Oh but the blog lives and breathes!

Subtitled: The Blogtastic Fantacular

Christmas has come and gone, the boy and I have eaten ham, blown out candles and watched “Spider-Man 3″ more times than is good for either of us (he now pulls down his winter hat and pretends to tear it off his face – a gripping but disturbing reenactment of Peter Parker removing his black Spider-Man suit).

We made a snowman, and a snowdog, both of which we were able to accomplish without strangely hyphenating their names (there was no Snow-Man and Snow-Dog – I mean, seriously, Spider-Man, what gives?). The snowdog’s life lasted about four seconds. Just as we were pushing in a stick for his ear his whole head came off.  This by no means dampened the spirits of the snowman. He continued to raise his arms to heaven, smiling with his wide eyes, caring so little for the troubles of smaller, less upright snow creatures. He, of course, would be melted down into a roundish bump only a few days later.

I work. My son goes to preschool. He tells me stories of his day that I’m not sure I can entirely believe. Someone hit him on the head. Someone ate his foot. He plays with children that I know were absent. Best of all, he has taken to looking up into the snow as it comes down and saying in Swedish, “Here comes the blood, Evan.” At least I think that is what he is saying. My investigation at his preschool has revealed that, yes, there is a boy there named Evan, and yes, they have lately been joking with each other at lunch. But as to the blood and the snow, I just don’t know.

I’ve been experiencing moments of synchronicity about human behavior. Just when I was thinking of how the financial crisis demonstrates humankind’s frequent inability to take care of itself, Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions comes along and says the same thing. Then I picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos from a pile of unread books, and he says the same thing, too – though Kurt Vonnegut is always saying that.

This is not to say that I feel pessimistic about humanity, I’m just worried for it, you know? There is joy in all this mess of being alive, though as to how much sense there is in it, I guess that is a matter of personal taste. I think I prefer equal measures of sense and nonsense. That said, I do like my snow to come down as snow and not blood, and I like my feet just as they are now, uneaten.

Tags: humor, parenting, life, fantacular, Kurt Vonnegut, Predictably Irrational, Spider-Man 3, Dan Ariely, blogtastic