And what, to my wondering eyes did appear? One tiny Avery, caught up within the feet of our living room side table, having struggled valiantly to free himself and having lost that fight. He was in the middle of the living room floor, with the side table atop his prone… proned-ness. He was a good seven feet, and several pieces of furniture, from where that table had been when they first met.

I didn’t know a Roomba could carry a good-sized table seven feet. But hey! Guess what! One very determined Roomba can, in fact, carry a good-sized table that far. While knocking aside a coffee table, an arm chair, and one corner of a couch.

A good mother would have probably had the camera ready, but I’m not *that* kind of mother. I’m proud, though. Infinitely so. And thus, I’m exploiting Avery’s triumph on my blog. As would any good mother… Right?
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Gonna turn off The Who on the Super Bowl, now, with a long sigh.

Because I like you, I leave you with a non-medly. Here’s Bob Mould’s “See a Little Light.” It’s an experience. A diary. A life.

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Thanks, Dad.

So, I explained to her soothingly, while making no sudden or potentially aggressive noises into the phone, that while “Puff” was certainly on that distinguished list of 60’s and 70’s rock and folk anthems rumored to be about the drug experience, there’s nothing verifiable about that, and that both PP&M and the song’s lyricist, Leonard Lipton, have always staunchly maintained that the song is simply about the loss of childhood innocence. Besides, even if it is about drugs, Amelia will be long past the “Puff the Magic Dragon” stage in her musical development by the time she catches wind of any dubious influence. I myself was reared on the PP&M classic, and just look how I turned out!

Silence.

Alright then, I added, little Jackie Paper ends up okay, doesn’t he? He moves on, makes way for other toys. So, really, if “Puff the Magic Dragon” is a drug song, it’s about triumph over the beast. That Jackie Paper! He kicked the habit, and is now a CPA in Des Moines with an expunged record, a reasonable wife, and three perfectly sober children of his own.

Mom decided to go with that one. The blond can have her “Puff.” Auntie Mags is a hero.

But then, Auntie Mags started thinking about that rascal “Puff,” and just what the nefarious “Leonard Lipton” (IF that’s his real name) might have meant about little boys living forever not so much.* And what exactly was the nature of those “other toys” budding repeat-offender Jackie “Lil’ Smack” Paper was making way for? A song about the loss of childhood innocence? Oh, you bet your ass it is! Take a toddle through any one of Honah Lee’s notorious needle shacks, my friend, and you’ll find one colossal shock of discarded childhood innocence wafting through the autumn mists!

So, as I said, Auntie Mags is a hero. She has proved herself selfless (as heroes do) by refraining from calling mom back with instructions to check the cupboards of Amelia’s Fisher-Price Grow-With-Me kitchen for signs of sealing wax residue, or other fancy stuff. But, I’m keeping an eye on the blond’s CD collection, let me tell you. If I find her in posession of one single copy of The Wall before she’s six, that dragon is slipping back into his cave, along with Lucy and the White Rabbit, and I’m cementing up the entrance.

*The phrase “living forever not so much” reads weird, but I’m keeping it. Stop it. It’s *my* blog.
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I am confident my blog has done many, many other wrong things, but just hasn’t been caught yet, so I intend to chalk this brief time-out we shared up to a lesson learned. I already let it have the gun header, and I’ve made the fish bigger, too. So, we’re cool.

Blog’s easy like that.
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Far be it from me to lay all the blame on my blog, but someone spent a huge chunk of her weekend designing a kick-ass new template for someone else (blog), and that someone else (blog) got all snotty and defiant about it and refused to look pretty on anyone’s computer other than someone’s personal laptop. Nothing but crazy-pants formatting shows up everywhere else, with text so big it’d scare the neighbors.

So, you know what? Fine. You’re all white, now, blog. I threw in the red links, and I’ve kept the fish, because I’m not totally devoid of human compassion, but that’s it. You can just sit there and be colorless, and think about that awesome gun header I made for you, which you don’t get to wear, while I figure out how to fix this damn mess.

Like I said, I’m not laying blame. But, this is all my blog’s fault.
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The original announcement (sans sparkle tags… what’s up with that?) is here.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry you have such disregard for life that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Haitian citizens, and a number of Americans as well, struck you as an opportunity to spew your vile, self-serving, misguided, blowhard sanctimony. I’m sorry that no one present during your flame throwing had the presence of mind to silence you with a swirlie.

I’m sorry you have opinions, and I’m sorry you’ve got public platforms from which to express them. I’m also sorry that I do not have the faith required to believe either of you has just permanently ended your career. But, I’m working on that.

I am not sorry that neither one of you was in Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010. I wish no one was. And I’m not sorry that I’m not sorry about that.

But, I’m very sorry you’re both crazy in the bad way.

Sincerely,

Mags.

P.S. From this moment forward, whenever thoughts of either of you should pass through the old cranio-melon, I will think of General Larry Platt’s “Pants on the Ground” instead. It’s healthier for my amygdala, and a much better use of my time. (With a grateful nod to Hilary Davidson.)