Nova has this book called "The Way I Feel Today," based on the TV show Bear in the Big Blue House, which used to run on the Disney Channel. I have to admit, we have never watched the show; I didn't even know it was a show, I just picked the book up at Goodwill last year because Nova seemed to like the pictures. (Lest that make me sound like a better mother than I am--the kind of mother who is anti-televison--heaven's no! I could tell you every guest star on Sesame Street for the last two seasons, and rank them in order of preference: Neil Patrick Harris, yes! Tina Fey, yes! James Blunt singing "Triangle," yes yes yes! We are however, a family who has begrudgingly decided it is more important to pay the car insurance than it is for Mama to get her Showtime fix.)
Huh? What? Who's rambling? Oh! Anyway, the book. Well, the moral is, "Feelings change all the time." I am totally on board with that. My feelings change so fast that sometimes one does not even clear out all the way before the next one is shouldering it's way in. It's like an emotional fire sale in there, with everyone piling in at the same time to get their piece of the action.
No, my problem is when Bear tells Treelo: "You couldn't be happy and mad at the same time." OH REALLY BEAR? Let Mama tell you about a little thing called AMBIVALENCE. Why, just this morning I felt MAD at Nova for peeing in her pants, and at the same time I was HAPPY that I had succeeded in making her feel bad enough about it that she almost cried. Last week I gleefully threw the dog headfirst into a snowbank after she ran away from me and I had to hike through the neighbor's yard in a foot of snow to get her.
Bear, don't even get me started on happy and sad. That's the story of my LIFE. Yours too, Treelo, you freaky little monkey-frog. Me, you, and everyone we know.