Alice's Adventures Underground

parmilial - (pər-mĭl'yəl) - adj.
1. apparently a combination of the words "familiar" and "familial"
2. something we have seen before and have done together
Are we going to our parmilial church today, Momma, or a drifferent church?

When he got back he said, "We need to watch less television in front of her." But what he really meant was You need to watch less television in front of her.

Then he related a story to me about how she'd announced from the back seat of the car out of the blue: "When you kill someone, blood squirts out of their neck. But not if you hit them in the head, then nothing happens."

I try very hard not to watch my CSIs and Mediums while The Dormouse is around watching. When she was smaller, she paid absolutely no attention to television whatsoever so it was easy. If the TV was on, whether it was CNN or Baby Einstein, she wasn't the slightest bit interested. I was very proud of myself, being the television addict that I am, that I was raising a child that didn't care much for TV. While I cannot give up my own television habit, I'd like to think I can teach my children a better way, you know?

But then about a year ago, everything changed. She discovered The Disney Channel and cartoons and that was the end. I can easily minimize my television addiction because I manage to do lots of things while watching: clean the house, get dressed, read, blog, work... But The Dormouse, like her father, is physically unable to accomplish even the smallest of tasks while the television is on. Her mouth hangs open and all other ongoing events in the world blur and fade away from existence. She has trouble doing even something simple like putting on her socks with the TV as companion and we often have to turn it off just to get her to finish the sock-putting-on-exercise, then turn it back on when she's done if it's something she was watching. While KoH is also patently unable to do anything besides drool while the television is on, he's not as into the shows as I am and can easily go without it much longer than I'm willing. So this exposure to violence this early in life is clearly my fault right?

The other night, KoH had his little collection of friends over for pizza. I was feeling my nightly exhaustion and chose six pm as my bedtime (don't judge me!), so he had The Dormouse in the room with them while they were sitting around talking. I woke up for a bit... long enough to overhear the following conversation from the other room:

One dude: "He could feel it in his entrails."

Other dude: "He felt it in his 'entrails'? Is that the right word?"

Other dude: "No... I'd say when you feel something, you feel it in your 'bowels'. Not in your 'entrails'."

Other dude: "Aren't they the same thing?"

Other dude: "When they're inside your body, they're 'bowels'. When they're outside your body, they're 'entrails'."

This is the kind of important stuff they discuss. I shook my head to myself from the other room and went back to sleep. When everyone left, KoH put The Dormouse to bed and I didn't think anything else of it until the next morning when I was fixing breakfast before taking her to preschool. While eating her cereal, she gave me this lecture:

"Mom, I have a bowl inside of me."

"What?"

"A bowl. I have bowls inside of me."

"I don't get it."

"But I don't have trails inside of me... Trails are outside of your body."

I no longer think the problem is that our daughter sees too much of my television programming.

1. My name is not Alice, but I think of myself as her.


2. It goes back to when I moved to DC and I felt like I'd stepped through the looking glass into another world.


3. I am fascinated with the Lewis Carroll books.


4. I think he is one of the first great children's authors.


5. I try very hard not to believe the rumors that he was a pedophile.


6. But mostly I like the music from the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland.


7. I started this blog because my friend Monica started one and it seemed like a good way to get some journal writing done.


8. In second grade, I started playing the violin because my friend, Cheryl, wanted to play the violin and begged me to do it with her.


9. I am such a sheep.


10. Cheryl quit the violin after four months and I went to college on a music scholarship.


11. So there.


12. I am both a WAHM and a WOHM, depending on the day of the week.


13. I was a big fan of WHAM! in high school, but that has nothing to do with my work schedule.


14. To most, it appears I have one child, but I really have three. One who lives with me, one stepchild who lives with his mother and one who is no longer living.


15. I manage to complicate even the simplest of questions.


16. I talk about my stepson seldom in this blog because I want to respect his privacy.


17. He is a wonderful kid.


18. In the ten years we've been married, my husband has had almost as many jobs as I have had my whole life.


19. We met on July 4th when I was basically on a date with another guy.


20. The other guy was a jerk.


21. I didn't get married until I was almost 30.


22. People at church were worried that I was going to "waste away without a husband".


23. They said this to my face.


24. I call my husband The KingofHearts in this blog because that is one of the only truly male characters in Alice in Wonderland.


