komplexify!

The Ladybug is in full conversation mode, and she’ll strike up a conversation with just about anyone, often with amusing results.  Here are two examples from today’s outing:

The Ladybug and I are at Hot Topic, looking for “Perry the Platypus” tee shirts.  A sales gal walks up and starts talking to the Ladybug.  In true Hot Topic form, she’s got green hair, thirty-eye Doc Martins, and enough facial piercings to transmit and receive radio signals.  As they’re talking, the Ladybug point’s to the girl’s day-glo flower-covered  JIMI HENDRIX belt.

“Oh, I like your belt,” says the Ladybug.  “It’s pretty.”

“Thank you,” says the sales gal.

“Is it Hannah Montana?”

The Ladybug and I are at Dairy Queen sharing a Blizzard.  As we eat, a pair of Army soldiers in sand-colored fatigues sits down at the table next to us.  The Ladybug leans over to them as smiles.

“Oh, you guys are all matchy!  That’s so cute.”

From a conversation between Ladybug and I about her crush on Alex, a boy from her preschool:

The Ladybug: Don’t. Tell. Anyone.  It’s a un-prize.

Me: Do you mean a surprise?

The Ladybug: No.  When you wait to tell everybody, that’s a surprise.  When you don’t tell anybody, that’s a unprise.

I was particularly amused by this, and related the story to the Queen B

The Queen B: You know, you’re pretty good with vocabulary.

The Ladybug: Yes.  Yes, I are.

Today was the Ladybug’s last full day of swim practice.  As we walked into the front lobby of the city swim center, she stopped, put her hands on her hips, and inhaled deeply.

“I like the smell of chlorine!” she said.”It smells like swimming.”

The only thing that would have been better is if Ride of the Valkyries had been playing on the speakers.

The Ladybug as been a little under the weather the past few days. On Monday she missed her swim class (one of her favorite activities each week), and yesterday she missed school altogether.

This morning I went into her room to wake her up, slowly jostling her from sleep, checking her head for fever and her nose for, well, snot.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her when she was sufficiently conscious.

“Good,” said the Ladybug.

“That’s good news,” I replied. “I guess that means you can go to school today.”

“Oh yeah,” she replied. “I mean bad. I feel bad.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “I guess we’ll have to stay home again.  But that means you’ll miss swim class, too.  Bummer.”

“Oh yeah,” she said again. “I meant good. I’m feeling good today.”

“I thought you might.”

There’s a restaurant in Rapid City called the Pirate’s Table.  It’s one of those “themed” eateries, wherein the decor, the menus, and the wait staff are all similarly modeled on a common theme.  The Pirate’s Table is based, obviously enough, on all things piratical: you eat seafood and drink grog at dimly lit tables hidden in tropical alcoves whilst being served by extras the Treasure Island.

I hear the food is both quite good and quite expensive, although I myself have been there.  I just don’t get the cencept of a themed restaurant.  Perhaps this is due to my knee-jerk reaction against that level of kitsch: if I want to eat overpriced food surrounded by Pirates of the Carribean wannabes, I might as well be at Disneyland first.

However, I also have to admit that I simply don’t understand the idea of basing your dining experience on piracy either.  I’m not sure what it is about criminals famed for acts of theft, rape, and murder that one is meant to find particularly appetizing (and perhaps more to the point, whether it would be wise to collect so many people who do in a single location).  You wouldn’t theme an eatery on, say, mafia-themed executions, would you?

Oh… nevermind.

I’m getting off-topic.

The Pirate’s Table airs a number of laughably bad commercials on the local channels.  One of them features a dude dolled up to look Captain Jack Sparrow, who proceeds to invite the viewer to dine with him with a breathy delivery that I suppose is meant to seems mysterious and ever-so-slightly dangerous, but comes off more like Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle.  I’ve never paid much attention to them, except for tonight, when one of these spot aired while I was watching TV with the Ladybug.

“Dad!” she shouted.  “Is that that guy?”

“What guy?” I asked.

“That guy,” she repeated.

I tried to figure out what she meant.  Given that the various Pirate of the Carribean movies have been playing nonstep on a gazillion different cable networks, I ventured a guess in that direction.

“Jack Sparrow?” I asked.

“No,” she said, and then unexpectedly burst into song:

“You spin me right round baby, right round, like a record baby, right round, round, round,” she said.

“That guy,” she added.

I stared at her blankly, until a vision of Dead or Alive flashed before my eyes:

“I think you may be right,” I concluded.