What I Did On My Holidays

You know, I think I forgot to mention that while the floor was being sanded and polished, we pissed off to Alice Springs for a week. Natalie had a medical conference there, and it seemed like a good opportunity to organize a family outing.

Alice Springs -- generally just "Alice" or "The Alice" if you wanna sound pretentiously like a character in the kind of movie that Bryan Brown or Paul Hogan might infest -- is a desert township pretty much in the centre of Oz. I'd never gone out to the centrelands before, so I was looking forward to it. Warily, yes, but looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, we couldn't manage to fit The Big Red Rock into the itinerary. But I reckon we got our money's worth.

That's the Smaller Son there, under the shower cap. We got up at four in the goddam morning to make our flight, so by the time we hit the hotel in Alice, we were pretty well shagged out. Didn't help that it was 4C and pissing down in Taz, but brilliant sunshine and 28C in Alice. (You Yanks can do your own conversions on the temperatures. I'm too busy to mess with outdated systems of measurement.) The Smaller Son mooched around the room for a while, but once he discovered the shower cap, everything was just fine. He sat down and took in some cable TV cartoons, secure in the knowledge that his hair wasn't going to get wet, nosirree.

Natalie had three days of medical kerfuffle to attend, which left the kids and I to our own devices. The hotel was about a kilometre and a half from the centre of Alice, so we opted to go walkabout. That's the famous Todd River the kids are standing in, right there. Looking pretty much as it always does. You get a lot of dry riverbeds in Oz, but most of 'em -- well, you'll see that the trees are gnarled and bent from seasonal flooding.

Not in the Todd. I walked up and down that river bed, crossed it about a dozen times on foot... and I still can't tell you which way the water flows when it's there. If it ever is.

Plenty of birds out in the desert. Those are galahs. They watched us from the treetop as we shuffled through the dust into the township proper.

Alice-The-Town is... well, small. There's an open-air mall. And a cinema, where the kids and I caught the latest Harry Potter flick. (Snape kills Dumbledore. That's pretty much the entire plot right there. Other than, you know, a lot of teenagers getting hormonal.) Alice is also dry and dusty and hot. Even in winter. We drank an awful lot of water, hung out in the shade when we could, and took things very slowly.

The photo above is -- honest truth here! -- the Olive Pink Botanic Gardens in Alice Springs. Yep: carefully tended desert flora. You know how you can tell where the Botanic Gardens stop and the desert starts? Well, there's this fence... and that's it.

Sturt's Desert Pea: there were a lot of lovely flowers around the place too. The desert around Alice isn't your hardcore sand-dunes and stony plains kind of thing. It misses out on being a veldt due to the lack of grass coverage, but there's a generous supply of shrubbery, and quite a lot of life. Mind you, I wouldn't want to be caught a mile or two outside town without a few litres of water on me.

I can't even recall the name of this parrot species, but the bird posed so nicely for me... Actually, I really enjoyed doing a bit of bird-spotting. I did a lot of that, growing up in Far North Queensland, and it's kind of a habit. Coming to Taz was fun because I was seeing new species for the first time in years and years -- and going to Alice was even better, because there were many birds I'd never seen before. The ringneck there was only one of many.
A local acquaintance of Natalie's took the kids and I to the "Old-Timer's Fete". That's kind of a big social occasion in Alice, it transpires. You wouldn't know it, as an outsider - it's a typical fete, with cake stalls and sausage sizzles, the inevitable bouncy castle, junk stalls, and the odd ride... the kids were excited by the whirly teacup ride, so I threw 'em in. Why not?

Interestingly, the name "Old-Timers" refers to the charity for which the fete is a major fundraiser. The fete is held in the grounds of the "Old Timers" place -- the major retirement centre in Alice. I laughed like hell at the name. It's wonderfully typical of outback Australia; blunt, accurate, direct and honest. No "Shady Acres" or "Sweet Gardens" or any of that shit -- it's the Old Timers' Place, and that's all she wrote.

Yeah. What can I say? You take the kids to the fete, you gotta expect this kind of thing.

Those hats... there was a market in the Todd St Mall on the Sunday. A little Vietnamese bloke was selling all sorts of odds and sods, including the iconic basket hats. Now, since the boys are huge samurai flick afficionadoes, there was no possible way I could avoid buying them basket-hats so they could play at being ninja. And they did, oh yes. A lot.

