Doodaddy

When I don’t get enough sleep, this stuff is really, really hard.

I don’t get enough sleep most of the time.

As long as you’re listening on this my favorite of all holidays, let me just mention:

I’m desperately thankful to anyone who reads this mess, comments, e-mails, chuckles, nods appreciatively, Twitters, or publishes articles about me in Wikipedia. You rock.

And, of course, I’m pretty thankful for, among others too numerous to mention, these:

How long will my arms last, do you wonder?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, wherever you are.

Announcing the arrival of imaginary friend number four: Harry.

Harry is father to Joey and Dodo — Meema was originally their father but very quickly morphed into their mother. So far we know that Harry likes tire swings but is too big to pee in a flower pot.

Gee — I wonder why Boo’s imaginary family is enlarging all of a sudden. Could it have anything to do with this ‘un?

Blueberry, pictured here with Boo’s friends Joey and Dodo. Photo taken by Harry and Meema.

Boo is playing with the big girls now. And it’s scaring the crap out of me.

At the playground the other day, she was actively sought out by two four-year olds who seem well on the road to junior high Queen Beedom. Listen in on this snippet of conversation:

Strange 4-year old, dressed head to toe in pink, addressed to my daughter: “Do you want to play princesses with us?”

Me, at a distance, silently: “Erp.”

Boo: “Yes, indeed.” (Yes, indeed, she really said that. I’m not sure where she gets that particular tic. No, indeed.)

Pink 4-year old: “OK. You need to get a credit card.”

Me, slightly more audibly: “ERP.”

Boo: “OK! Here’s my credit card!”

At that point, Boo picked up a sycamore leaf and brandished it at the two princesses. Before long, they all had autumnal credit cards and were sticking them into various slots on the playground equipment in order to make lavish purchases of jelly beans and pumpernickel. (To Boo, that’s the most royalest word of all, you see.)

What do you say when your precious not-yet-three year old comes over to where you’re pretending to ignore her game and pronounces with a shit-eating grin, “Look daddy, I’ve got a credit card!”?

Answer? You swallow once to buy time.

And then, it turns out, you smile and say, “Yes, you do! How cool is that?” The evils of our consumer lifestyle and the images bombarding our children — let’s worry about those later, OK? This is pretend time, for better or for worse. And what’s really wrong with a game of Princess Credit Card, anyway?

Nothing. Boo smiled proudly and returned to where she and her new friends were preparing pretend dinner — by taking boxes out of the pretend freezer and putting them into the pretend microwave.

Now where on earth could she have learned that?

Oh, right — from her friends!

Belated congratulations to Elaine the Redhead Reverend and Scrapbooker Extraordinare for coming closest to the Blueberry’s birth date and time — she wins the manky old gift certificate!

As long as I’ve got you on the line here, and since pretty much everyone who was going to guess the Blueberry’s real name has done it by now — here’s the final clue:

We named the Blueberry after the main character in a kids’ book called From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. She’s got taste, this kid — she convinces her rich younger brother to run away with her and they stay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan — solving an art mystery as long as they’re there.

If you haven’t read it, do, and you’ll know Blueberry’s real name.

Boobaby, you may be aware, was similarly named after a spitfire from children’s literature — the pig-rescuing 8-year old in Charlotte’s Web, in her case. She had me at “Where’s papa going with that ax?”

That’s as much as I say here.

Thanks for playing, all!