Trickle Down Economics
Enough about you, here's a little more about me:
Kristin Dunning is, or aspires to be, the Well Read Hostess. The WRH lives, geographically speaking, outside of Philadelphia. In her imagination, however, she breathes the rarified air of a place where she can spend her days reading and throwing fantastic parties. She does not particularly care for the word "Blog" and is considering offering a reward for the clever soul who comes up with a happy substitute. She is writing this "not-a-blog" because her brother basically double-dog dared her to.
You Can Also Find My Pithy Prose Here
Did somebody say bowling and tater tots?!
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This is So Not What I Meant To Do
Fear no more the heat o'the medusa/Nor the furious winter's rages.
But also, what the hell? Because when I took the dog for a walk in the woods today, she found this:
Then the dog approached a group of three college students and barked at only the black guy and the Asian and not the white guy. Because other than taking a huge steaming dump in front of the person you've only just begun dating and want to impress, the most embarrassing thing dogs do is bark at people who are visibly different from their owners. The other day she growled at a dude in a motorized wheelchair and tried to bite the tires. It's like the dog is getting you back for feeding her food that smells like, well, dog food by saying, "Hey look. I'm telling everyone you're a bigot." When clearly, I am not a bigot, otherwise my dog barking at non-caucasian looking people and the disabled wouldn't make me wish for instant death. And when this hideous dog behavior occurs, it's not like you can do anything, because anything you and by "you" I mean "me the queen of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time - or anytime really," would come out all assbackwards and by then you I might as well be walking the dog while holding a burning cross and parking diagonally across two handicapped spaces.
And because today wasn't enough of a cluster$%^! what with the snakes and racist dog, I had a mucous management crisis. There is something people do outside when they find themselves in need of a tissue and woefully without that tissue that I have long maintained is inexcusable and gross and heinous and just plain NOT DONE. So you can imagine my delight today when I blew my first ever snot rocket, which to tell you the truth, wasn't that much of a success, and while I was, uh, dealing with the aftermath, I looked up and saw that I was standing in front of a completely adorable pair of 25 year old male mountain bikers.
My kids had ice cream for dinner and in fifteen minutes I'm getting in bed to watch Mad Men because, damn.
"Oh I love trash. Anything dirty or dingy or dusty, anything ragged or rotten or rusty, yes I love trash!"
Last night I let my kids stay up late watching the terrifically awful remake of the Shaggy D.A. starring Tim the Toolman Taylor because I wanted them to leave me alone while I watched the beginning of the Oscars.
I'm not proud, but there it is.
I love me some famous people. And I love me the big dresses. And I love it when people behave outrageously. And I love me a spectacle. And the Oscars are a spectacle of the famous people acting outrageously in big dresses.
I will confess, though, to a bit of Oscar ambivalence, philosophically speaking, and this year's show did nothing to help resolve that.
One the one hand: famous people, dresses, outrageous behavior, spectacle.
One the other hand: It's entertainment, and entertainers. It's not life saving cancer treatments and great acts of humanitarianism and social consciousness. Nobody is changing the world by painting themselves blue and inventing a language and filming in 3-D. Last night's Academy Awards show included a new feature, one that the director (who, in my humble opinion, should be run out of town on a rail and I don't even know who it is so if it happens to be my cousin Greg, who is a real live director, I'm sorry and I don't mean it and it was awesome because nepotism is wicked cool) was especially pleased about and mentioned in interviews; for the best actor/actress awards, each nominee was introduced by a friend who was also an actor/actress, and instead of merely discussing that nominee's performance in the film for which he/she was nominated, the friend talked about that nominee's personal characteristics as well. And I was all, "HUH?" Isn't that sort of beside the point? And worse, isn't it giving a kind of significance to an award about being a good actor that it maybe doesn't merit? It's not a peace prize. It's not a MacArthur grant. It's not even Boy Scout Volunteer of the Year. It's an acting award.
Hence the ambivalence. Also, that show had the pace of a three legged turtle on ludes. OH MY GOD, could you have kept it moving a little faster??!! I think Alec Baldwin fell asleep during his own bit on stage.
Also, to my brother, I know that this is really long. Deal with it. I'm blood. You can make the time.
Oscar highlights, forthwith.