It's weird how people respond to kids in costume. The locals and tourists alike just couldn't seem to believe their eyes. Three kids in basket hats: people pointing, and smiling, and laughing, cameras snapping... the kids have long since learned to take that kind of thing in their stride, because Natalie and I have never bothered to try and restrain their instinct for dressing up and playing games. And why would you, anyway? But I have to admit: it got a little wearying for me, acknowledging the endless stream of delighted outcries, etc. "Yes, the boys watch a lot of samurai movies. They like this kind of thing... Thanks. Cute. Yeah, I suppose so..."

I wish other parents would let their kids off the lead a little. It gets a bit embarrassing having people stare at mine!

We went to the Desert Park once Natalie was done with her medical stuff and we'd managed to rent a car. The Desert Park is maybe 10k outside town, and it's extremely well set up. Very educational, even for me - I learned a lot about the Australian desert ecosystems, and the critters living in them. That's a barn owl, by the way. It's part of the rather well managed "Birds of Prey" show. If you get out to Alice at all, you shouldn't miss this place. One hesitates to call it "cool", because it was actually hot as all fuck, but it's really good.

That's a Tawny Frogmouth ignoring the camera there. It's a big nightjar. They occur all over Australia. I'm really fond of them - they're marvellous birds.

That's... erm... that's... ahhh, fuck knows. But it's pretty, right?

And that's the Mau-Mau, playing in the red dust, shielded by her fine new Ninja basket hat.

We took a walk out to Standley Chasm in the Western McDonnell ranges. Fantastic walk through a dry riverbed into the ancient, red-rock bones of the land. The place is still owned by the traditional dwellers, and it's well maintained. Beautiful walk, too. I like the way the sunlight filters down on the Mau-Mau in this shot.

Farther up the creek bed, Smaller Son hid from the heat under a big rock. The kids loved this walk, bounding from rock to rock, climbing like monkeys and goats, racing ahead, finding new things to show us... and once again, all the other walkers and visitors were vociferously charmed by the microninjas and their hats.

It was interesting greeting the other walkers. Natalie counted six different languages, not including English. I guess winter is a popular tourist time around Alice. Makes sense: I hate to think what the place would be like in summer.

Standley Chasm itself - a gap, cut by water, in the McDonnell Range. One small ninja contemplates the grandeur of nature...

And there was a reptile centre in Alice, too. It seemed like a good idea. They were really friendly, and there's a bit of a show-and-tell time, so the kids got the chance to get hands-on with some of the less dangerous of Australia's reptiles. That's a blue-tongued lizard right there.

...and that would be Jaffa, the Central Tree Dragon. I've never seen one that shade of yellow before.

Heh. Smaller Son likes lizards, but he was a little nervous about Jaffa. (A bit bigger than he's used to.) He held onto the thing for about twenty seconds, then quite without warning, he simply dropped it in the lap of the bloke next to him.

Fortunately, the bloke was comfortable with lizards, and was actually in the waiting-to-handle circle... but the sudden appearance of Jaffa in his lap caught him by surprise, and he just about leapt out of his seat. Poor bastard. I suppose I should have warned him about my kids.

That's an Olive Python drapped around Elder Son's neck. Beautiful snake. I'm glad to say the kids were quite comfortable with her, once they got over a little bit of early worry.

That'd be a Shingleback.

The Mau-Mau had a chance to get up-close and personal with the little olive python too. My hands are in the picture, yes - but not because I feared for the Mau-Mau. The snake was beautifully accustomed to human handling, and well fed. No... I was worried that in her excitement, the Mau-Mau might inadvertently hurt the poor snake.

Anyway. That'll do. I've spent too long on this crap anyway. I'm busy reloading my study, backing up files, sending emails, and half the day is gone already. I've still got raspberry canes to plant, fences to erect, laundry, cooking... so I'll cut it short: we made it home. It was nice. Alice Springs was interesting, but I'm not gonna be looking for real estate there in any hurry.

Sometimes A Thing Is As Good As Advertised

Um. Yes. Those are soap bubbles. And yes, they're pink. Vividly pink. Amazingly pink. Trust me: you cannot achieve this effect with food colouring, or for that matter, any other quirks of chemistry you happen to have up your sleeve. These bubbles are something new and amazing.