25. He is bothered by this, as he feels the King of Hearts was an emasculated weakling.


26. I prefer to think that in my version of Wonderland, the King grows a pair and runs off with Alice.


27. He should be glad he didn't end up as The Mad Hatter.


28. He tells people that KoH, my abbreviation for the KingofHearts, is the symbol for potassium hydroxide because he thinks that "sounds better".


29. He is a Big Geek sometimes.


30. I am a Big Geek of a different kind.


31. In college when my friends and I would hang out in the local bar, it was not uncommon to find us doing the melodic dictation for the band that was playing or quizzing each other by saying: "do 120 beats per minute"


32. It's a conducting thing.


33. My daughter is The Dormouse because that's the smallest character in Alice in Wonderland.


34. She is not, and has never been, as "quiet as a dormouse".


35. When I was a kid, my IQ was tested and I was placed in a "gifted and talented" program.


36. I almost failed the fourth grade because of all the instruction I missed when I was pulled out of my regular class to go to the "gifted and talented" program.


37. My 4th grade teacher was not a fan of anything that took kids out of his class.


38. I do not now, nor have I ever felt, "gifted and talented".


39. But I did get to go on some cool field trips.


40. I do not know what my IQ is; I do not want to know.


41. My parents' divorce was final less than a week before my wedding.


42. I joke with my mother that I come from a "broken home".


43. I watch a lotta television.


44. Mostly gory procedural crime dramas like CSI or medical shows like ER.


45. The gorier the better.


46. In another life I could have been a forensic investigator, a criminal profiler or a physician.


47. I even took a class on crime scene investigation.


48. My husband and I have been known to argue in front of company about the formula to determine how long a body has been dead.


49. We are not good dinner company.


50. Unless you want to know the formula for differential temperature equalization.


51. Then you should invite us over.


52. I grew up in the desert.


53. When I look out the window and see that it is sunny outside, I assume it must be warm.


54. Even in January.


55. Conversely, I was born near the Canadian border in the middle of one of the worst snowstorms in years.


56. I do not believe one inch of snow should bring the District to a standstill.


57. But I'll happily stay home when we have "snow days".


58. I am a trained Music Therapist.


59. But I do not work clinically these days.


60. My first major in college was Psychology.


61. I wanted to major in Photography, but didn't because it was too expensive.


62. In my Psych 101 class, we trained the professor to lecture from only the left side of the room by getting the entire class to yawn and stop paying attention to him when he stood on the right side of the room.


63. We told ourselves it was a "Pavlovian Experiment" and not just a "Mean Thing To Do".


64. I do not believe he ever noticed.


65. I minored in music performance back then.


66. During my sophomore year in college, my mentor in music from the time I was in elementary school was imprisoned for molesting some of his students.


67. I was totally crushed and never really trusted a teacher again.


68. I am probably lucky that I was never really in a situation where I was ever alone with him.


69. When I was a child, I wanted to be a veterinarian.


70. I have had an endless stream of pets in my life: mice, fish, birds, cats, dogs, snakes, salamanders, hamsters, rats, guinea pigs...


71. Once, when my neighbor's pet goat got out of their yard, I was able to coax it back in when no one else could.


72. They told me I had a "way with animals".


73. I was very impressed by this and was convinced I was the American James Herriott.


74. This is the same neighbor who paraded around the state with a deformed cat that hopped around like a rabbit.


75. He called it the "cabbit" and told people that it was the product of mating a cat to a rabbit.


76. He was convinced he was going to make a million dollars charging admission to see the "cabbit".


77. He did not end up on the Fortune 500 List, that much I know.


78. My best friend who lived next door to me when I was a kid had a pet hen named "Cluck".


79. I now believe there were a lot of "farm animals cannot be kept in urban areas" ordinances broken in my neighborhood.


80. My husband claims I am "somewhat anti-social".


81. I prefer to think that I'm "just not user friendly".


82. I like people fine when I don't have to deal with their stupidity.


83. This is seldom.


84. I lived in South America for two years while I served a mission for my church.


85. I learned to speak two languages there.


86. A big part of what I did was give immunizations, and teach people about health and wellness, how to be self-sufficient or how to play the piano.


87. It was a lot like the Peace Corps, except with proselyting.


88. My Spanish mostly comes in handy now when I want to yell at men on the street who don't think I know what they are saying about me.


