Sundays with Stretchy Pants

Marinating in babies.

You could put that Will.I.Am Yes We Can song on a cat food commercial and it would make me cry. Here it is trying to make Lena and Liberty’s review of Nikki Grimes’ Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope review less, well, boring. It was the end of the day and neither of them was really into doing the review, but just like the Gosselins, we don’t have child labor laws in this house so I made them do it. And it was boring. And I told them it was boring and they were like, “Yeah? Well? It’s a boring book.” And then I called them racist and sent them to bed.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s a boring book. It’s important to learn about important people in history. And now that he’s our president, I felt comfortable putting it on Kids Know Stuff. I didn’t feel comfortable before because I thought somebody would see it and then make me review that John McCain book by his heir-head daughter. I just can’t support Meghan McCain. As a daughter from my dad’s first marriage, it enrages me that she excluded Sen. McCain’s first marriage and her own half-brothers (half-, not even step-) from the book. Plus, she’s super rich and not that talented. I heard her once on NPR and she was all, “Like, yeah, it was super sweet writing that, like, book about my, um, dad and stuff?” And then I punched the car radio in the face.

Why am I still talking about politics? I’m not, I’m talking about my kids. That’s why this post is going under the “I Homeschool” category and not “I Like Politics?” I homeschool. And part of homeschooling is Kids Know Stuff. And part of homeschooling is being called racist by your mother. They have to learn.

Do you see that? There, in the bottom right corner? Cool. Just in case you can’t see it very well:

That’s right. Barack Obama really is our next president. Woohoo!

We had a little party over here last night. I thought when I woke up this morning, Mr. President-Elect would’ve had this place all cleaned up, but he didn’t. I’m beginning to regret my vote. I voted for change and it’s all just the same: I went to bed with a dirty house and woke up with a dirty house. Kidding!

Sorry about the delay in the acceptance speech, but he was busy emailing me to thank me for everything I did for his campaign:

I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.
We just made history.

…

But I want to be very clear about one thing…
All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,
Barack

Yup, we’re friends. What? Other people got that email too? Well, it’s just because Barack has lots of friends. It doesn’t make my email any less special.

So the kids filled out the electoral college map with red and blue stickers. It came with the School House Rock Election Collection DVD.

They seemed to have fun with that, but they kind of balked at watching the acceptance speech. But Dawn and Kristen and Lynne and I weren’t having it. We forced them to watch history happen and, dammit, we forced them to like it. I liked it. Did you like it? If not, were you as gracious about it as Sen. McCain? Or did you boo like his a-hole supporters did every time he mentioned Obama in his concession speech? That was lame. But I thought McCain’s speech was excellent. Very classy. Now I have to make like Obama and clean up! Have a good first-day-not-worrying-about-the-election! Unless you live in Minnesota.

I saw this on Feministe:

Lena and Liberty start a paper route today. Now maybe they can buy their own damn food and gas. Kidding! I know they would choose to buy video games and starve to death, clinging to the warm screen of the DS.

Anyway, we’re terribly busy because we all have jobs now, except Maya who is very quickly learning to read so she can get a job. She’s sitting on my lap as I type this and she just said, “Why does it say ‘Maya’? And why does it say ‘job’? I’m glad I didn’t type effin’ job or something like that. I’d hate for the first sentence she ever reads on my blog to contain profanity. (I wouldn’t really mind that, but I felt I needed to say that for that part of my audience which is comprised of good mothers.)

Um, anyway, yeah jobs. And we’re going to Michigan this weekend so the girls can trick-or-treat with their cousin so I have to make sure there are things to pack and stuff. Lena, Liberty, and Riley are all going to be characters from the Naruto books. (I gotta get this kid off my lap, she just said told Lena and Liberty, “Mom typed your name on the computer!”) And Maya is going to be a princess/cheerleader.

I’m kind of glad that we’ll be spending the last weekend before the election in Michigan. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pretend there is no election coming up, which will enable me to sleep the sleep of the non-swing-state citizen. We have election stuff to do on Monday when we get back, though. I did phone banking a few days ago again only this time we were calling democrats who have absentee ballots and telling them to mail the suckers in. It was way more fun than last week because everybody was all, GOBAMA! and stuff.

Ok, that’s all I got. It’s time for laundry now.

And just in case you don’t know what my title is talking about, here’s a video for you. Ok bye.