One sunny Saturday afternoon a few weeks back we noticed a mommy robin building a nest above the light fixutures on our deck, below the eaves. She was in a pretty big hurry, spazzing and throwing twigs and twine all over the place. (“Flap your wings/just like a birdie!” The Wiggles.) Barking at us when we went out on the deck. Didn’t seem to mind the dog or notice the cats. (But they sure noticed her, from inside the patio door. Bird TV.)

Hockey God was not pleased. The deck was a mess, all littered with debris. “Does she even know what she’s doing?” She started on the light on the right side, then switched to the light on the left. Was looking a little confused. Settled on the left. Flew off. Back. Off. Back.

I told the kids, “We can’t use the light til the babies are gone!” and covered the switch with masking tape.

There is no stopping a robin who’s feathering her nest, and she did know what she was doing! Pretty soon she had mudded up a nice new little condo for herself and the family.

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The thing about blogs is you have to blog, my Wacky Cousin tells me. Huh. The thing about blogs is that however everyone else is doing is how I start doing. The readers, the other bloggers, the Internet in general. I am impressionable like that. So we’ve all been in something of a funk lately. What with summeritis, jobs changing (I’m starting school to get my real estate license), my Wacky Cousin being beautiful with her big baby belly (I start FEELING PREGNANT just being around her. See? Impressionable.), school getting out, BlogHer ’06 (I’m not going and am sulking), being in a “bad-ish place”, getting our pictures taken with Andrew Shue, sigh, “screwing up the world one baby at a time”, etc.

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Love this one. My next car needs to be a lowrider.

Why does my husband hate Prince? I love Prince. Going back (waaaaaaaaaaaay back) to his first album. And second. And third. And now, 3121 his, what, three thousand one hundred and twenty-first album, right? Which is why he numbered it that? (That sentence is so ungrammatically correct.)

It sounds like old Prince and I love it. It sounds like new Prince and I love it. Here’s the main reason I’ve always loved Prince: When You Were Mine….

“I never cared (didn’t care)/
I never was the kind to make a fuss/
When he was there/
Sleeping in between the two of us…”

…which honest to God I listened to about eight million times in a row when I was 18. OK, I still listen to Prince, old and new, all the time now. I am an addict, are you happy? Now you know. That, along with, you know, Erotic City.

“All of my purple life/
I’ve been looking for a dame/
That would wanna be my wife/
That was my intention, babe”

Prince is funny! And funky! And he makes you want to screw! What else do you need in a song, damn. So I’m attaching Wacky Dee’s review of the new album, sent in a private e-mail to his friend Extremely Wacky T, who lives in Minneapolis. (Edited to say: Excuse me — he prefers “Hockey God” to WD.)

T told me that when he moved there they made him sign a pledge devoting lifetime allegiance to Prince. He was already a fan and said “YES WHERE DO I SIGN?” That, to me, IS REASON ENOUGH TO BAIL ON PORTLAND, ORE. AND MOVE TO MINNEAPOLIS.That, alone, is reason enough for WD to say NO to Minneapolis. Based on this, I have no qualms about publishing my husband’s personal e-mails. Huh. Is that wrong? “LITTLE JAPANESE IMPORT CAR” MY ASS, WD.

Prince is a 1959 Chevy Impala with fuzzy dice.

Here’s the e:

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Thanks for asking! I’m not pregnant, just fat. So don’t ask me, my husband, or the kids anymore, ‘k? Cool!

Fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa fwaaaaa

Dear Wacky Mommy:

What do you make of this dream, WM? The two dogs and I sitting on the bank of a river, I’m trying like mad to not let the dogs jump in, floating by are all these people I know, not quite floating and not quite swimming (but alive)! following them were large monkeys or apes — then a large red-headed wood-pecker shows up and starts hammering on a tree next to me. I woke up with a splitting headache and feeling sick…..what the F????

Husband’s work has been a tad stressful lately — work..no work..work..no work. He’s now looking into a career change after 20 some years in his current profession — I’m thinking maybe there are huge stress cells sloughing off him onto me while I sleep?

Sincerely,

Zip

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So. The Lovely Miss Amalah posed the question, re: what to do when you and your spouse can’t agree on how many kids to have (zero? 15? four and a half?): “Whose definition of “complete” did you end up using?”

AND THE READERS WENT COMPLETELY NUTS. It’s a pretty interesting read. But don’t consider jumping into the fray, cuz the comments section, she is closed.

Honestly, people, people, people. The question is not, “How many kids should we have?” but rather, “How the hell do I get rid of this headache that I’ve had for two weeks, that is considerably aggravated by my screaming kids?” One kid, 15, four and a half, it doesn’t matter. They’re going to scream, and you’re going to get a headache.

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Ya’ll realize, I hope, that if you’re looking at my blog and something really weird is there, under comments, that it is not our crowd — it’s the…

OK. I cannot use any of the words that these folks use to track me down. So read between the lines:

They’re sp@!mers. I f&!king despise them. I spend a large part of my day deleting na&*y comments left by s@amm#!$ on my blog and Hockey God’s. In fact, I deleted about 20 comments today alone on the two blogs, including half a dozen on Hockey God’s, left from the time we got home from Wacky Girl’s dentist appointment (at 6 p.m.) and now (8:30 p.m., same day).

Oddly, he gets about three times more junk mail than I do. Just like our snail mail.

Re: dentist. WG needs braces. She is six. “Six year olds don’t get braces!” you’re no doubt thinking, “They don’t, like, even have all their permanent teeth yet. WTF Wacky Mommy?” They get “appliances” now, then braces later. I have been told this is expensive. Please don’t tell me how expensive. I’m enjoying denial. Her teeth are way crookedy. Good word, no? Crookedy. Makes it seem almost comical, instead of “F&*@!ng h&*l we have to re-fi the house for this?” Her bite and jaw will get “even worse and she will need surgery,” according to the two dentists and two orthodontists we have seen.

“You might be looking at surgery, on down the road, anyway,” they say.

“It’s too soon to tell the extent of this,” they say. Although they all agree that the poor kid’s mouth is a mess.

“You can make payments,” they all say.

Good, good, that’s a comfort.

So the junk mail? Please ignore. Thanks and have a splendiferous night.

Wacky Girl is and always has been a spelling fiend. Even more so after watching Akeelah and the Bee. Which I have seen referred to recently not by name, but as “a Starbucks-produced film.” Which it was, but whatever, hello, say the name of the picture, would you? It’s a great film, and it was awesome to be able to take my six-year-old to a film that we both enjoyed, that was inspirational without being sappy, and that starred people who weren’t white.

Good God, was that so much to ask of Hollywood? Hollywood, what the hell is your problem? You know I dislike Tom Cruise, Hollywood.

Thank you. And now, a few spelling words… starting with…

“C-R-O-Q-U-I-G-N-O-L-E: Croquignole. (Fr.) A hair waving thingy.” (Sorry, that’s what I wrote down.)

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Calling all bloggers:

D. Challener Roe is looking for the help of bloggers to post tributes — five years after — to those we lost on Sept. 11, 2001.

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