Res ipsa loquitur

At Thanksgiving dinner: "It reflects and reinforces."
"Like duct tape!"

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Just finished ordering a couple of swimsuits for the kidlet, which was an exercise in frustration -- it's very difficult to find appropriate swimwear for someone who's already shaped like a woman at thirteen.

It seems to me that the available swimsuits make one of three statements:

Type 1: "I am a hoochie mama. I wasn't actually planning on swimming; I'm just going to recline here while you undress me with your eyes. If you bring me champagne, it's going to have to have a straw in it, because if I raise my arms, these straps are going to break."

Type 2: "I am a middle-aged matron. Would you like to see my swim cap with the little flowers on it?"

Type 3: "I can afford to spend seventy dollars for a swimsuit for someone who's still young enough to enjoy scooching around the bottom of the pool on her belly."

I no longer have a problem ordering for myself, because I actually am a middle-aged woman (though my swim cap doesn't have flowers on it) and have lowered my standards to "will stay on for actual swimming and won't disintegrate in the chlorine for at least a year."

I ended up at kmart.com (the online store, because the three-dimensional store only had Type 1 swimsuits, many of which had both fringe and sparkly studding) with a couple of suits that look athletic and practical in the itty bitty preview photos. I just hope they don't fall apart right away.

p.s. is there such a thing as a service on the internet that I can instruct, "Keep an eye on this product, and send me an e-mail if it goes on sale"?

The kidlet, being a seventh grader, had her Abstinence Education today. To deliver this, the school evidently took her back to the 1950s.

The AE teacher told the girls that every boy thinks constantly about having sex with every girl he meets. Yes, seriously, the phrase "only want one thing" was used. Girls have to police how they dress so as not to tempt boys.

She sees right through all this, of course -- I mean, she actually knows some boys, and most of them, if they only want one thing, only want not to have to play dodgeball again -- but naturally she had to share squeaks of outrage with me when I got home and then share more squeaks of outrage with the spouse when he got home.

And then she had to endure me marching up the stairs at lights-out to make the speech that begins "And I suppose they assumed that everybody is heterosexual?" and ends " ... perfectly normal and we would love you in exactly, precisely the same way."

To which she replied, "Yes, but strictly speaking the term for women isn't 'gay,' it's 'lesbian.' "

Tonight the kidlet, who is twelve, asked me to define "fursona."

Um, yes. Dr. Spock did not prepare me for these moments.

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In other news: Are any of y'all involved in university public relations? The spouse is looking for some advice. (U.S. folks preferred, since higher education probably works differently in other countries.)

I was recommending books to the ten-year-old, and I mentioned Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsinger. "I think I remember it being a pretty good book," I said, "but I'm not sure, because she also wrote books for adults, and as I remember it, the gender politics were pretty awful."

"What do you mean, gender politics?"

"Well, it's been a long time, but what I remember is that all the women were beautiful and tempestuous, and mostly they were there to be prizes for the men to win. The books weren't very interested in what they wanted, unless it was a man, and they fought over men, but aside from that they didn't really have relationships with each other."

"Oh, yeah, I've read books with women like that," she said. "Sugarboxes."

The kidlet has a friend over to spend the night. We had videos rented and activities planned, but the two of them decided they'd rather act out "The Sound Of Music."

Two lines of the title theme -- two lines of "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria" -- the scene where Maria arrives at the mansion and is welcomed by the butler -- the scene where the children step forward and announce their names (and these two ten-year-olds know all the children's names) -- and then suddenly they get bored, and the friend announces, "This is a remix! The captain's nice and Maria's mean!"

Now the kidlet (as Maria) is in handcuffs and the friend (Mother Superior) is slapping her around. It's like the musical theater version of Calvinball.

Kidlet questions I've answered this week:

• What does 'treason' mean?

• That magazine says a man is pregnant. How could that happen?

• Will you buy me a hedgehog? OK, how about a ferret? A rabbit? A snake? What about a guinea pig? A dog? A really little dog? Is there any animal you're willing to live with other than a cat? Can we have another cat, then?

• If I worked in the zoo, do you think they'd let me play with the monkeys?

• Does Pantalaimon mean something, or is it just sounds?

• Can we buy a present for the dog next door? It might be her birthday.

• I can't find the Caspian Sea on this map, can you?

• Is it OK if I give communion to the cats?

Someone gave the kidlet a virtual pet for her birthday. She was sitting on the couch with it, and I was sitting on my chair attempting to concentrate on LJ over her constant babble of comments: "If you push this button? The monkey will juggle bananas! And if he's not hungry, you offer him food and he shakes his head!"

It's something like a real pet and something like worship. I mean, if she neglects the monkey, he will disappear and she'll feel guilty so she'll have to hunt for him and find him and brush him and feed him and give him bananas to juggle. But if she faithfully pays attention to him, he'll lead her into all these new locations, where she'll pick up something called "virtual stickers." She wants to take her monkey lots of places, because if she does, he'll get mail from those places, and that will make him happy.

She lost it today and turned the house upside-down looking for it. "Oh, good," she said, "he's not sick or anything. He's just asleep."

Finally she looked at me over the top of my laptop screen and said, "Don't you wish you had a virtual pet?"

Oh, no, honey, I'm very happy with my own digital idol.

"You can't fall off the edge of the universe. The universe is universal."

Me: Should I ask why the baby doll's hands are tied behind her back? Or do I not want to know?
Kidlet: Oh, I just decided to handcuff her.
Me: OK. Why?
Kidlet: I wanted to see what she'd do.