I believe I mentioned a while back that I aimed to score Super Dad Points on the Mau-Mau's birthday by acquiring a small stock of Unobtanium: coloured soap bubbles so new to the market they're not actually available in Australia as yet. Courtesy of my boon friend Bigskygirl, I managed to have two packets of Zubbles sent over, and they arrived just in time for today's big event -- the Mau-Mau's fourth birthday.

She got a hell of a haul, courtesy of parents, grandparents, cousins, and far-off USAnian friends, but it was those bubbles that drew the most attention. Seriously, folks: they're farkin' amazing.

I read about Zubbles a few years back, on the web. At that time, the people behind it thought they'd go to market within six months. It took them several years, but they're finally here - and what they've created is little short of miraculous.

The bubbles are perfect, and beautiful. Sure, you can only get pink and blue at this point, but both the colours are strong and vivid. Most amazingly, they do not stain. Not at all. In fact, within a few seconds of the bubbles splashing onto a vulnerable surface, most of the colour fades. The rest disappears with gentle rubbing.

It's like magic. We splattered cerise bubble-stuff all over the white walls, just for the fun of making the stains vanish. The Mau-Mau got it all over her hands and face and clothing - and it simply wiped away.

I don't do 'corporate shill', but I am always impressed by good design, good ideas, and products which do exactly as advertised. Zubbles are delightful. They are astonishing. They are beautiful and ephemeral and marvellous as soap-bubbles have always been... only now, they come in brilliant, dreamlike colours.

Start putting your small change in a jar. You can't get Zubbles in Oz yet, and I've probably snubbed a few laws by receiving the stuff as a gift... but fuck it. There's little enough magic in the world. If you've got kids, or if you've ever been a kid, you owe it to yourself to get hold of some of this stuff...

Gotta Love Those Censors

Hi. I'm back. Proper update soon. Meanwhile, this:

I'm hoping to buzz across to Melbourne soon and catch a flick with a couple mates. One of those chaps -- Barnesm -- works for a government department. In the past, I've had minor difficulties with the Naughtiness Censor attached to his work email, so when I sent a note suggesting maybe we could catch a Sam Raimi movie together, it looked like this:

Subject line: Drag Me To Heck (Don't want to offend the cuss-filter, do I?)

Text Body: Hey -- what's the odds of arranging a Sam Raimi session say, sometime around the week after next? Yeah, I'll miss Birmo, but it would be forkin' magic to catch "Drag Me To Heck" with you and GBob and Struggers...

df

The reply I received was this:

Inappropriate phrases/text have been detected in

your recent email, this email has now been

quarantined. This email will now be viewed by the

system administrator and one of a number of actions

taken.

1. If the email is work related or if the original

quarantine was based on a false positive, the

email will be forwarded to the intended recipient

within 2 business days.

2. If the phrases/text detected are deemed offensive

the email may be deleted.

3. If the phrases/text detected is deemed abusive or

threatening it may be recorded and reported to our

legal department for appropriate

action.

Repeated transgressors may be banned from emailing the organization.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ahem. I guess I'm a repeated transgressor now. Good thing Mr Barnes was willing to send me an ever-so-slightly-less censored email account...

Hiatus Warning!

Must be my day for goddam dust.

See, Natalie has finally succeeded in her ongoing harangues about the state of my study. We're getting a bloke in to sand back the floor in the sun-room and restore the much-abused polish, and I agreed that I'd clear out my study and strip the carpet so this room could get prettied up at the same time.

Of course, that means yanking out not only the carpet and the underlay, but years of accumulated... stuff... in here. Which I've been doing for a few days now.

The carpet itself is plain nasty. It appears to have been laid down in the Early Filthocene Era, and repeatedly been conquered by hordes of unwashed barbarians from various incredibly dusty regions of the world. I've pulled up half of it by now, and honestly, I'm choking in here. It's Snot City, and I am the Chief Boogermeister. Achheh. Kaff kafff hacckkh!

Meanwhile, the elderly cast-iron grill in the bottom of our wood-heater/fireplace thing has finally given away, big-time. It's interesting what happens to cast iron that gets repeatedly heated and cooled: today, as I was pulling the thing out, I snapped a couple of the grill-bars with my fingers. These things are at least a centimetre wide, and 3/4 of a centimetre thick. They're not rusted. They're just... heat-fucked, I guess.