Isn't the girl that George brings to events so that my husband doesn't know we're having an affair pretty? And she got the memo: wear a red dress. I bet she regrets that tat, though.
p.s. George, get a haircut.
Cameron Diaz got the other memo: wear silver. She looks gorgeous, even though her face is a little weird. But a) I didn't even see her there (note to director - less talky talky more candid shots of pretty people) and b) was she even in anything over the past year?
People went all bananas about this dress and the boob flowers. I thought it was gorgeous, the color, the rosettes on her gazongas, especially when you could see the whole thing, including the back. Stunning. Plus? Charlize Theron? You could roll her in dog poop and sprinkles and she'd look fab.
Is this Demi Moore? And is she wearing a dress or is she nude and ruffled? I hate nude colored clothes. I have been working on a Demi Moore theory based on my observation that she not only appears NOT to age, but might actually be getting younger. I think she's made of at least 74% silly putty. Which would explain the dress color, actually. The remaining 26% percent? Restylane and hubris.
Helen Mirren is a goddess. She is sublime. She is divine. She is an inspiration. She should ditch Captain Von Trapp, though, he ages her.
It was SO nice of Matthew Broderick to bring SJP's ninety year old grandmother from Boca to the awards with him. What a sweet guy. He even drove her to the show in his convertible! What a prince! SJP was nominated for what? Worst eye lift of 2009? I think she lost to Nicole Kidman, though.
Readers, I'd like to introduce you to my best friend, Sandy. She's awesome and funny and smart and totally gets it. Even though I think Gabourey Sidibey should have won. Sorry, Sandy. BFFs forevs, though.
I'm not putting a picture of Maggie Gyllenhaal here because she is the cutest thing ever other than my daughter who is currently missing two front teeth courtesy of her brother and an unfortunate swimming pool mishap the other day, but alas, her dress is not so much wonderful.
I'm also not putting the picture of Kathryn Bigelow up here because I have never in my life seen someone who had every chance to be prepared for such a moment look so awkward and uncomfortable. I cringed for her. I was, however, thrilled that she won, and even more thrilled that she beat James Cameron who is irksome, and yet more thrilled today when I learned about ten years after everyone else on the planet that she was James Cameron's first wife whom he left for Linda Hamilton whom he left for the chick he's married to now. Poetic justice makes me shiver with delight.
And now, I guess I should probably see some of these movies everybody last night was talking about.
Your Parents Lied When They Told You That You Could Be Anything You Wanted
I am totally OK with the fact that I know I will never be:
blonde
tall
an ethnobotanist - because who wouldn't like to say, "Hi. Nice to meet you. Yes...yes. It's true. I am an ethnobotanist."
a reporter on NPR - which is what I really wanted to be, not an ethnobotanist, although, maybe a reporter who covers ethnobotany?
lanky
mellow
sophisticated -and pretending otherwise just makes it worse
succinct - unless I can use the F word
prepared
patient
a gourmet cook
the parent of twins
an artist or musician
Tall, blonde, and glamorous - not me.
On the other hand, I am also pretty OK with the fact that I am, and can't help but be:
going grey - especially now that I've nurtured my white stripe into being and have John the colorist at Deja Vu on speed dial
OK. Honestly? I'd rather be tall.
an educator - plus a bunch of other things
a writer? - of sorts, which is good enough. For now.
energetic
genuine
verbal
good in a crisis
efficient
a good hostess - especially when expectations aren't terribly high
the girl who helped make and then grew and fed from her own body two perfect people
a seeker
Did She Just Say That?
"Are you really old and you look really young or are you really young and you look kinda old?" student to me
"What do you mean you don't EVER want to go back to the pool? Think about how many times you went swimming before when you DIDN'T knock out any teeth." me to daughter
"Oh right. He's bleeding, too. But on his finger. I don't know what happened. There was so much blood before it was kind of hard to tell where it was coming from." Babysitter to me
"Relax, don't worry. Just be yourself...Well, yourself if you had any filters." Boss to me
"Mom. I checked your wallet and you are really broke. I have way more money than you." Son to me
"And just think how much you'd have if I hadn't been regularly stealing from it to buy coffee in the morning." Me to son
"Could you check the pool filter ONE MORE TIME? She's really worried that the tooth fairy can't swim." Me to lifeguard
And that's a wrap.
