Another Year

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It's time of the year when we review the previous year. Okay, that time happened a while ago. However, it's probably time to remind myself, and future lil s, who will probably be a nuclear physicist or the emperor from Star Wars, the sort of music she listened to during this year of her life.

We enjoy the rise and fall type stuff, because we think of the rise as a rise to power and the fall as a slow crumbling due to a decline in tax revenue..we also plan to rule the stars up above us.








And, as inspired by the blog: 9,000 things to do with your daughter before she moves out at seventeen with her forty-five year old trucker boyfriend. I'll break down 31 pieces of advice I've picked up to give to my child before the arrival of my next birthday.

One: Tell her she's intelligent. This is important to do because a lot of other outlets are going to tell her that it's important to be beautiful or attractive. However, it's important to let her know that if she's intelligent it won't matter how conventionally pretty she is. Heck, if things go well enough she can be so intelligent that she'll be elected President of the Universe or whatever and then she can tax people who are too beautiful or cause them to wear trash bags or something, because if you're like me, you're hoping your offspring becomes dictator of the Milky Way galaxy.

Interpretative picture of what that will look like:

2. Teach her to sleep with her eyes open. This is an invaluable skill that will serve your little girl/dictator throughout her life/iron fisted rule. I could have made it through many a meeting, lecture, or all of ninth grade history, so much better if I'd possessed this amazing skill. And let's be honest, becoming dictator of the Milky Way is probably going to result in some sleepless nights worrying about whether the population of insects is too high and impinging upon your dominion. You'll need to make up on that sleep at some point in time without the ants catching on and carrying you off.

And some afternoons in late winter, when the tree branches are mere shapes of things back lit by hollow gray skies, you'll lie on the floor next to her as she gazes intently at a green block. Her cheeks will be that same blush of pink that you remember from those first hazy days when you returned home from the hospital. Her reddish gold hair will be falling into her eyes, and you'll brush it away, running your hand along her smooth forehead and she'll look up at you, suddenly, intently, imploring in only the way a small child can. This afternoon will fade away like all the others before it, dropping down into that subterranean well where all our old memories swim, sifting through the dark with flicks of ghostly tails, waiting to surface.