I've been looking for a replacement grill for over a week now. Tried both hardware places. Tried both farm-gear places. No go. Launceston wasn't much help either, until this morning, when I took the Mau-Mau in and we tackled a specialty camping-goods outlet. Got myself a loverly new grill, and all I had to do was drive an hour there, and then an hour back again. Oh, and then cut it to fit with my angle grinder. Oh, and then pull the old one out, with all the struggling with fine ash you might expect. Achhehh! Kaff kaff haccckkh!

Anyway, the point of this post is not the dust. Not really. No, it's the satellite modem. See, that little box of goodies sits on the desk in my study. The soon-to-be removed desk. And there's no way to relocate the cables that come down the wall and up through the floor and everything. So from Thursday, there's going to be a bit of a hiatus hereabouts, because I'm not leaving an incredibly expensive satellite modem (and a cheap router) hooked up in a room that's about to have the living shit sanded out of it.

Also, there's three layers of varnish and/or polish to consider. Normally they'd only take a day or two, but it's winter in Taz, and we're having a dampish spell. (Okay. Soggy. Dripping. Deliquescent. Very fucking wet!) Ergo, the varnishing process won't be done quite so quickly.

Not to worry. You'll manage without me for a bit, right? And when I get back into my study, think how much more cleverly I'll be able to write with all that polished wood underfoot...

The Fools! Don't They Understand?

...some things must remain lost!

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Ancient-Cities-Lost-to-the-Seas.html

Ancient Cities Lost to the Seas

Dunwich, England, is one of several underwater sites where divers are uncovering new information about historic cultures

• By Robin T. Reid
• Smithsonian.com, July 29, 2009

Share-Housing vs Parenting

Things I learned From Share-Housing That Prepared Me For Parenting

• Nothing that has ever happened in a diaper is anywhere near as repulsive and disgusting as the stuff that accumulated in the sink at my first flat. Or my second. Or the third.
• Food remains edible a lot longer than the manufacturers would like you to think.
• Sleep is less important than most people believe.
• The refrigerator will not clean itself.
• Not everything that is green in the refrigerator is fit to eat.
• Stocking toilet paper? Plan ahead. A long, long way ahead.
• Potatoes abandoned in dark places for too long become...unacceptable. Ergo, they are not good playthings for children.
• Screaming does not necessarily mean something bad is happening. It's all about the tone and pitch.
• A pile of salt on a red wine spill will help remove the stain from a carpet. On the other hand, the goddam carpet is going to get stained sooner or later, so why bother? Polished hardwood floors and cheap throw-rugs rule!
• It is entirely possible to play cricket in the hallway.
• But it's best to use a foam rubber ball, and to make sure your girlfriend (wife) doesn't catch you doing it.
• Never, ever assume the bedroom door is locked. Or the toilet door, for that matter.
• Just because the toilet door is only half closed, there's no reason to assume the place is unoccupied.
• Silence indicates grave danger, unless you are alone in the house.
• You can disguise almost anything into edibility with enough cheese, tomato paste and pizza crust.
• Always leave at least one adult person sober enough to answer a fire alarm.
• Riding in large commercial driers is enormous fun. Putting other people in them is even more fun. Small children, therefore, cannot be trusted alone with the lesser version in your laundry.
• Shouting louder than the other person is not a viable method of winning an argument.
• Eating things that fell on the floor is a lot less fatal than your mother always said.
• Hide the TV remote before someone else does. That way you'll be able to find it. That's the only way you'll be able to find it.
• They won't go to bed of their own accord. Sooner or later, someone has to announce that the party is over.
• And no: they will never, ever put away their toys by themselves.
• Being the only grown-up sucks donkey balls. You really need somebody to share the job.

"Princess" Syndrome

I think I've already expressed my vast contempt for the school of thought, arising mostly from deeply wrong-headed garble-science of the 70s, which says that little boys and little girls raised in an identical fashion will show no discernible forms of gender bias. But if I haven't please allow me to wax eloquent about the pinheaded buffoonery of this position... at least, as based on the mighty population sample presented by my children (and those of a whole bunch of other long-suffering parents I know.)

