Say what?

I am very good at decoding my daughter's language; probably better than anyone. When she said "Aye, aye Captain" to me sarcastically after I asked her for the fourth time to clean up her mess of beads and pipe cleaners, I wasn't too surprised. When she announced that she dreamt of "sitting on the lawn with a ghost and eating sweet juicy paw-paws", I found it sweet. But occasionally she will say something that hard as I try, I cannot understand the origin or meaning.

I should mention that many of these phrases are actually incorporated into more elaborate songs during her nightly "shows." Her statements/songs range from unexpected and curious to downright bizarre.

In the unexpected category we have:

I'm going to law school.

I am very annoyed.

With your nail polish on, you can't touch anything.

He's pooping on stage 'cause he had too many carrots.

In the bizarre category:

It's the new naked.

Let's do combo fighting.

Horrify with me.

It's impossible to be in chuck.

Your guesses are as good as mine.

"Come on everybody say 'alcohol'!"

This definitely sounds like a fraternity house rabble rouser chant, but alas, it came from the mouth of my 3 1/2 year old daughter. I suppose there is no context in which this cheer would seem normal from a pre-schooler, but I can assure you that the context in which it was spoken was mortifying.

It was a beautiful day at the beach (by which I mean the State Forest glacial lake-there are no oceans in Vermont). The new school year had just begun so the beach wasn't too crowded, just a few groups of moms and their kids.

After the usual unpacking process during which my daughter cases out the other kids' belongings and water toys, she took to this young boy's bodyboard and tractor and decided to drag them back and forth from one end of the beach to the other. Fine. She's not really bothering anyone, maybe I can actually read my US Weekly for a change. I'm sitting and listening to a few of these mothers talking about lesson plans and worship. Ahhh...religious homeschoolers with well behaved children.

So peaceful... just reading... John Mayer-what a cad... Rumer Willis-slightly androgynous, but she cleans up well...

The silence was soon broken by my daughter stopping in the middle of the beach, raising her arms and loudly requesting, "Come on everybody say 'alcohol'!" I'm sure they were all very impressed at the way I'm raising my daughter. We worship at a different altar.

The bright (er) side.

So our public library is the Atheneum, named after Athena, of course, the Greek goddess of wisdom and the arts (and a bunch of other stuff). Makes sense. It is a beautiful building on the outside and even more stunning on the inside. So stunning that letting a three year old run rampant is dicey at best. Oops-there goes the antique globe. Woops-the toupee of the mannequin newsreporter (yes, there is a mannequin newsreporter seated at his antique typewriter) is now between volumes II and III of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Clearly my child needed to be restrained.

The time came to check out a book, "Squids Will be Squids"-excellent and highly recommended. Much to my shagrin, I was told I needed to sign up for a library card; a reasonable request had I not been holding a cranky Tasmanian devil child who knew at that moment only that there was so much more destruction to undertake! She was already unhappy, so leaving the library without the book was out of the question. Surely I could take one minute and fill out a silly little form. Then I met him: Mr. Atheneum.

I quickly filled out the enrollment form and prepared to sign out the book. Not so fast. My daughter's kicking and yelling and pummeling ramped up a notch, but Mr. Atheneum was on the other side of the desk, with a bad case of nerdy tunnel vision. Here I was stuck between Scylla and Charybdis and by god, Charybdis was going to give me every tidbit of information on the Atheneum and its days and hours of operation, its lending policies, its featured periodicals, its website functionality and more, if it killed him, or me, which was far more likely. For fifteeen minutes this continued. Mr. Atheneum must have been deaf by the end, I know I was. He certainly seemed oblivious to the maelstrom in my arms.

We haven't been back in months.

The moral of the story: Don't take a child into a nerd's domain and expect either one to pay attention to your comfort level.

I'm sorry...Are you kidding?

Did National Geographic and Ski Magazine really bother to visit Saint Johnsbury, VT before declaring it "The #1 small town for adventure" and "one of Vermont's coolest little downtowns", respectively?

If you call trying to understand the redneckian dialect and actually getting the right order at the local Dunkin Donuts an adventure, St. Jay (as it is known locally) is the place for you. If you think gun racks, welfare scrounges, and delapidated housing riddled with bed bugs is cool, come on up.

I find St. Jay one of the most depressing towns I have ever visited in my life. If someone normal looking walks by in St. Jay, you notice, and assume he or she must be another out of state visitor hoodwinked by clever advertising into coming here.

The truth of the matter is, there are a few very rich families who have lived for generations in St. Johnsbury; but the area is poor. Most of the downtown architecture is grand, but it loses something when establishments like "The Dawg House" tavern move in. I wish I was removed enough from the poverty so I could view St. Jay as a cool adventure town. Affording enough heating oil is a struggle, not an adventure. Unemployed pregnant mothers of four on the street corner smoking are certainly not cool.

Tomorrow I look on the bright side. http://www.discoverstjvt.com/top_ten.php