Fence Sitting: Painful for You, Bad for the Fence
I wrote this last week, and then later pulled it. My reasons for pulling it are complicated and confused, in my mind anyway, but I think it's important for me to preface this by saying that the thoughts and opinions I expressed here represent a personal response to what I see around me. I'm not judging anybody else, and I'm not seeking to impose my view on others. Part of the difficulty I've been having deciding what to do with this is that my words below didn't do the job I wanted them to. They zigged when they should have zagged. While it seems like I'm saying "Shut up you with your stupid problems because I don't care," what I have been grappling with is that I see a society supporting the notion that lives should be lived in public and, as a consequence, people - via reality television, blogging, twitter, facebook, text messages, whatever - try to construct persona that are either witty or together or edgy or kind or provocative. Spending that kind of energy and time constructing that persona seems freakishly self-indulgent. I would rather get to know real people. The best thing about social media is that it builds community. I want my community to be populated by the genuine articles, not carefully constructed and manipulated simulacra. Furthermore, my personal struggle with this public vs. private lives conundrum is very real. I constantly have to check and double check myself. What am I disclosing? And why?
Sylvia Plath, the famously depressed American poet, stuck her head in an oven one night, thereby ending her own life by asphyxiation. I KNOW. Cheerful start, right? She did, however, take the time to block the spaces beneath the kitchen door with towels so as not to sicken or harm her sleeping children. Of course, that does mean that she chose to kill herself while her children lay sleeping in their beds, sure to find her the next morning upon awakening. Plath wrote poetry about her children and her affection for them, all the while acknowledging her inability to focus on much other than her own emotional state for very long.
The depressive artistic temperament is old news. We more or less assume that a great creator has snakes in her head. Which came first though? The chicken or the egg? Chicken being artistic impulse and egg being depressive tendencies.
Is this why so many bloggers eventually cop to all kinds of mental breakdowns and deep love for anti-depressants? Or is their neuroses and pervasive sadness the reason they become bloggers?
Did something about Vincent's life as an artist make him cut off his ear, or do dudes who cut off their own ears necessarily possess an artistic bent?
Yeah. You read that right. I just compared bloggers to VanGogh.
But let's get back to Sylvia Plath, because she supplies me with better points of comparison today on my little exploratory ranty-rant. Sylvia Plath was a confessional poet. Many blogs, particularly the ones that few people read and don't get their writers on the Today Show and the cover of Wired Magazine, are confessional in nature. Add the words, "Dear Diary" to the top of many blog pages and what you get might as well be pulled from someone's coffee stained journal.
Trolling the blogosphere, I've read about alcoholism, abuse, depression, death, bad marriages, affairs, fractured friendships, career angst, failed episodes in parenting, acne, bad hair days, clumsy early sexual experiences, abortions, and hemorrhoids. I do not dispute the notion that normalizing and letting the sunshine in on personal experiences and struggles has significant benefit - to the discloser and to the disclosees. Nevertheless, all this self-disclosure is making me uncomfortable. Sometimes bored, too. I don't care what you had for lunch. I don't want to know that your husband cheated on you with his secretary and you have body image issues. It's not that I'm heartless; it's that without a filter to keep other people's private stuff OUT and my own private stuff IN, the stream of information would drown me. All of us.
This belief that our lives are to be lived publicly, or that every thought and action and word is worth sharing with the faceless masses is not just a bloggy phenomenon...it's a central element of our contemporary culture. And it's dangerous. That much time thinking about yourself isn't introspection, it isn't depth. It's self-involved. It's solipsistic. It's damaging.
Socrates may have said "an unexamined life is not worth living," but he didn't mean examined by everybody else...he meant examined by oneself...and even that should probably come with a warning label, just ask Sylvia Plath. Or her children.
The Bachelor, Facebook, Twitter, texting, or ohmygod Sexting which really just shouldn't even be allowed to be a word, and now Chat Roulette. If you don't know what that is, you can go ahead and google it, but fix yourself a stiff drink first, make sure you have brillo and Clorox in your shower for you to scrub that icky feeling off of yourself, and by all means disconnect your webcam.
Where did we make that wrong turn that convinced us that our real lives needed to be shared in such detail? And who convinced us that our virtual lives might be a substitute for real living? I don't think the world would be a better place without Plath's poetry. And I love the fact that I get to connect with people through this medium and find out who just had a baby by reading Facebook. But I'll bet that less time in her own head couldn't have hurt Sylvia. When did the lines between person and poet, sickness and self, public life and private life blur to the point that she opted out?
