Wild Child

After an amusing visit to the grocery store where the next person in line happened to be a totally punked out guy with a Mohawk (buying a single bag of shredded cheese), Elle wanted to know why. "Why a Mohawk, Mama? Why was his hair like that?"

"Why do you wear pigtails, Elle? Or one ponytail, or sometimes no ponytail?"

She so got the connection between his appearance and the music that she came home and blasted our American Idiot CD. She ripped out her pigtails, leaving her hair looking like a lion's mane, and a wild dance party ensued.

This one is directly responsible for the gray hairs I'm sprouting. So far they're still passing for highlights...

Part of this weekend was spent cleaning up a crime scene. Elle broke into her sister's room and absconded with nail polish Sarabelle received for her birthday. The theft was detected when I passed by the guest bathroom. My first thought, formed after an especially audible gasp, was, "Somebody killed Barbie." An entire bottle of fuscia nail polish had been spilled and surreptitiously wiped, or smeared, all over the bathroom floor. All over the deeply pitted, stone-like ceramic tile of the house we rent. Her attempt to dispose of the evidence left bright pink blobs on cabinetry, bathrobes hung on the back of the door, even inside the toilet bowl where she shoved the saturated toilet paper she used.

Twelve ounces of acetone, two hours, and one green plastic potscrubbing pad later, she did it again. This time dripping another horrendous shade of pink and then blue on her bedroom carpet. Did I mention we rent this house? The house we probably only have one more month left in. The house that survived Hurricane Charley. I have yet to figure out that removal technique. Maybe I'll leave a well-placed area rug behind.

Contrast that behavior with Sarabelle's: She apologized profusely because though she doesn't even wear nail polish, she still felt responsible for having accepted it as a gift and keeping it in our house. I was hardly kidding when I posted this.

Sunday I was a big mean prison matron who never let her charge out of her sight. Out of arms length. I hear some people use the benign term 'tomato staking,' but I'm not buying it. If I could have found a ball and chain, she would have been wearing it.