Lazy Sundays - Featuring Twilight Spoiler So Don't Read It If You Are One of Those People Who Get Freaked Out By Spoilers, OK?

cat and green
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Last week I went to Mr. K's used books. For once I had the intelligence to bring a list of possibly decent authors with me so I was spared the usual total blankness that overtakes me whenever I walk into a book or video store. I swear, when I'm just sitting around I can remember the names of dozens of authors I want to read and all the titles of the movies I want to see but the minute I walk through the doors, poof, it's all gone. I react more or less the same way I did when I wandered into TJ Maxx recently for the first time in years: I turn into Goggling Fool Just Down the Mountain From the Cave Where She Has Spent Her Whole Life. "Ooooh," I say, "Shiny! Lookee there! Wowee! What's that?" and bam, my entire long term memory has vanished and been replaced by pure bemusement. This is how I end up leaving used book stores with paranormal romances featuring alien talking dog lawyers and movies about more or less the same thing. This time, though, I had a list and so I have been pretty happily working my way through a pile of relatively decent books, even if one of them was just a lengthy paean to the joys of dying in battle, preferably with a silver axe by your side.

Audrey, meanwhile, has been reading the Twilight series. I have avoided this thing like the plague, because I've read all too much about it on the internet and know that I would be immediately hooked, absorbed and unable to come to until I crawl out the other side feeling vaguely disgusted with myself. I know enough about Twilight from reading the online mockery, actually, that I was able to completely spoil the plot for Audrey by saying, innocently enough, "So, has she had the vampire baby yet?"
"MOM!" screamed my daughter, "She does not! Vampire baby?"
"Oh I'm sorry," I apologized insincerely, "I'm totally making that up."
"You are not," said Audrey, looking at me closely. "Vampire baby?"
"Well," I said, "It's not like it claws its way out of her or anything."
"MOM!!"

Now whenever she walks in the room, bemused from another six hour session of straight Twilight, I raise my hands above my shoulders, hook my fingers like claws, stick my teeth out and say "RAR, RAR! Vampire Baby! Rar!" I find this endlessly amusing. It breaks the monotony of trying to cure Theo of his obsessive barking disorder by using positive reinforcement and lengthy calm lecturing. "Use your tail, not your bark." I say in my best Romper Room voice. "Remember, use your tail and ears! We're not going to bark today! You'll get a gold star for using your tail!" and then I pet him. It is easier said than done to pet a dog continuously when he isn't barking. Rar! Rar!