Who knows, and maybe Plath's* a bad example, but the good stuff of real life doesn't happen in full view of everyone else, and it can't just exist in your own head.
*Her soul sister Anne Sexton, whose work I actually prefer, didn't fare much better.
"Who Wants To See A Resentful, Sulking Pole Dancer?" Me, That's Who!
Dear loyal and devoted readers: I owe you a Virtually Well Read post about The
Progress Paradox. This week. I SWEAR. A great deal and sometimes
inventively.
Last night NBC, in a desperate attempt to resuscitate itself
as a network anyone cares about beyond The Office and 30 Rock and Brian
Williams, interrupted its own coverage of the Olympics closing ceremonies,
during which by the way, I must have dozed off because I had the weirdest dream
about Captain Kirk and giant inflatable beavers, to air the pilot of The Marriage Ref. For those of you who have lives don’t
watch as much crap tv as I do haven’t heard, The Marriage Ref is a show
cooked up by Jerry Seinfeld and features couples so trashy it’s funny arguing
about things I never even thought about arguing about (how many “abouts” can
one use in a sentence before one has committed some sort of writing crime? Hmmm….something
to ponder.). One reviewer I heard today, when asked when she thought
the network would pull the plug on the series, commented that she was actually
surprised they hadn’t done it in the middle of the first episode.
However, and keep in mind that
I was still probably a little sleepy and confused about The Shatner and all
those giant beavers, I laughed my ass off.
Oh how I wish that were actually possible. And true.
- I don't know who that man in the pink shirt was, or maybe it was purple, but he needed to pick up the pace a bit. I give him a big two thumbs up for his impression of a "resentful, sulking pole dancer."
- I want to be Natalie Morales when I grow up and also get a time machine so that I can be younger than I am now when I grow up because Natalie Morales is about 36 and I am not. Anymore. As much as I love La Morales, the fact checking service she seems to be there on the set to provide is a little lame. Besides, facts are for people with no imaginations.
- Alec Baldwin – don’t care what he does, he could kick puppies and blow snot rockets on my shoes and I’d still think he’s the greatest living comedic genius.
- I try to hate Kelly Ripa because she’s so totally hateable- on
paper. I defy you, however, to actually
hate her. She’s hilarious and
unembarrassable. My two favorite qualities in a chick.
- As TWGH said, men are going to lose on this show all the time. Why? Because men are idiots. Last night's show featured a guy arguing with his wife about whether or not they could put his recently dead and taxidermied dog in his house in a special niche he'd had built for it and another debonair genius who tried to convince his wife that they should install a stripper pole in the bedroom for her to "exercise" on in front of him.
- The end of the show features Marv Albert, much shrunken under his giant toupee since his big Biting the Girl on the Ass scandal, but I don't know why he was there.
p.s. Lest you think that I’m a complete classless wretch, I did manage to haul my tired carcass out last night to see Crazy Heart. Which was fantastic. And if Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal don’t both win Oscars I’ll be shocked. And outraged. Wait. Is it possible for both Jeff Bridges and George Clooney to win Oscars? Yikes. Dilemma.
Aristotle and Chocolate Pudding
I was a little twerked yesterday. Mood swingy - not my favorite way to be
Roller coaster emotions require two things: wallowing and chocolate.
Check and check.
Yesterday I got an email about Kelly Corrigan's new book, Lift
. She wrote The Middle Place, about which I waxed rhapsodic when it first came out or months afterward because I'm generally a day late and a dollar short. This afternoon I clicked through to read an excerpt. And then I cried for fifteen minutes. Not just "Oh how sweet and moving" little weeping tears of bittersweet emotion, but snot running down my face, mascara smeared, snorting and snuffling unattractive crying. Aristotle, in Poetics, describes "catharsis" as the purging of negative or strong emotions resulting in a sense of enlightenment or heightened well being. Although Aristotle specifically tied catharsis to Greek tragedies, the term has been co-opted by us regular non-Aristotelian-type thinkers to mean...the same thing but without having to marry your mother and poke your eyes out.
Kelly Corrigan wrote what I've been not saying. Or, if I've tried to say it, I haven't done it nearly as well as she did.
