Haiku of the Day

don't take your love to town

Rudy Huxtable
your iconic chipmunk cheeks
cannot be outgrown

For some reason, while I was falling asleep last night I kept thinking about Rudy Huxtable. I'm only three years older than Ms. Pulliam and yet I feel this fierce protection for Rudy and all of her endeavors. The idea of Rudy in grown-up movies is possibly more disturbing than the idea of Natalie Portman in grown-up movies. It's kind of weird how famous people stop aging in your mind - much like the cousins you don't see a lot. They just sort of max out at 8-years-old and you can never get past it.

Anyway, I remember sitting at the TV, watching the Cosby Show credits roll and thinking how exotic it was to have a hyphen in one's name and how lucky Rudy was to have such a fun staircase to run up and down.

But now when I think of Rudy I feel old. And that's weird because I AM NOT THAT MUCH OLDER THAN HER. Yet, things like this totally freak me out. I guess I shouldn't be freaked out. One cannot actually BE 8-years-old forever. But still. How can Keshia Knight-Pulliam being 26 make me feel like I'm 89? And even more importantly, what would Claire say about that picture?

messy

Right. So I added the little subscribe icons over there on the left, but it looks messy. Please ignore the muss while I figure out how to get that clean, crisp, pleasing blog look. Oh, who am I kidding? Might as well model the blog design after my living room. After a while you get used to the clutter. Or it makes one of your eyes twitch. Either way.

Interview!

There's an interview up over at Burstblog. I feel so fancy!

bang crash

bouncing off the walls
pinball game with arms and legs
ding ding ding ding ding

The best part about being hugely pregnant and spontaneously dizzy? Momentum. It's not really that you WANT to crash into every wall in the house, you just can't stop yourself. And, happily, watching mommy barrel headlong into every door frame keeps your child way more entertained than Dora does.

Off goes the TV! Let's watch Mommy try to make it to the kitchen!

Maybe I should pitch this to Fox.

crack addicts

playing peekaboo
much more fun with a baby
than with a butt crack   

I took the wee one to a birthday party today. It was the usual rip-roaring, cake-tastic, assemblage of crying toddler fun that a birthday party is.

While there, though, I was confronted - no accosted - with an incredible amount of ass crack. It came from one person and I'm pretty sure she wasn't flashing her booty on purpose. But the thing is, this wasn't the usual amount of crackage. It wasn't a whale tail, or an unfortunate plumber peek. This was a full 2/3 of a butt. Staring at me. For extended periods of time. I mean, after seeing that amount of butt for that amount of time I feel like we should have at least exchanged phone numbers.

Anyway, here's my plea:

Hear ye jeans manufacturers:

Mamas don't want to wear low-ride jeans that expose the junk in our trunks. Even if our trunks are mostly junkless, we'd like to keep them concealed. YET, YET, we do not want to be forced to wear Mom Jeans, either. You know what I'm talking about. 9 inch fly, elastic waistband, no back pockets.

Mamas want comfortable, butt-covering jeans with pockets and you know, some cuteness. Is this too much to ask? Because lately it's definitely been too much ass. Especially for birthday parties.

all about me

ah, publicity
a magical elixir
for growing ego

The Haiku Mama site is live! www.haikumama.com (or you can go to www.karianneroy.com). It contains possibly the longest bio ever written, and a picture of my fat belly.

Let me know what you think. And, seriously, if the bio is too long, send me an email and say, "girl, get over yourself."

I may or may not listen.

Investing in my nemesis

contamination
extra e coli worth it
well, it better be

We've started Newman: butt-munching, ear-infected, allergy prone, Benadryl denying, bane of my existence and dog of the year, on a raw diet.

This diet costs approximately a lot. It costs so much "a lot" that when we went to the pet store last night in an effort to either find a voodoo spell to cure the dog, or at least something that works better than his current diet of prescription, specially processed corn meal wrapped in hundred dollar bills, we were embraced into the world of Behind the Counter. (I didn't even know pet stores had Behind the Counter. This is like where the Dom is kept at the liquor store, or the canary diamond tennis bracelets at the jewelry store.) Swank!

As we were escorted Behind the Counter we were greeted with a sales spiel one might receive when contemplating the purchase of a Jag-oo-ar or maybe a really nice leather couch. There was no pressure, only Facts and Benefits. There were no price tags (other than a small, handwritten price sheet attached to the refrigerator containing the dietary delights). There was Serious Scientific Evidence and Real Life Testimonials.

After doing the math we figured that A) we're already spending assloads of money on the current prescription food we feed Newman, and this food is not really working to alleviate his allergies or ear infections. B) If the raw diet actually works, we'll save money in the long run by not having to spend an extra couple of hundred dollars every month or so on taking him to the vet, which never really helps to alleviate the allergies or ear infections. C) It's cheaper than taking him in for doggie acupuncture, which I kid you not, is next on list of "what the hell, nothing else works, why not try it?" even though it will probably not help alleviate the allergies or ear infections.

