Watching a bunch of middle-aged teachers trying to learn West African dancing tonight was pretty damn hilarious, I must say. Different syncopation, my ass -- even I could figure out how it went. Or maybe it's just the repressed drummer girl in me.

So, did I tell y'all about taking Mother to get her flu shot a week or so ago? No no, nothing particularly remarkable about it except for these two Mexican women who brought a Satan spawn of hell into the waiting room. Now, I'll point out that we had to be up early to get Mother there for me to work the rest of the day, so clearly my happy wasn't firing on all pistons. But these two started chattering away loudly in Spanish, and the kid started screaming for whatever reason. Well, you'd have thought someone was stabbing me in the head with a spoon, because I'm quite sure my blood pressure went up and I had steam coming out of my ears. I tried shushing them first, and that worked for about two minutes before the brat started howling again. So after giving them the hairy eyeball for awhile, I made a production of getting up out of my seat and moving to the other side of the waiting room, and that shut them up long enough for Mother to have gotten her shot.

The reason I bring this up? Chicago trixie moms are having a hemorrhage at a bakery/coffe shop owner for putting a sign up in his shop that asks them to make sure their children are using their "indoor voices": Lookit.

Now, when I was a wee broad, it was tradition that on Fridays, the folks would pick me up from school, then pick up my grandmother (the one I hated, of course, and who hated me back with equal ardor) and we'd go to Baker's Square when it was known as Poppin' Fresh, or perhaps Steffie & Joe's in Highland, which is now a parking lot on the corner of Highway and Kennedy. So we'd go and enjoy our dinner, and in order to keep me quiet, the folks would allow me to make "lemonade" with the water (read: pour as much salt, pepper, sugar and lemon into my water as possible. It was pretty). Either that or they'd let me bring in a book of some sort, but there was no crawling under the table or looking over the side of the booth at the neighbors or any other such nonsense; if there was, I'd have had a foot up my ass. So would someone like to tell me why it's so offensive to ask these parents to control their children? It's not like the guy is even being a jerk about it, but here are all these women talking about boycotting the joint. I don't think it's too much to ask that if you're child is acting a fool, get him or her out of the situation.*