"There are other mistakes, less obvious. I don’t mirror your emotions enough, though I can’t say why because when I do, it seems to calm youdown. I forget to praise your effort instead of your achievement, I discipline by carrot and stick instead of reason, and I ignore the indisputable research about the benefits of family dinner."
She even mirrored my own experience of reading my daughter's report card, which read "She sees the Big Picture so quickly that she rushes through her work and missed the details." Oh really? Wonder where she got that from? The way we parents put every bit of ourselves into doing our most important job, loving our babies and helping them be who they are meant to be, except when we don't, and then bury ourselves in our own sense of failure - how do NOT do that? Or maybe that's exactly what we are meant to do? Teach them that it's OK to not be perfect. Teach them that even their mommies can be jerks. Corrigan's words sunk their teeth in deep. So I cried. And though it was ugly, the tears weren't because I was sad or mad or disappointed or frustrated. My tears were salty relief. It's Not Just Me.
When I pulled myself together, except for the smeared mascara because how the heck do you get that stuff OFF. Is it or is it not waterproof. I think waterproof mascara only means that it comes off with tears and eye-rubbing, but requires brillo to take off at the end of the day, I went home. And then I made chocolate pudding with my kids.
And all is now right with the world.
Double Chocolate Pudding
In a medium (who cares) saucepan, whisk together 3/4 cup granulated sugar, 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, and 3 tablespoons cornstarch.
Gradually whisk in 1 cup light cream - whatever - I only had half and half and that worked fine. Come to think of it, I have no idea what the difference between light cream and half and half is. When it's fully mixed in and smooth, add yet another 1 cup of light cream (1/2 and 1/2).
Set the pan over medium heat and cook, whisking constantly (a wooden spoon will do fine if say, your dog runs off with the whisk and is hiding under the dining room table guarding it as though it were a giant ham or roast beast) for about five minutes, until the stuff starts to thicken and boil. Then whisk (stir) for another minute.
Take it off the heat
Pour it into
This is a great recipe for cooking with the small ones because it's so simple andthey can do almost all of it themselves. Except the constant stirring until the hot pudding is boiling. I would never let my kids stir boiling liquid next to the hot stove. Probably. Unless I needed to do something important in a hurry. Like update my Facebook status. What? Nobody got burned. And look. Pudding.
Recipe pilfered poached swiped adapted from Epicurious.com
Side note: John Boehner is a tool. An orange, orange, smug tool. Wow. I feel better for writing that. It was almost cathartic.
Another side note, although now that I look at the page, I realize this is nowhere near the side: Why is anyone surprised that a Killer Whale held in captivity and forced to do tricks for fat tourists for the price of a day-old sardine killed someone?
Nowcasting
I'm in a snowglobe. Like one of those overdressed snowmen eternally rooted into lucite. Every so often, the swirl of falling snow diminishes to almost nothing - a stray flake here or there - and then, with the flick of a wrist, I'm back in the middle of a frosty maelstrom.
That's what it looks like out my window.
Sounds kind of pretty, doesn't it?
Well it sucks and I hate it. It's not cold enough for anything to stick. Might be pretty, but it isn't doing me a bit of good.
Rewind to last night.
Wednesday spaghetti - a house full of the greatest people on the planet, my friends. A very different crowd appeared than usual, schedule changes and cosmic interference, who knows. I was worried that it wouldn't click, it wouldn't be smooth, it would, horror of horrors, feel like a party. Silly me. Clicked. Smooth. Relaxed.
When all 40 something of those people went home, and the kitchen was reassembled (Dear Mother Nature, I am sorry that I use paper plates and napkins and plastic cutlery and cups for Wednesday Spaghetti, but...), I tensed up.
Yesterday the weather people, both mainstream and fringe, my particular favorites, were calling for big snow today into Saturday. Which means a few things to me: fun weather, snow day, time with kids, time to catch up work, sleeping late. But then they weren't sure. Would the "Snowacane" as one person dubbed the windy mess heading my way make a left or a right? Left = beaucoup snow, right = not so much. I couldn't stop checking the weather. I didn't even pack lunch today hoping that I'd be going home from work early, IF I even had to go to work at all.
