what happens at grandma's, stays at grandma's

sweet things that happened today:

-two best friends, who we'll call emily and jennifer, came together and kept hugging each other and doing other adorable best friends activities. we called them the babydaycare bffs. at the end of the day, jennifer's parents came to pick both of them up, and emily was more excited about it than jennifer was. the mom held jennifer and the dad held emily and i was like aww, baby friendship. i'm feeling nostalgic because i went to the museum of natural history with my best friend from baby days over tgiving break, and we tried to relive our baby experience--everything from the entrance we used down to the conversations we had (she once told me that if i touched the glass and it broke, i would go to jail. i told her that she was lying because everyone knew kids couldn't go to jail, and she responded, "but you could go to JUVENILE jail!!" we were like, 5 when this happened).

-at one point, the director turned on some really loud music, and everyone started dancing, laughing, and jumping up and down. i danced along with them, and discovered that my baby dance moves are very similar to my actual dance moves--i mostly wave my arms around and raise my eyebrows a lot. i'm not sure whether that is funny or very sad.

-someone's mother bought babydaycare a baby basketball hoop. back in my day, a baby basketball hoop just consisted of a hoop and a basketball--but now, you see, things are different. this baby basketball hoop lights up and talks to you when you make a basket. "way to go, sport!" and "you should join the allstars!" my favorite was "someone call the fire department, you're burning up the nets!" too much, too much. anyway, like many of the toys at babydaycare, the basketball hoop is a a little over their heads (literally)...but it does provide an exciting tool with which to play peekaboo. they took turns hiding behind and jumping out, and i started saying "hi [name]!" every time a kid jumped out. after a few times, they all started repeating me--they couldn't pronounce any names, but they all shouted "HI!" several times for at least ten minutes.

-one of the babies had a shirt that said "what happens at grandma's, stays at grandma's." one of the teachers asked him, "what happened at grandma's?" and, true to his convictions, the kid held his ground and didn't tell her. inability to speak may have also been an issue at play here, but i don't want to underestimate the power of his will.



afterwards, miranda and i went to a paula deen book signing, in which we stood on a line for an hour to tell paula deen that she should tell smithfield to stop abusing their workers. i felt a little bit guilty, yelling at an agoraphobic woman outside of the safety of her home, but we did it anyway. paula deen is kind of adorable. it's a problem because it makes it harder to hate her. also, the staff at the bookstore went around handing out free cookies (a paula deen recipe! page 44).

paula deen's response was that she had talked to the workers and they were fine. in addition, "working for smithfield is work. it's not supposed to be play." hearing that made it easier to hate her. however, regardless, i'm keeping the autographed book and giving it to my sister for christmas.

i was too excited to keep that a secret, so i told her. her reaction:

sister: um, ok. it would be a better present if i cared about paula deen at all.
me: don't you like her? didn't you say she was funny once?
sister: i think i meant less, "she makes me laugh" and more "i find her situation comical."

but whatevs. we agreed to make some christmas recipes together from the book.

oh man it is late. i'm out...