Amal Nahurriyeh

Isk in the supermarket, pointing at a box of Uncle Ben's brand rice: Look. Barack Obama rice.

Amal and Leigh: *don't know whether to burst out laughing or weep*
Amal: *points out that Uncle Ben does not, in fact, look like Barack Obama*

Leigh and Isk are currently at work in the living room/dining room, creating a sorting system for all of his toys and placing all of the random objects throughout those rooms in those boxes after determining which category they belong to. So far, there has been an argument about whether there can be a helicopter box, whether 'castle blocks' go in the blocks box (and whether there needs to ne a subcategory for 'lincoln logs', and whether sponges in the shapes of animals count as 'figurines.' I anticipate about three more hours of this, with intermittant shouting.

2:30 on a Sunday is too early to start drinking, right?

[I, on the other hand, have already cleaned the whole kitchen...to my standards. I am 100% sure Leigh will walk in and tell me everything that's wrong with it, but my ability to care is, you know. Limited.]

***

purimgifts is live! I got a nice little mytharc-y XF fic yesterday, all about Teena & the extended Spender/Mulder family dramaz. Today's fic hasn't gone live for me yet, so I'm just gonna keep refreshing my gifts page...

My son has become obsessed with knock-knock jokes. The problem is that he keeps trying to make them up, and they are AWFUL.

Him: Knock knock!
Me: Who's there?
Him: Belly button.
Me: Belly button who?
Him: BELLY BUTTON BEAR! *laughs uncontrollably*
Me: ...

Him: Knock knock!
Me: Who's there?
Him: Jelly.
Me: Jelly who?
Him: JELLY JAM! *laughs uncontrollably*
Me: *laughs politely*

Therefore, I need to suddenly know a lot of knock-knock jokes to tell him. Anybody got some?

(The only two I know are the banana/orange one and the olive one.)

"Iskander Nahurriyeh, if I can see your scrotum, you did not put your underpants on right."

-Today's Parental Wisdom

(Somebody reassure me that, someday, my four year old will be potty-trained, able to dress himself, and willing to eat a meal that does not contain chips of some sort. *rubs temples tiredly*)

Since I added/was added by a bunch of new people on kouredios's friending meme, I feel like I have a duty to post things. Here goes.

***

Isk invented a new food the other day. He explained, very carefully, that he wanted a bread quesadilla. You know, a quesadilla, but with bread instead of a tortilla.

I paused. "You mean a grilled cheese sandwich?"

"No," he said, in that tone of voice that children use when correcting stupid adults. "A. Bread. Quesadilla."

"Oh. OK." And I made him one.

Points for decolonizing the grilled cheese?

***

We are behind on getting reading for the December holidays. Today is the first night of Hanukkah, and we're going over a friend's house to do candlelighting and latkes with her and her daughter. I feel a little bad about it--I wanted to do Hanukkah with another family who celebrates it, because I wanted to show Isk that there are actual Jews in the world who celebrate it. (Long story short: Leigh's dad was raised Jewish by very Jewish family, but decided the path to success involved passing as a WASP from his teens on; Leigh was raised Quaker, not really aware of her Jewish roots, and I converted to Quakerism as a teenager after leaving the Catholic Church; we decided as parents to bring back some basic identity with Judaism as culture/tradition/spiritual practice in our family, while remaining Quakers.) But I kind of feel like I was all "hi Jewish friend! be Jewish for us!" I think it's fine, I just feel weird if I got tokenistic there by accident.

Isk and I made cookies to bring for dessert, because clearly the thing to do in this case is to bring Christmas cookies to Hanukkah dinner. (Mint chocolate chip cookies, made from this recipe. BTW, this is my favorite GF baking blog at the moment. I've also made one of her pies, and it was a hit. And the cookies are excellent.)

Tomorrow we'll probably go get our tree from the tree farm. Because we live in the country, and so can do that. We didn't buy an advent calendar this year, so probably I'll hold off on doing Advent/Jesus-y stuff until after Hanukkah is over. One holiday at a time, you know.

Also I should take down the Halloween decorations.

***

Odd thought: am I unusual in Sherlock fandom for *not* being a fan of the broader Sherlock Holmes canon? I mean, it's not like I'm opposed to it. I'm a highly educated and bookish Anglophone person, so I'm familiar with the ACD stories, though I haven't read many of them; we watched a lot of PBS when I was a kid, so I watched the Granada series on Mystery because it was there, and I remember liking it; I saw the first of the Ritchie movies because it looked fun, and I enjoyed it. But I'm not fannish about any of those. And then I did the whole fannish-imprinting thing I do on the BBC version, such that it has eaten my brain, and now not only can I not watch Elementary because of feelings (which sucks, because it seems like it is fun, esp. for a procedurals junkie like me), I don't want to consume any of the other iterations. Like, I am happy when I read fic that consciously draws from ACD canon, because I am into meta, but I don't feel any desire to write it, or to go read the ACD stories for inspiration. I'm glad all the rest of it is there, but I don't have feels for it. But it seems like the majority of the DW/LJ based fans I interact with seem to be fannish about the broader canon.

Maybe this is because I hang out with other bookish, highly-educated Anglophone folks? IDK.

"What you need is a male-female adapter. Because, see, this is a male piece, and this is a male piece, and, in trains, that doesn't work."

-leigh_nahurriyeh explaining how wooden train tracks work to our son.

Happy Halloween from the Nahurriyehs.

If you have chronic skin itchiness, and then your cats somehow get fleas (we don't know how, they're indoor cats), and then you get flea bites on every inch of your legs from hips on down to ankles...

You will eventually become convinced you have a flea up your nose.

It's funny when, accidentally, you mess up the name of the intro course your character is trying to write a syllabus for with the name of the intro course you habitually teach. In a different discipline. Project much, professor?

***

Sample of the questions my son has asked about the Olympics:

1. Is this lady rowing? I only want to watch lady rowing.
2. What is water polo?
3. Is this basketbowling?
4. What is a penalty? Why did that horse get a penalty? What is Big Ben? Why did the horse kick the London bus?
5. Why does he have metal legs? Why is he running with metal legs?
6. Why is she crying? Why does she have that flag?
7. When is there going to be lady trampoline? Can I watch lady trampoline?

Quick, which one of these OMFG PARENTING quotes wins?



Leigh: DO NOT close your penis in a car door, that will hurt it.

vs.

Amal: No, I need to wipe your butt, move the police car.



Yes, same incident.