My daughter got a snow day and is home from school, so I don’t have much time to put into this. Forgive me if it sucks, won’t you?

Today I have for you two thoughts relating to my kid. I like to call them Thing One and Thing Two.

Thing One.

We have The Talk about every other day now. This has happened much sooner than I had dreaded it would, and I’m much more awkward at it than I ever dreamed I could be. It’s possible she senses this weakness on my part and brings it up just to mess with me.

She has only to say, “Mom, what’s lube?” and hilarity ensues. I grasp for words and turn red, and she smiles her ass off.

Don’t ask me where she got the word “lube” to begin with, because I certainly won’t tell you that it was on my shopping list and she read it off to me. What kind of idiot would put that on a shopping list, promptly forget about it and then hand that same list to her kid? Not me. Oh noooo. Not me.

Thing Two.

When I was working at K-Mart, Charlotte was about five years old and said to me, “When I grow up, I want to work at K-Mart like you.” Let me tell ya, I’m pretty sure I cried myself to sleep that night. I had never felt like more of a loser in my whole life.

But, that’s in the past, and today was a landmark moment for me. I was tickling my kid and pretending to wipe snot on her jammies when through a giggle she gasped, “You are so evil. I hope I’m not like you when I grow up.”

Oh happy day!

I breathed deeply, nibbled at her little arm and said, “Good. Then I did something right.”

Changes like this don’t happen overnight. I’ve had to pretend to wipe snot on her for five years to get her to this point, but rest assured, it can be done, and it’s worth the effort.

For the last six months or so, Charlotte’s answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” has been “I want to be a rock star or a waitress or both.”

You may be thinking that the waitress job isn’t much of a step up from K-Mart. I’m hear to tell ya, it is. I never got tips when I worked at K-Mart. Unless maybe you count the words, “Get a real job” as a tip, and in a sense they are, but not in the good appreciative way that money is a tip.

In any case, if years from now you meet a rock star waitress named Charlotte, and she forgets your coffee creamer, please be kind to her. She’s trying to come up with lyrics for her next big hit, so details like coffee creamer may sometimes slip her mind. Tip her generously anyway, and do not pat her on the ass. She rocks hard for the money, so you better treat her right.

While you’re there, if you happen to notice an old lady in the corner booth, wearing a huge adoring smile that is seemingly directed at the rock star waitress, you’ll know who she is. Give her the Fonzerelli thumbs up. She’s been waiting a long time for it.

While we were waiting for our meals to arrive at The Spaghetti Factory, Michael told me this joke:

“There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who know Binary and those who don’t.”

Then he went on to explain how 10 is 2 in Binary, and that’s why the joke is funny.

I hoped I wasn’t expected to laugh after he’d explained it to me, because mostly it just made me sad. So, I forced a smile and thought, “Where is our damn food?”

As fate would have it, until the waiter got our food to us, Michael felt the need to explain several programming languages to me.

I’ll quote him now to the best of my recollection:

“Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Octal.”

As you can see, I learned a lot.

Anyway, when I read Bryan’s post this morning, the first thought that came to my mind was how lucky his girlfriend is to be a robot.

Oh, and I’m sure Sean’s wife will know what I mean when I say, “There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who married programmers and those who don’t have to hear programming jokes.”

While basking in the kind linkage that Scott-San tossed my way, it occurred to me what a loser I was for not having linked to the site that contained the original post that contained this brilliant ad therein. Did you get all that? Good. I’m done then.

Our dog is learning to do that Russian Dance. You know the one. That dance where they link arms and kick. Not to be confused with that dance they do in Las Vegas where they link arms and kick. The primary difference between the two dances is the number of titties you can see on stage during the performances. Also, the Russian dance looks like it would be hard on the knees, and the Las Vegas Dance looks like it causes hard ons. But, I digress.

Anyway, you know the dance. And our dog Max must be learning it. I can’t imagine how else a small animal like him could create such a disturbance in the middle of the night.

He’s either learning the Russian dance or he’s taken to bungee jumping from our bookshelves.

In any case, he scared the hell out of me last night. I heard a loud thump, and I thought Charlotte had fallen out of bed. So, I went rushing into her room only to find she was still sound asleep.

Then I saw Max standing at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe he had been swinging from the railing and fell off. Who knows. All I know is that a 25 lb. dog managed to make a 75 lb. thud.

This is not an isolated incident, or it wouldn’t have inspired a post. Our dog is leading a secret life while we’re asleep, and he’s doing it way too noisily for it to be much of a secret. I regularly hear clatters, thumps, bangs and rattles while I’m lying in bed.

Is he building something???

If so, what?

The point I’m trying to make here is that I can’t be sure exactly what he does while we’re sleeping (or trying to sleep), but I’ve no doubt we should be getting it all on tape.

I’m choosing not to watch the State of the Union Address tonight. If I decide I want to be lied to, I’ll just ask my husband if my ass looks fat in the jeans I’m wearing.

But, I must recommend that everyone click on this link. It contains the most accurate reporting I’ve seen in a year.

How do you know if you are too obsessed with your computer in general?

For starters, you post a picture of your main Everquest character onto your blog.

Isn’t Migli Wiglitoes a cute little Hobbit? The dragon was friendly, so I immediately struck a pose next to it.