This weekend Violet and I were watching Cinderella. When it was over she asked me what Cinderella was doing after the ball, before the news of the glass slipper got to her. Her question was about the contentedly cleaning image of Cinderella, humming and waltzing to herself thinking about last night. It got me thinking. If you were essentially enslaved by your step-mother and step-sisters and you had met a prince at a magical ball and you two had spent the evening falling in love, and then you had to run out without giving him your number or name, wouldn’t you be freaking out the next morning? How am I going to get in touch with him? Who do I know who knows him? Is he on Facebook?

She doesn’t know if she’s ever going to see him again. If it were me, I’d wonder if he thought I ran out because I was really married, or turned off by something he did. It’s all kind of infuriating because to-date, her life had been a long run of bad luck. Her kindly father dies leaving her with these ugly bee-yatches. She spends her life scrubbing floors with no rubber gloves, what makes her think it’s going to work out okay?

Conversely, my life has been pretty good. Why do I always think everything is going to turn out disastrously? I sit here with a furrowed brow and my leg tapping madly, biting the inside of my cheek and I have no answer. Where does one get that kind of Cinderella faith? Thoughts?

I am a parent of a child who sees nothing wrong with cookies for breakfast. At least once a day I say, “Cookies aren’t a breakfast food! “ Isn’t that terrible? I hate hearing myself saying it, but we just got back from a vacation with my brother Matt and he makes his daughter Pixie eat real meals while Violet is Snacky Girl. So now I’m cracking down. The question of why cookies aren’t for breakfast is plaguing me like so many dumb things I think about. Why are pancakes in syrup or muffins (aka cake) breakfast food? I don’t know, Violet, I don’t make the rules.

A few days ago I mentioned to her that at school last year she ate normal cereal for breakfast and how about we get that? She agreed, but didn’t know the name of any of the cereals so I did artists rendering of the cereals I could draw: Crispix, Corn Flakes, Cheerios, Raisin Bran and she’d point and say, “Yes, that looks like the one!” I’m not really an artist though so when I brought them home they were just plain wrong.

It made me think of what pressure police artists are under and how every police sketch on the news looks the same to me (I can picture him right now) and then it made me think about how cops are known for eating donuts (at least on the cultural barometer of The Simpsons). And donuts are about the junkiest think you can eat and are a totally accepted breakfast food. So now I’m starting to wonder, why not cookies?

So far this morning I’ve uttered at least three sentences aloud and there is no one here except my two dogs and I’m not even talking to them.

The most recent blurting was, “What do you think, I’m stupid?” in answer to an e-mail. While I was saying it I was eating a crumb off the carpet. Now does that make me crazy?