Most of the parent-types of my cohort have absorbed at least basic ideas of gender equality. We're not out there buying pink for girls, blue for boys. We tend to think Barbie is a particularly nasty form of consumer manipulation, and we're well aware that a large cardboard box is probably the finest plaything any child can ever have. In short, we don't pander to the old stereotypes about kids, but we're too lazy (and possibly well-informed, having ourselves been children in an experimental era) to go all rigidly PC on our kids either.

Mostly, the kids get to choose their own path. We just try to make sure they've got lots of interesting choices available to them.

Now, for my two boys, the path-choosing thing led to both of them building guns out of lego before they could actually talk. Seriously. The first thing Elder Son ever built, when we got him his own bucket of that clunky, over-sized toddler-lego stuff, was a stack of eight short blocks, with one long block sticking over the top. He ran around the house pointing it at everybody, making pssk-chew! and pyew! pyew! noises, and there was no bloody mistaking the fact that we were being blown to bitty pieces by his ray-gun, or whatever weapon it was meant to be.

I quite liked that. Particularly because Natalie had been solidly adamant on her "no toy guns" rule. I did tell her that I thought it was a waste of time, but she didn't believe me... right up until the kid who could barely say "mum" and "dad" shot her full of imaginary death-beams with his Lego blaster. After that, she kinda caved in. And a good thing too, or I couldn't now indulge in the supreme joy of massacreing my offspring with a super-sized waterblaster every summer...

In other words, the boys did Boy Things. Sure, they also played with all kinds of 'dolls' (including wine corks, cutlery, pieces of food...) They both like music, and both spent a lot of time dancing happily when they were small. The Younger Son quite likes to get involved with the cooking. But fundamentally, they did Boy stuff.

The Mau-Mau... well, we had a houseful of leftover toddler toys for her. And heaps of toddler clothing. All of it was for boys, more or less, insofar as toddler stuff is ever differentiated... but we didn't figure that mattered at all. And so, in her early days, the Mau-Mau wore -- pretty much what the boys wore. And she played with the things the boys used to play with, yep.

But... the way she played was different. And her first word - it wasn't "Mum," or "Dad". It was "shoe". Followed very quickly by the plural, "shoes". And as soon as she got old enough to express a preference, she wanted pink stuff. Lots and lots of pink stuff.

She's nearly four now, and the trend has not abated. In fact, it's reaching something of an ugly crisis point. The Mau-Mau is a cute little creature, but she's smaller than her brothers, and being unable to use force to get her own way, she's resorting to emotional manipulation.

This is extremely unpleasant. The boys both went through brief stages of crap like "I'm not your friend any more", and the Younger Son has delivered the inevitable "I hate you!" line in a fit of temper. Elder Son had massive tanties from age two through to age four.

But in both cases, it's been unsubtle, and not particularly well orchestrated or planned, and with patience and firmness and solid boundaries, we got through it all. The boys are open about what they want. If they don't get it, they might grizzle, but that's about it. And if/when they get angry - fine, they get angry. If they overdo it, they get sent away to cool off. Then they come back. So much for that.

The Mau-Mau... yeah.

Neither Natalie nor myself likes emotional manipulation. And to see it becoming a mainstream approach from the daughter is disquieting. To an extent, I'm sure it's being reinforced through her interactions at daycare with other little ones. But how is it becoming her go-to position?

The slightest bump or injury... sometimes they're nothing at all, as it should be. But if she's in the mood, that tiny bump can become a gigantic trauma, with the full range of tears and horrors and wails. Any perceived slight from a brother becomes the greatest outrage of all time, and she performs to the peak of her ability in the hopes that someone will visit punishments upon the brother in question. Natalie and I are now literally at the point where first instinct, when the Mau-Mau howls, is to disregard it completely. (Fortunately, the parental ear is a finely tuned thing. If she really had cause to howl, we'd hear it and know.)

A performance of "but I don't WANT to eat my dinner and your cruelty in insisting that I must is only matched by the viciousness of the Spanish Inquisition, you heartless filth!" includes streams of very real tears, and howls, subsiding quickly into a very prolonged wordless whimpering -- the sort of thing you'd expect from a beaten dog, licking its wounds -- and accusing stares that can last anywhere up to half an hour. That is, unless either parent loses patience and sends her off to calm down, which is the usual result.

And that's the thing, isn't it? We're not reinforcing this shit. It gets ignored as long as humanly possible, and at best, it results in temporary banishment. It doesn't get her out of anything. It doesn't gain her anything.

