Something's Strangely Not Going Down...For Once

I discovered the following very tranquil photograph, of our neighboring Somethin's Going Down compound, in my photo album, and dear God, luddite that I am, I even managed to crop it to my satisfaction.
As you can see, a full panorama of the various corners of Crab-cowboy-compound. Many cars, but no goats nor cowboys evident. A rare motionless vista of the lodge and its attendant sleep hovels...you can't really see all the mobile homes, but this is still quite a good slice of Crabcorner architecture and parkitecture.

I believe the image may, however, be deceiving. If I recall, I was trying to get a shot of the man sleeping in that brown car. Enjoy!

And if you're looking for more Mom-related posts, please visit the you-know-what. I particularly relate to How to be an Eco-Housewife at the moment.

Multimedia Mommy, or, Get Out of My Inbox with your Totspam!

I know I said I wouldn't get personal on this site. But I received the following email. From an acquaintance. Let me repeat that: she is not my friend; she is a playground acquaintance. And if she were my friend, she would no longer be after this:

This September, we found out, we will be giving XXX the gift of a SISTER!!!!!!!!!!! :) This little, EXTREMELY active girl inside of me looked PERFECT on the advanced ultrasound yesterday!!! The doc said her heart looked "weepingly" beautiful.....and everything was in place where it should be! :) He used technical terms for everything......but all in all she was good to go! :)

No, this is not a joke. You have just met Crabtown's own Multimedia Mommy. People, how could I have given her my email address? I do not know. I don't recall her asking for it. But sweet Jesus, I evidently gave it, and I have been paying for it ever since.

Everyone has an MM in their midst, albeit probably not one as cracked as ours. A Multimedia Mommy is the mom who, with her constant need for others to adore her spawn as much as she does, has annoyed us all since time immemorial. But the digital revolution has only made her more dreadful and given her new platforms on which to perform her parental braggery.

Some sample offenses:

1. Multimedia Mommy shows you—and everyone else she barely knows—her 6-week sonogram.

MM, here's a rule of thumb: if you have to point out the anatomy to me ("see, this looks like the head but it's actually the yolk sac!"), chances are I'm not going to find your fetus enchanting. And while we're on the subject, don't show me the 5-month sono either. I know you're excited it's a girl and that the heart is "weepingly perfect" as you quoted in your email by way of your astonishingly creepily enthusiastic sonographer (what the frock?) but to me your snap shows nothing more than a dinosaur. Okay, maybe a seahorse.

Also, ahem, unless they are your best pals, your sister, or your mom, especially don't show your sonograms to other moms. We are not interested. Some of us weren't even interested in our own dinosaur.

And then there's that whole gender-exam bit of the sono...To that MM who's having a boy: no, I can't see the penis. I still can't find the head. Oh, here it is. No, sorry, that's the yolk sac! So no, I guess I don't see the penis. And I'm not sure I need to. Strange though it may seem, I really prefer my penises to be fully grown rather than the in-utero sort of mini-prong. I mean, I just prefer to see them in the flesh, as it were. Rather than in a grainy black and white pic. That somehow just seems…a bit…off.

2. MM sends you a mountain of "freshbaby" jpegs one second after she has given birth to it.

Freshbaby, of course being a baby who has not yet been cleaned up post childbirth and who confronts you at 7am in full hi-res meconium-tinted glory, before you have had your first sip of coffee.

3. Once the tot is born, MM spams out bi-weekly links to her kid's Flickr album.

Make that you AND THE PEDIATRICIAN too. Yes. I am not joking. Our MM has her pediatrician on these massmails. One just has to wonder, is she on crack? Pix of your kid for the pediatrician? Lady, it's bad enough for the doc to have to see our tots in the flesh once a year. The monthly photo reminders she might just be able to live without. Adorable though they surely are.

Look, MM, we sympathize. We all have to sit on our hands not to force the whole world to look through our monstrously gigantic photo albums. But we know that even if everyone should want to look at every shot of Supertot, it's still good to at least pretend to respect other people's time and EDIT THE DAMN COLLECTION. Or just do a small sampling of Supertot in jpeg form. And, in that case, there's that handy button in iPhoto that helps you minimize the jpeg size.

As for the note begging us all to hold on "because MORE photos will be downloaded later tonight" – that part I thank you for. I was getting worried. I mean I just couldn't get enough of a close-up gander of tiny XXX on the beige helix slide in that first roll. But, thank God, we have another roll coming later tonight.

