I never should have complained about the naked Barbies. At this moment, Ollie is parading around in her birthday suit. I'm not sure why. She marched past me a few minutes ago on her way upstairs and proudly proclaimed "I naked!" as if I were blind. Now she's trying to convince Grover to get naked, too, which apparently is not going well. Perhaps I should step in at this point....

After my most recent post (all of twenty minutes ago), I decided to exercise my clearly befuddled brain and read the news. The front page story, not suprisingly, is about the Duke Lacrosse (alleged) rape case. Being mildly interested, I scanned the article and found interesting, relevant information about two Duke lacrosse players arrested today and an interview given by the second dancer at the party which neither corroborated nor refuted the accuser's story. However, I was a bit annoyed to read the following near the end of the article:

"Reporters tracked the district attorney's movements in minute detail. Just after noon, Nifong emerged from his office and walked across the hallway to the bathroom.

"Reporters surrounded the bathroom door in a crowd that included five television cameras, three still photographers, sound men with boom microphones and at least a dozen print reporters. At the sound of flushing, the group tensed, raised cameras and prepared. Nifong did not emerge with news."

I realize that the DA is running for re-election and as no one from an opposing party has announced his/her candidacy, will effectively win or lose in May's primary, but seriously... Is it really necessary for the media hounds to camp outside the restroom in hopes of getting a quote??? And does this piece of information have ANY relevance to the case at hand??? And did we really need the "sound of flushing" part???

So much for journalistic integrity.

Where did that saying come from anyway? I suspect it was some ABC After-School Special that we watched as kids that made us the sensitive, caring people we are today (shut up, BA!). Today's kids could stand to be locked in a room with their eyelids taped open and forced to watch a few of those (Hey, I just realized the abbreviation for After-School Special is A.S.S. Only took me 30 +/- years to figure that out. Hmmm, maybe "Special" actually refers to "mildly retarded"...). Then again, eyelid taping may be a little too Clockwork Orange.

Wow, what a digression! My point was to talk about my addiction to Mountain Dew and Taco Bell and look where I ended up. I almost forgot my point which was the sad fact that I actually commented to the Avril Lavigne lookalike at the TB drive-thru that their prices had gone up since Friday because the total of my "usual" meal was 11 cents higher than it was three days ago (also just realized there's no symbol for cents on this computer. Perhaps a conspiracy on the part of the computer manufacturers to subliminally convince us all to go to a coin-less and eventually cash-less society. Oh god, I'm starting to sound like Fishmonger.)

Oops, another digression. The point here is that I eat at Taco Bell way too much. But that's just boring.

Or the oven, to be more accurate. I was in the dining/craft room last night adding to Ollie's baby book when I heard Ollie exclaim "Ooooh, fire!". When last I looked in the kitchen, she was up on a chair "helping" my husband make pizza for supper and all seemed fine. Upon the fire comment however, I felt it necessary to investigate so I casually walked in and asked "Fire? Where?" Ollie dutifully pointed to the oven. Indeed, there were tiny flames dancing inside the oven around the heating element. My husband was just standing there watching like fire in the oven was a perfectly normal form of entertainment. When I mentioned the fire extinguisher under the sink, he pooh-poohed the idea, presumably not wanting to wait for the oven to then be cleaned so he could make his pizza. So then I asked if he would like some baking soda. He looked at me quizzically, so I just stopped asking. I retrieved the baking soda and tossed a teaspoonful or so on the fire and it promptly went out. My husband was so impressed. He had no idea that baking soda would put out a (small) fire. Now, I'm not sure when I learned that, but it was a long damn time ago. Like middle school or something. Long before I ever had a chemistry class in high school, much less college (did I mention my husband is a chemist, too?). I tested him to make sure he knew to put a lid on a grease fire on the stove, too. He wasn't amused. Ollie, however, thought the whole incident was a riot. I was just glad Grover wasn't here - she's still at the grandparents - she would have freaked out.

Well, the clever people in NYC have come to my rescue yet again. Here we have the obvious explanation for the Easter/rabbit connection from overheardinnewyork.com.

Old Man #1: Do you know why a bunny is connected to Easter?
Old Man #2: No.
Old Man #1: It's because Easter is about fertility and rabbits are animals that are always copulating.
Old Man #2: Huh, I never heard about that.
Old Man #1: Think about it. On Easter, you have the bunnies and the bunnies have eggs and the eggs have children in them.

--Penn Station

Well, damn, if I'd known that, I would have skipped that whole childbirth ordeal and just waited for Easter.