89. When I was in South America, I learned to love Avocado Milk Shakes.


90. They're better than they sound.


91. I am addicted to Diet Coke.


92. I have few other vices, so I let this one slide.


93. I also like ice cream.


94. But every time I eat any combination of sugar and milk, I cough uncontrollably.


95. And yet, I continue to eat it.


96. This is a source of confusion to my husband.


97. I talk a lot about my daughter in this blog.


98. Mostly it's because I want to remember my experiences and the funny things she says and I know I will forget to write them down anywhere else. I hope one day I'll be able to give this stuff to her.


99. More than that, I hope that she'll care to read any of it.
100. I hate how numbered lists come out on my template too close to the left edge, but I am too lazy to fix it. I figure I've got better things to spend my time on... like the CSI that's on tape from last night.

For the most part, I've found them useless. What new mother gets enough sleep to be able to concentrate long enough to read through a four page article on how to get your child to sleep longer? I perfunctorily flipped through each month's issues, page by page, as if it were my duty, staring blankly at the pictures on the page and barely seeing them, much less making sense of that jumble of strangly shaped symbols that my husband informed me was language. Never did a single thing in any of the issues I, I'm going to go with "read" here, jump out and provide me with some brilliant gem that made my life as a mother easier, that I didn't already know via the fabulous sense of "common", or that even was worth the time I took to look through the pages.

Except one: Family Fun Magazine. I don't know where this came from, I've never heard anyone talk about it, and I've never seen it advertised anywhere. I honestly don't know how it started coming to the door, but this magazine is great. It's completely devoid of long articles on post partum depression, parenting techniques through the decades, and developmental milestones that will freak you out if your child hasn't achieved at exactly the prescribed time. Instead, all it has is fun crafts, activities and outings to do with kids. I love it! And the best part is they have a website with all the crafts and activities archived, so I don't feel like I have to save a year's worth of magazines in order to use that idea for a jack-o-lantern next Halloween. If I still worked with kids in my job, I would definitely keep up a subscription to Family Fun and use every single idea in there to advance the curriculum. So now, as these complimentary subscriptions and catalogs are starting to dry up three years later, I have renewed a subscription to this one and this one only.

Last year, I found out two days before Valentines Day that I'd need to be getting a Valentine Card for each kid in The Dormouse's class for their Valentine party.

Not only am I over prepared for Valentines Day this year, I am early! And crafty!

Below please find pictures of the best Project To Do With a Three Year Old and Also Knock Out Nineteen Required Valentines For a Preschool Class ever. And, as an added benefit, it's a way to get rid of all those worn down and broken pieces of crayons lying around the house. Who wouldn't love it? If you want professionally written instructions and pictures that actually chronicle the progression of the project more than the break down of my camera, I suggest you click here.

First, round up all the spare and broken crayons in the house and remove the papers.

Next, (and I'm missing the picture here, thanks to a now broken camera, but you get the idea) break up all the crayons into half-inch or smaller pieces.

Find an appropriately shaped cookie or candy mold and spray with cooking oil. Place broken crayon pieces in each mold to fill the space.

Place in a 225 degree oven for approximately 10 minutes or until all the crayons just melt. If you leave it in there too long the colors will all mix together and your crayons will all come out looking brown - not so much the Valentine color of choice. Let them cool completely in the mold.

Silicone molds work really well to get the crayons out because you can turn them inside out as such... but here's a tip: do not look at the unmelted crayons in the oven and think Oh they only need one more minute or so; I'll check on them in a second and then not turn on the kitchen timer thinking you will remember and don't need it. Because you will not remember. You will forget and after twenty minutes in the oven unattended, silicone melts too. Betcha didn't know that. Or maybe it's just the cheap $2.00 silicone molds that I picked up at Target.

Finished heart crayons look something like this.

Then you just need to do something with them.

(I know, again, sucky picture... even before the camera broke, it seems the focus was going.) Here's another good time to remember that crayons are made of wax and will melt if you're taking your time using a hot glue gun to attach them to cards, so either find some other form of stick to stick them (I had also tried double sided foam tape, but it didn't stick for me), or learn to work quickly if you don't want a giant hole in the back of each crayon and wax all over your living room floor. I'm just sayin'.

Happy Valentine's Day from Alice, The KingofHearts, and The Dormouse!