So we're doing the raw diet. He gets one patty of combined chicken and turkey every day. This patty also includes bones and entrails and a variety of fruits and veggies. It's supposed to mimic what the dog would get if he ate a rabbit and the rabbit's tummy was full of stuff freshly eaten from your organic backyard garden. Or something like that.

We're also mixing the patties with some raw kibble so that he will not have immediate and inconvenient bowel explosions all over my rug, as is apparently possible when switching your dog to raw after a whole lifetime of regular dog food.

Want to know the real reason I know this food is so swank? We got the first three weeks of food for free. And buy one get one free coupons for the few weeks after that. See? They wean you into accepting the price. All while your dog is being addicted to the raw crack that is most likely ground up with the meat and entrails.

This better work, dammit. For something that just lays on the couch and licks its butt all day, this is an investment beyond words. This is like sending your hamster to Harvard and expecting real academic results. I feel like I need a reality show to document this.

Lessons in Purple

teaching dinosaur
I had some of those in school
they reused lunch foil

Barney. They say you either love him or hate him. I can't really say either. He's not my favorite, with the simpering smile and condescending tone. Yet... I have to say his songs are catchy. And they teach things.

The wee one loves to sing the "Clean up" song, and for that I'm grateful. We sing the "Look Both Ways When You Cross The Street" song together, too. And, of course, who couldn't love, "F-I-R-E... T-R-U-C-K!"

I was just thinking that maybe there should be a Barney for the young-ish adult, hipster set. Barney could have a handlebar moustache and some aviator glasses. He could sing about "Truck-er Hats Are So Last Year" and "Par-is Hilton Is Not A Role Model." Or maybe, "Break up, break up, it's not nice to use your phone..." or "Look both ways when you cut off a pregnant lady with your rental car and she flips you off." (That one needs a little lyrical help, but you get the idea.)

He would wear "vintage" t-shirts that say things like "dikfore" and "fo schizzle" and he would wander around SXSW venues talking loudly on his cell phone about facial hair maintenance and masking coffee breath.

I, personally, would like to suggest that Barney (for kids or hipsters, I don't care) create a song much like the "F-I-R-E... T-R-U-C-K" song, that instead spells out "D-O-U-G... H-N-U-T-S." I know it doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily, and it could confuse people briefly ("Doug  Huh-nuts?") but then they would get it and we could all sing about sugary confection together.

Maybe I should go poll the SXSW crowds and see what they think.

[taps playing]

porcelain heaven
not a SXSW band
it's where our fish lives

First of all, can I state how tired I am of antibiotics? First the dog has to take them because his ears are festering holes of slime and decay. Then I have to take them and they give me a foul, white furry tongue, for which I have to take OTHER medicine to fix (FYI: oral thrush blows). THEN the wee one is on them for an ear infection (but with much less festering than the dog's, thankfully). NOW, NOW the EFFING FISH are on antibiotics because of fin rot, which means they look like little Pirates of the Caribbean skeleton fish swimming around.

Our house has become the Lair of the Antibiotic Beast. We cannot be rid of it. Maybe there is a sacrificial Druid ceremony I can look up that will cure us of the curse of the weird and funky germs that plague us.

Anyway, the blue fish has succumbed to either the antibiotics, or the fin rot, or possibly being nibbled on by frogs when he was just kind of chillin' on the floor of the aquarium figuring out whether to live or not. He's officially dead, though. And this is now officially a Teaching Moment.

The wee one isn't really attached to the fish. He likes them and all, he's just not all that into them (there's a joke here somewhere, but I'm too lazy to figure out). So when I pointed out the upside down, partially eaten carcass of the Fancy Blue Guppy, he wasn't that disturbed. Until the D-E-A-D word was uttered. Then I had his attention.

For some reason the wee one has been asking a lot of questions about death and dying and heaven and things like that. I think it has something to do with the Jesus talk at preschool, either that or it's a Star Wars thing. I'm not sure. I've been doing my best to give him honest answers. But saying things like, "Some people believe we go to Heaven when we die, and others believe we are turned into another person or animal, and still others believe our spirits can stay on earth," etc. isn't really helping. For now I'm sticking with the heaven thing.

As I, uh, fished out the dead fish the wee one asked if the fish was going to Fish Heaven and whether or not Fish Heaven is in Texas. I told him, in fact, fish heaven IS in Texas, and the express train to get there is directly through our toilet - convenient, eh?

There was some confusion from my explanation, though, and now the wee one thinks the toilet is Fish Heaven. I can't wait for that to come up at preschool.
"Anybody know what heaven is?"
"It's our potty and it's in Texas!"
That should go over extremely well.

We're still working through a lot of dead fish and religion-based questions, but there isn't a lot of grief, so that's good. I think. And I also think we can stop the fish antibiotics now.

Thank-you Fish Jesus for the mercy you bestow.

Speaking of Big Box Bookstores...

You can find HAIKU MAMA in your neighborhood Barnes & Noble (and other stores) now:

WOO! WOO!