Monday, Jun. 17, 2013 - 8:58 a.m.

Things going ok here. Made some good pizza last night. Bad sleep.

Now that Q had a thing with Mickey Mouse, and we allowed her to select some Minnie merchandise for herself one time, MIL has gone hog wild with the licensed character merchandise.

Class, please explain again the difference between a child selecting an item for themselves, and items being selected for them in terms of reinforcing certain norms of behavior. In particular, discuss what the effect is when some interests are supported with consumer merchandise, and others are not.

Not to mention that her enthusiasm for the characters has waned, but the buying of Minnie crap has not. Now we are the proud owners of Minnie and Daisy water wings, a ball, and a child's folding chair, coloring pages, as well as sundry meal-related items.

On the bright side, they did go out of the way to select a green scooter for her, and a helmet that sports only sparkly butterflies, not princesses. 6 points out of 10 for that. They lost points for motivation (they are now excruciatingly careful that any items U might someday touch have no pink, lest he sprout a vagina [not that there's anything wrong with that!]) and, well, sparkly butterflies. I'm sure hard to please, ain't I?

Anyhow. She seems to keep playing airplane and train, no matter how much Disney crap they give her.

Have I mentioned how much I hate Minnie and Daisy and their stupid poses and their stupid high heels and their stupid voices? Probably I didn't have to.

All produce has been obtained at Costco and stored in the fridge, so the peaches taste the same as they do in January. They go from crunchy and dry to squishy and mealy if you leave them out for the day. When J gets back I will try to get somewhere that they have real fruit for sale. I got these tiny little peaches in Tucson before we left-- from Wilcox-- the size of a half dollar and flat, that were the sweetest peaches I have ever eaten. Not the juiciest (they were juicy, just not the juiciest, probably because they were so small), but absolutely the sweetest. We joked about taking a mini-vacation to Bloomington while we're here, as if 8 hours were a daytrip. The more I think about summer fruit, the more tempting it is, screaming baby nonwithstanding. Sometimes I still kinda want to move back to Indiana. June-August, mainly. There must be a way to live in Tucson during the academic year and summer in Indiana. My papermaking plot. I need to get back to work on that. There's a dream for me to work with.

