The Toy Story movies are really charming and everything, but they always make me feel so bad about all the My Little Ponies I have in my parents' attic.

I watched War of the Worlds on Sunday, and something that bothers me about these movies, these aliens take over the world movies, is that I think the people in them never demonstrate enough surprise. They’re surprised, sure, but it’s like their terror always overcomes their surprise. If an alien spaceship climbed out of the ground in front of me, I would be SO surprised. So surprised. Like, I would think I had gone crazy. I would just stand there, staring at it, even after it started moving around and shooting people, because I would think, This cannot possibly be a real thing. What an interesting hallucination for me to have.

I introduced a two-year-old to my cat today, and as soon as she saw the cat, who was sleeping, curled in a ball, the two-year-old took my hand, said, “Sarah, outside,” and walked towards the door. I tried to be all, “The cat is friendly! Watch Sarah touch the cat.” But some part of her brain just knew: Claws! Teeth! Bad! And that was obviously a stronger instinct. Because she just looked at me like, “So that animal clearly has really sharp claws and teeth and I don’t know what your problem is but I am saving myself now.” And continued to walk towards the door.

We’re doing a farm unit with my class this week, and it’s almost as hard for me (as a vegan) as the week we did Thanksgiving. I have to read all these stories about the happy cows and pigs and chickens that live on the farm, and I want to look my toddlers in the eye and say, “You’re not getting the whole story, you know.” It helps to remember, though, that it’s that way with everything we tell children – we never tell them the whole story. I tell them, I want you to stop stamping your feet because you might stamp on your friend’s foot, but I never add, Also the sound of you stamping your feet is like the sound of nails being driven into a coffin that’s burying me alive.

I was watching an episode of Supernatural on a plane last month, and one of the characters was drinking another character’s blood (he was getting super powers from her demon blood, like, you know, one does), and I felt extremely awkward about it. Like I should explain to the person sitting next to me the RATIONALITY behind the blood-drinking. So she would know it wasn’t weird or anything. Years ago, when I lived with my parents, my dad walked into the family room while I was watching an episode of Buffy that involved two of the characters chaining another character up and kissing in front of her and I was like, “It’s a trick to get more information about the apocalypse! That’s what’s really happening. Don’t read anything else into it.”

Sometimes I see people from my morning weekday bus on another bus, and I just think, What are you DOING? It’s like when I was a kid and I’d see a teacher at the supermarket, like WHY ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR BOX?

My brother has this theory that everyone has super powers, something trivial a person is UNCOMMONLY good at (my brother can tell when the air in any given room isn’t circulating), and he’s so far rejected all of my ideas for my potential super powers, either because the ability isn't sufficiently trivial (I read really fast) or uncommon (I am amazing at Snood). But I finally came up with one I think is definitely uncommon and certainly trivial: when I yawn, it’s not contagious.