I woke up this morning to flurries...snowglobe. And I've been on edge ever since. Lots of good things going on - excellent Wednesday Spaghetti experience, kids cute and delightful and doing interesting things, husband well and happy, working on some fun writing projects, teaching the satire and the plays and the grammar. Even if I didn't have any lunch.
The weather people claim that they are unable to do much "forecasting," and so they've resorted to something they've named "nowcasting." In other words, the past is done and doesn't provide us with much helpful guiding information and we have no earthly idea what's going to happen in the future, so...right at this moment? Snowglobe.
I'm emotionally nowcasting. I'm flying back and forth between all good, all right, and WHERE'S THE DAMN SNOW. I WANT SNOW.
I'm irritated that I'm missing Obama's health care meeting with the
And when I reflect on the fact that I'm riding an emotional roller coaster over a weather event, I begin to ponder my own sanity. Which throws another emotion into the mix. Look, I'm doing it now. I'm nowcasting.
As an attempt to kick myself in the ass, I strolled on around the internet looking for diversion. Jenny was funny and made me envy her big smile with cute photos. BOSSY is laid up but generous enough to keep us all in the loop, Dooce is going out of her way to make me feel like a nothing by posting a promo video of her new tv show which features an immaculate house which I can only assume is a doll house because nobody with two kids and two dogs has a house that streamlined and clean. Or maybe she has TWO houses? One she takes pictures of to show us and one that is a hovel where she really lives? And oh! Look! Another emotion. Envy. How attractive. I can't entertain myself with the other World Wide Waste of Time Wonders that I want to because I can't get into any blogspot pages for reasons we don't need to go into right at this particular moment but have to do with my immediate geographical location.
Let's review, shall we? I'm sad, I'm happy, I'm on edge, I'm envious, I'm worried, I'm this, I'm that. I'm sharing every emotion I experience in real time. I'm hugely self-involved because emotional self-disclosure only makes people uncomfortable and despite knowing this, I continue.
You know what I am mostly?
Exhausting.
(I could use a snow day to rest up a bit.)
Best Date Night Ever
For the first Tuesday since the dawn of time or at least early September, I managed to get my daughter's hair into the very rigidly defined "ballet bun" without tears and recrimination. And it was a good one.
After I picked Ballet Bun up from ballet (that's an excellent example of synecdoche, by the way, for those of you playing the "Who's the Biggest Literatary Terms Geek" game at home), we stopped by the homestead to take a shower to wash the gallons of hair gel required to make the aforementioned hairstyle stay put, check in with the dog, and headed back out again. Child Masculine the Elder was with His Father at soccer or something sporty and Very Important.
Sorry. No Dogs Allowed
My girl, all showered and even be-jammied, was presented with the opportunity to select ANYTHING SHE WANTED for dinner. She picked "The Boathouse," a local watering hole with an actual boat in it for a reason I have never fully understood given that we are landlocked here in SE Pennsylvania but whatever. She love love loves The Boathouse, and her brother does not love love love it at all but rather, if you ask him, hate hate hates it. The fact of her brother's disdain for all things Boathouse makes her ability to choose The Boathouse extra fabulous and fun. I totally get that. I had a brother. Actually, I still do.
I was thinking that this was going to be a date for just the two of us, but the girl had other ideas. She brought a friend much to the dismay of the actual dog.
There was a wide array of dinner options...behold, the Specials Board.
But no, she ordered OFF THE MENU, because she has fancy tastes. And by "fancy tastes" I mean noodles with butter. Why she loves loves loves The Boathouse is a mystery because last time I checked, I can provide plenty o'noodles with just butter at home and I do every single day, but never mind.
There are, truth be told, other reasons to love Boathouse night with mommy. For instance, on Boathouse night with mommy, she gets to order root beer. Don't tell her brother.
She also gets sole control of the ipod touch featuring the "Where's Waldo" game while she waits for her spaghetti. While Mommy watches her favorite anchorman talk about the two wars we're fighting for three minutes and figure skaters for 27.
coveted ipod touch tiny Brian Williams
Also, even if she doesn't finish her noodles and please note the shocking lack of vegetables in this scenario, she gets to have the fancy shmancy Boathouse kids' dessert.
When we got home and were getting ready for bed, she wrapped her tiny ice cream sandwich covered fingers around my neck and pulled me close. She whispered in my ear, "I love going to The Boathouse with you mommy. Thanks."
Anytime, sweetie. Anytime.