No fewer than seven people on my livejournal friends list posted yesterday to say that the Serenity trailer is online, so I’m guessing that you all already know it.

It is just as fantastic as they all say.

Can’t wait for September.

And Sheepy, I am dying of envy.

The forty-ninth parallel is the border between Canada and the US, right?

I panicked in the shower this morning because I am just that much of an idiot. Ugly dark red marks peppered my left shoulder. OMG, thought I, I’ve contracted some sort of terrible American skin disease. I thought my whole body was going to turn like that, and I’d have to start wearing a mask lest small children scream in terror at the sight of my disfigured skin.

Then I remembered that I’d used that shoulder to lug the heaviest car seat in existence by the tether strap through no fewer than three airports. I’m bruised! Damaged in the name of safety.

It was worth it though. Both flights were nearly empty, so Munchkin got to have her own seat. Across the aisle from me, another mother sat with her little boy of about the same age. He was not restrained in a car seat, and he spent the entire flight trying to break loose from her and take off down the aisle. She appeared quite harried by the time we touched down in Seattle. Hah!

Munchkin was as good as gold and played happily in her seat for the entire flight. As a result, I was much more relaxed than the other mother. Unfortunately, while we were still okay when we arrived yesterday morning, by the afternoon we had reached a state of extreme crankiness and exhaustion. Four AM is an indecent hour to have to rise to catch a plane.

All is better today though after a good night’s sleep. It is good to be here.

So we went to the park.

In this park is a small lake.

In the shadier parts of this lake, small chunks of ice still float as a remnant of winter.

Along the bank of this lake walked two small children of age four or five or so. They played along the edge and reached climbed up on a rock then climbed back down again and crouched down to fish out bits of ice.

Said my husband: that’s horrible. I’d never let Munchkin loose like that.

Said I: Well they are a good deal older than Muchkin, and there is such a thing as over-parenting.

I’d later agree with him. My judgment was based on the faulty assumption that their parents were in fact just out of our sight but still plainly in view of the children. As we made our way along the lakeside, and the children made their slow progress toward us still stopping from time to time to reach in the water and play with the ice, we realized that there were in fact no parents to be found.

Stupid parents.

Then the little boy leaned over to far and fell in. It was shallow, but I imagine icy water must have been quite a shock. M helped him out, then took the stroller from me and followed along in presumably was the direction of his parents.

The poor little boy was howling as he walked by this time. Aha, thought I, now his parents will surely hear and come running from behind one of the many groups of trees that might be blocking our view of them.

Once again I was wrong as still no parents appeared.

In the meantime, I had a chat with Little Miss Smartmouth who didn’t want to help what I thought was her brother (turns out he wasn’t) and refused to head in the direction where her parents were thought to be. As I didn’t feel comfortable dragging a stranger’s child off with me, I had no recourse but to stand there and wait.

Eventually the boy found his parents and the girl’s parents (they were a group) came after her. She ran from them, not wanting to go back, and they scolded and yelled, but who was going to scold and yell at them?

We’d watched the children play alone for quite as we walked toward them along the shore. The lake fortunately happened to be rather shallow there, but you can’t count on it being like that everywhere along the bank. Sometimes it can drop off rather suddenly.

And shallow or not, icy water provides such a shock that it is pretty much always dangerous. The child had trouble struggling to his feet and climbing out even in the shallows.

What is wrong with these people?

So I came across an article titled Santorum: DeLay Needs to Answer Questions this morning and read it as meaning that DeLay needs to answer questions about Santorum.

Heh.

Gotta love Dan Savage.

Everyone was doing this a bit ago. I checked the answer key, and I can’t for the life of me figure out which question I got wrong. I should have gotten them all right. And the statistics are rather meaninlgess as thirth-something percent of people scored higher than I did in a section where I got one-hundred percent, and the test just doesn’t let that happen. But here:

Just a little bit ago, Little Munchkin Girl brought the nursing pillow to me and held it up while saying “na-na? na-na?” This is her normal way of telling me that she wants to nurse these days.

But then while I was taking the nursing pillow back over to our preferred nursing chair and sitting down, she went and found the television remote (which I’d left on the edge of the counter in the kitchen for some reason, and she could just barely reach it to get it) and brought that over to me. Hee! My littel girl knows me too well.

I miss the days of being able to read or even write on the computer while nursing. I used to get some great reading done in the nursing chair, mostly back in the newborn stage when we’d seemingly spend all day there. Or I’d put her in the sling and write on the computer while she nursed and then napped. These days trying to do either of those things results in little nursing and a battle of epic proportions because she just needs to be the one to hold my book for me (usually turning the pagse backwards) and loves to pound on any keyboard within reach (No, no, not my darling new laptop, please! She has her own keyboard, even, but for some reason she prefers mine.)

The ice cream truck just drove by. First time this year. It was playing “I am a teacup, short and stout.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard that from an ice cream truck before.

It’s quite warm out. I’ve had the front door open all day, and all of the snow has melted from our yard. Really, all of it, even the huge mountain of hard-packed snow left from shoveling our driveway. We joked that that wouldn’t be all gone until July.

It’s still early April though. I doubt we’ve had our last snowfall before summer. It seems impossible it could go from this to cold again though.

My foot is absolutely disgusting. I have three blisters on my little toe alone. Or rather, I had three blisters until one of them popped leaving an ugly, red, raw mess in it’s wake.

I also have a two other toes with one blister each, a blister on the bottom of my foot, and a blister on the heal. And have I mentioned OMG the pain that is walking? Especially walking in shoes?

And yes, I will be buying new shoes very shortly. This is all the result of the snow melting enough that I could put away my winter boots and walk for two hours in shoes that I hadn’t worn in a year or so. They didn’t do this to me last summer.

And Munchkin is little-miss-cranky-pants because she is bored and wants out of this house right this isntant, but I can’t think of anyplace to take her that doesn’t involve me doing quite a bit of walking, and I am so not up for that just now.

Could someone just do me a favor and, like, cut off my foot so that I can get a prosthetic? Because, once again, OMG the pain that is walking.

Little Munchking Girl just gathered up an armful of pajamas and other clothes that her lazy mama left on the floor. She carried them over to the gate at the top of the basement stairs and is now trying to figure out how to get through with them.

We think that she’s attempting to do the laundry. What a good girl.

The cutest bit is that she found the sling and is wearing it as if to carry a baby (well, sort of - it’s mostly dragging on the floor behidn her). If M. isn’t home to watch her, I usually carry her in the sling while I do laundry because I can’t trust her up here by herself.

Except she’s now dropped the laundry and brought the sling over to me and is currently whapping me with it and saying “upupupupupupupupupupup,” so I must end this now.