Both my purposes will be amusingly defeated if the red kettle gets my shopping list, leaving me with a scrap of cheerfully expressed social activism to guide me through the grocery store.

a non-update

Yes, I am still here, and no, I never did figure out what that ticking was.

November has been... intense. Memorial services for two terrific, accomplished, vibrant and beautiful women. My mother's stay in the hospital for hip replacement surgery and rehab, and my father's stay with us during some of that. A four-day conference of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. Continued construction on the house. Meetings, playdates, parent/teacher conferences, basketball practices, Tuesdays in the school art room, Thursdays in the school library.

Thanksgiving.

All worth writing about, but there is no uninterrupted time for that any more, unless I get up at 5:00 AM, which is how it happened today, but as great as it is to sit at my desk unobserved and undistracted, I could probably have made better use of staying asleep, which I would have if I could have.

Now I hear little feet on their way downstairs, so that's the end of unobserved and undistracted.

I hope your Thanksgivings were all lovely, or, outside the USA, that your November 24ths were just super.

I sense a nap in my near future.

The telltale... what, what, WHAT?

I was just emptying the dishwasher, while waiting for the teapot to boil. Mounted on the wall to the right of my cooktop is a spice rack Mr. Sandyshoes made for me. On hooks at the bottom of it, I hang spatulas, etc. So I'm hanging up some of these utensils. The kettle whistles, I make my tea, and continue unloading clean dishes while it steeps. At some point I notice a faint ticking sound in the vicinity of the spice rack.

Tick.

What could it be? Who would care? It's barely perceptible.

Tick.

But it bothers me because I don't know what is doing it. I assume it is the spoon I see rocking back and forth on its hook a bit after I hung it up, and I go to steady the spoon.

Tick.

Not the spoon. The tick is coming from higher up, within the spice rack, somewhere between parsley and tarragon (yes, they're alphabetized. Yours aren't?).

Tick.

Maybe the change in humidity from opening the dishwasher just after it finished running is causing the wood of the spice rack to expand against the kitchen wall?

Tick.

I press on the spice rack and hold.

Tick.

Hm. That did seem like kind of a stretch. I've emptied that dishwasher hundreds of times and never noticed this before.

Tick.

The ticking is regular. I'm going to time it.

Tick. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand,

tick.

Every four seconds. But what? From where?

Tick.

The pepper mill? I take out the pepper mill, hold it to my ear, feeling foolish now, but something is ticking. This is a question with an answer, and I want the answer, even if it's going to make me feel like a dope.

Tick.

Not the pepper mill. In the wall. I go around to the other side of the wall, which is my laundry room.

Tick.

It's even less perceptible here. Definitely on the spice rack side of the wall.

Tick.

Folks, I wish I had an end to this story. Something in my wall is still ticking. Every four seconds. Quietly, but distinctly, ticking.

I predict it will continue through tomorrow, and stop just as Mr. Sandyshoes gets home from his trip. There won't be any point in telling him about it, but I probably will. Uh-huh, he'll say. The spice rack is ticking. Sure thing. Don't worry baby, I'll get right on that.

4th grade homework is impossible

The Bean's favorite subject is "science." Under that umbrella, her class spends time on various topics in turn. The current unit is about weather, the atmosphere, etc. So she brought home a study guide that has terms she wanted me to quiz her on (humidity, greenhouse effect, front, anemometer...) and questions she should be prepared to answer (what properties can be used to describe air masses? In which layer of the atmosphere does most weather occur?).

I scanned through the guide, making sure I knew everything she was supposed to learn, plus a little extra for discussions. It's cool -- I had forgotten all about the troposphere being called that. So far, so good.

The last bit of her assignment read "Please review the symbols of a weather map and [emphasis mine] be able to predict the weather." And I thought, whoa.

She didn't understand when I told her if she really mastered that last bit she could quit school. I guess some stuff's only funny to parents.

OK, maybe only to me.

This one goes to '11

In amateur rock bands where individual egos trump balanced sound, often one musician will nudge up the volume on his amp, and in a few minutes another one will do it too, and not to be outdone a third pushes his over the volume of the others, leading the first one to realize he's not loudest any more and crank it up, etc., until everyone is at max volume and nobody can even stand to be in the same room anymore. You expect kids in garage bands to behave this way.

Same thing in Presidential primary elections. Florida moved up its primary more than a month, to January 31st (why?). South Carolina and Nevada had to follow suit (why?) and moved theirs to January 14. Iowa is having its caucus on January 3 (why?). New Hampshire's Secretary of State is now saying he'll move their primary into December 2011 if necessary to maintain first-in-the-nation status and comply with a NH state law that says theirs has to happen a full week before anyone else's (WHY?).

This is so flippin' stupid, and I haven't even gotten into the candidates, about whom humorist Andy Borowitz quips "there are people running for President I would not trust to park my car." Hm. Probably best I don't get into the candidates, except to say that Mitt Romney's inevitability train now appears to be leaving the station before the calendar year is even over.

This is so depressing I may forget to complain about the Christmas decorations already up in department stores.

That's gonna leave a mark