MMs everywhere: Please. Put the technology away. I know you have something really special to send me. But your babyspam is crushing my inbox.

Spoofery

OK, I know I said I was far away engaged in cooking and debauchery. But apparently I am still here. And I know I said I was going to make my next posts all about momming and kids. But I was lying. Still, even if you are annoyed by me, go here. It is parent-related. It is also bloody plain funny. And relates very much to all of us who just can't leave our multimedia lives alone...to the point where we have no lives left. Okay. Off to get a life. So she says.

Korean Robot Emcees Wedding

Yet another reason to love Korea.

And by the way, please be patient for more mommy musings. I am away AGAIN this weekend celebrating Crabubby's 40th birthday weekend. We are meeting up with Crabhub friends and family and C-Mom is cooking her tail off to ensure good noshing for the Crabhub, WHILE, also keeping C-tot out of his hair for one weekend. Yes, I am an ubermommy. Once in a while.

So yes, away from the blog, but C-Mom rants will begin in earnest again next week. While I have GREAT NEW DEVELOPMENTS regarding the cowboy compound and much more silly science on the blogbackburner, I am going to force myself to return to literal Crabmommying in my next writings: I have a slew of complaints and quips regarding tot-rearing and other tot-rearers. Happy weekend...and please do go to the bloglet for more in the interim. I know I say this a lot. But maybe I should just say it again one more time. Please do go to the bloglet for more in the interim.

Something's Always Going Down

As faithful readers know, here on Crabcorner the neighbors are always up to something. Whether stealing a fork from one's lawn, or sleeping in their cars, or dismantling their log cabins, the cowboys in the rodeo-inflected compound across the street from us always provide much interest.

Today's report:

8 am. Hot damn! A goat is spotted in the yard:
8.30 am. Said goat is put into the above-pictured truck and driven away.

As always, lingering existential questions remain: Whose goat is it? Where is it going? And why? Did it sleep in a mobile home last night? Or in the log cabin? (You can't see the compound here, but it is sprawling, with many options for shelter.) I swear I saw no goats outside last night and heard no goat whinnying either.

And here's a question to the floor: can you call cowboys rednecks? I mean, could I call this neighbor-spying "Redneck Report"? It has a nice ring to it. And these are very slummy sleep-in-yer-car type cowboys.

P.S. Baby Be of Use: Board Books on Sale

I've already posted today, but p.s. McSweeney's is having a blowout sale because witty publishers sometimes have to do that. Delight yourself with Baby Be of Use, a nifty series described as follows:

With the Baby Be of Use Four-Book Bundle, you've got your domestic bases covered. Between naps and "turning over," your baby can learn his or her way around banking, car repair, breakfast preparation, and drink-mixing. Through basic shapes and colors, these board books teach your precious little angels to be useful at long last. And why shouldn't they help a little around the house?

Get all four Baby Be of Use books--that's Baby Mix Me A Drink, Baby Make Me Breakfast, Baby Do My Banking, and Baby Fix My Car--for the astounding price of just $16.80. Now that's a shower present! Right here.
(Now please read the post below and tell me what you think...is the ping pong an animal or a plant?)

Silly Science Pic of the Week

I'm not yet able to get back to proper posting as I have a truckload of back-bloggityness to edit up before posting. This is what happens when one is a global traveller. One lags behind. Blame it on Korea.

Rest assured you will soon hear the familiar Crabvoice once more, whining away. In fact I am working on a new section called Crabmommy Slings Mud, a section in which I break my blogocratic oath and vent, quite specifically, about moms that are bugging in addition to my general venting about motherdom and its irksome features. As with Ask Crabmommy, this will be a new regular feature in which I showcase examples of Highly Bugging Mommydom.

Regarding either my advice column or mud-slinging, as always, feel free to email suggestions or questions to crabmommyatgmaildotcom.

And here is the SS pic of the week. We are still in our underwater series.

Ping Pong sponge:
Question: is a sponge...animal or plant?

Crabmommy in Korea

Mommyknows, you win the cougar cap, you lucky, lucky lady. Indeed, while my trip may have sounded very South Carolinian (!?) to some, Korea was the destination. South. Not North. because in the North, the dictator is not so swell. He has a bouffant hairstyle and drinks a lot of French brandy, so I learned when visiting the border. And he kidnaps people he finds useful or fascinating, which must surely mean the likes of the Crabmommy.