It isn't as though she doesn't get positive reinforcement elsewhere. She gets her cuddles, and her quality time. She gets books read to her, and we make things together, and do all kinds of stuff. When her behaviour is good, she gets rewarded immediately and clearly.

And yet the awful, manipulative stuff continues.

Then there's the clothing thing. We've tried exposing her to the positive girl image stuff. She's got Dora the Explorer. She's got all kinds of gender-neutral Doctor Seuss. But you know what sticks with her? The fucking princess bullshit, of course.

She has one 'princess' Wii game. She has one pink 'magic mirror' that says princessy stuff when you press a button. There are some pink foofy dresses, yes. And I suspect she's seen some princessy crap here and there at daycare, and at other houses, etc. But the magic word 'princess' is astonishingly powerful, and the clothing...

... I hurried her dressing the other morning. Looked into her room, found her shimmying into a feather-weight pink summer dress with thin shoulder straps. Outside, it was 2C. (That's about 36F). So I told her she needed leggings, and a warm jumper.

The Mau-Mau instantly burst into tears. "But I want to be beautiful," she howled, clutching her totally inappropriate non-winter frock.

Fuck me. Where did that come from?

Naturally, I told her she was beautiful no matter what she wore. (And if there's a man alive who doesn't recognize where this situation is leading to the grown-up version of the Mau-Mau, then he's gayer than Tom Cruise and more clueless than Stephen Conroy) And I pointed out how cold it was, etc... but the damage was done.

When did she decide "beautiful" was something to aspire to? She's not even four years old yet, for fuck's sake. Who told her that "beautiful" had any fucking relationship to the clothing she wears? Half her gear is still hand-me-down rough-and-tumble toddler-wear!

I'm unspeakably furious about this, and I'm not sure I should be. I can accept that girls and boys differ on a fundamental level. I accept that they think differently. And yet this seems to me such an invasive, unpleasant piece of mind-control: someone, somehow has convinced my tiny, lovely daughter that she needs to be 'beautiful'. and that in order to be 'beautiful' she has to wear very specific kinds of clothing.

If that's true -- if there's been some kind of social act, some sort of indoctrination, inculcation and conditioning, then I genuinely want to go postal.

But what if it's not that? I trust the daycare situation. The woman who runs it is amazing, wonderful, fabulous. She's looked after both boys, and now the girl, and all three of them idolize her. I'm sure, of course, that like Natalie and I she's prone to using the word 'beautiful' when the Mau-Mau primps and poses, yes. But I'm equally sure that she would never permit or encourage this fetishizing of the concept of 'beautiful', nor imprint on any of her charges the idea that 'beautiful' came from the clothing they wear. And obviously, as I trust the daycare situation, the home situation is even more free of this stuff. I mean, for fuck's sake: I'm the dad who's proud of his Godzilla-loving daughter, right?

So... what if it isn't socialisation at all? What if this is down deeper, closer to the genetic stuff? What if my response to this sort of thing from my daughter is as ridiculous as Natalie's feelings towards the boys and their toy guns?

There's heresy for you. Naomi Wolf created a huge stir with The Beauty Myth, which (in its early versions) came nearly paranoid-close to positing an outright conspiracy among men to foster the 'myth of beauty', and to use it as a means of controlling women. (She modified some of the more paranoiac lines from the introduction in later editions; I know this because I got into a load of trouble quoting from the introduction to the 2nd edition - the copy I own - in an argument with a bunch of True Believer Feministas from the US.) Wolf offered nearly three hundred pages to argue that the whole concept of beauty was a social construct, and a deliberate imposition.

And while I didn't accept the 'conspiracy' thesis, I did accept the idea that beauty is socially constructed, and the effect of that construction on women is disempowering, and negative.

So now what? I mean, really -- now what?

This morning, I lost patience as we walked out to the car. The Mau-Mau had suffered some imaginary slight in the process of getting ready to leave, and she'd begun the Great Whimper, complete with tears and bottom lip and foot-dragging. I didn't have time for it, so as I passed her, I said: "Princesses don't cry, do they?"

There was a pause. I stopped, and caught her eye.

She slowly shook her head.

"Good," I said. "If princesses don't cry, what are you doing?"

She straightened up, and climbed into the car without another word.

I think I hate myself.