For those many readers puzzled by the Korean sojourn, Crabgrandfather had a business visit there and offered to take me along for the ride. As always, I am generous with my company, so I obliged and thus spent a magnificent 6 days making the Crabpresence known in Asia.

Highlights:

--a piece of charcoal in a basket in my plush hotel room with the mysterious words "Charcoal is good for the environment" beside it.
--food. And more food. Abalone bibimbab. Bulgogi. The Koreans do not mess around when it comes to side dishes.
--watching locals eat on the beachfront at Jeju island. Each table has an aquarium next to it, containing all manner of intense marine life, and a personalized per-table individual granny attendant who whips out desired fish or urchin at appropriate moment and then chops or scoops it onto platter. Presto! Sushi.
--Korean steam rooms where mommies, grandmommies and tots scrape themselves with brushes and scratchy cloths, in every nook and cranny, all totally naked and not remotely shy. I went along with it. Just like boarding school, only with fancier baths and beauty products.
--Korean version of Carpenters' songs playing on hotel speakers everywhere I went. And classical music piped from fake stones hidden beneath topiarized bushes on tropical isle. You are walking to the beach and hear violins shooting out suddenly from within the heart of a strange shrub.
--honeymooning Korean couples dressed in matching clothes visiting the Teddy Bear Museum on Jeju island. I wanted to photograph them, but how do you do so politely?
--Koreans call Bush "Bushy." I don't know if it is meant to be pejorative or is just a linguistic tweak, but I like it. Bushy. Bushy!

My jetlag is really kicking in now, so you will have to forgive the Crabmommy for bloated prose. As a result of being far from my blogstation, I had a real vaycay and missed my tot horribly, who was looked after back home by Dad and Grandma. Nothing like a break from Crabtot to take the Crab out of the Mommy and make me absurdly thrilled to see that tiny face again.

And so off to spend some time with C-tot. Back to blog form and regular posting next week. Please do stop by my bloglet if you are panting for more in the interim.

FREE STUFF!

I received an overwhelming response to the Croakies sunglass accessory giveaway last month, and so, I'm doing it again, friends.

Crabmommy gives and gives and keeps on giving. Actually, the person who really does that is my good friend Mommyknows who hands out coveted goods online all the time, like today's wooden puzzle. And her stuff is dang fine. Although perhaps not as fine as the following item:Yes, after a number of you expressed interest in the Cougar Fund baseball cap I received as part of my Teacher Appreciation Package, I decided what the heck, let's just go and be generous already. And so, thanks to my friend A of A&A, you see Crabmommy modeling it as above, and therefore you know exactly what you're getting, as well as what a great back-of-head I have.

And how do you win this treasure?

Try to guess where Crabmommy is going tomorrow. Yes, C-mom is going away for a week with Crabgrandpa. Sans tot. Or poor long-suffering Crabhusband.

The clues are as follows:
a place where resides a Teddy Bear Museum
A place where resides many blind masseurs
A place where resides a split between north and south
A place with an island off it where occurs a festival of pop songs involving sea bream (hey, I'm just getting this from the web)
A place where on said island occurs a tradition of women-only scuba diving.

The floor is open for exactly one week. I will try to report from my mystery destination (and in a mysterious way, so as not to give away my locale) but in case I am too busy examining teddy bears, feel free to enter your best guesses in my absence. On my return, Crabtot and I will put correct answers into the cougar cap and make the final call.

Meantime, if you are not satisfied by my brief postings, do visit my Cookie bloglet where, thanks to a nifty feature of Typepad (hear that, Blogger?) one can post-date blogs...so while I am in the teddy bear museum my Cookie readership thinks I have just returned from another playground jaunt with Crabtot. Cheating, yes, but convenient.

Also, I recommend for my South African friends in particular to visit the weirdship of Mahendra's Ties, a website exclusively devoted to the logging and blogging about a Souf-Effrican TV anchor's sartorial choices. Americans may also freely venture over to MT to broaden their cultural horizons too.

Looking forward to picking the winner of my cougar cap. Watch this space and wish the Crabmommy a pleasant journey as she speeds far, far away from Crabtown, to...?

Silly Science Pic of the Week

What could be sillier than this newly discovered sea species?
Is it real or did the Japanese invent it?
It looks like a creature from Spirited Away.
But this was in the New York Times, people.
Still. They might be lying.
Maybe it is made of earwax.

More SS deep-sea pix to come. I will ration them out, one a week.

Speaking of water, if you want to hear what I think of kiddie swimming, please visit my bloglet.