In order to deal with her fears I would run around the room scooping the ghosts up and throwing them out the windows and doors. It was quite a workout and made PK laugh like a hyena. The upside was that after I’d chased all the ghosts out of her room she would go to sleep. The downside was that she was so amused by my ghost-busting that every time I went into her room to catch them there were greater numbers of ghosts. Just inventing more ghouls wasn’t enough though, they also got smarter. Eventually I’d go into her room to find hordes of ghosts who would no longer cower and scurry off when tossed out on their ears. The new ghosts would cling to the door frames, wriggle out of my arms to hide in the closet and creep back in the window while my back was turned dealing with the next apparition.

Fortunately there came a day when PK outgrew the ghosts and I was forced to join a gym to get my exercise. Now I’m dealing with Monkey’s fears: Monsters. Tonight she crept into our room after she’d been tucked in to let us know that her room was overrun and she was on the run. Since DH was lounging face down on the bed and showed no sign of concern I abandoned my ironing to fend of the oogedy boogedies.

She entered her room cautiously and told me the monsters were under her bed. After I turned on the light she inspected the shadows below her bed and declared that there were no monsters because they were only there when the lights were off. Flicking the switch down she checked again and pronounced that they were back.

I turned the light on once more and sat with her to discuss the problem. It turned out that the monsters hid right outside her room waiting until the moment the room went dark to go mini-size in order to slip in unseen. Once under the bed they got big-sized again in order to scare her.

The solution to the problem was immediately clear. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my aerosol can on monster repellent. It’s very similar to bug repellent or RAID. By spraying it around all the doors and windows we were able to stop the monsters from entering the room at all. With the monster problem solved Monkey snuggled back into her bed and hasn’t been seen again.

Two questions remain. How far will the monster problem escalate and what boogy-woogie with Busy B come up with?

For some reason my daughter soaks up the information spewed out of the mouths of presenters hired to hawk goofy products in sixty second infomercials. It’s like a disease. If Billy Mays (RIP) touted it the Monkey knows all about it. That’s not all though. She doesn’t just catalog and store the information in her random trivia file, she treats it as gospel and behaves accordingly. The behavior consisting of immediately running to Mom or Dad and insisting that we absolutely need and must immediately own Debbie Meyers’ Green Bags, the Perfect Slice Brownie Pan or the Aqua Globes to water our non-existent plants.

For Christmas my mother bought me a silicone mold for baking a giant cupcake. Before I even know what it was the Monkey was excitedly spouting the virtues of the mold and explaining to me exactly how it works and why being able to bake cake size cupcakes was so awesome. A while ago I came home from the store with a Ped Egg that I picked up at Walgreens while waiting for a prescription to be readied at the pharmacy. The Monkey wanted to show me how to work it.

When PK was little I explained to her that advertisements were just companies’ way of trying to sell us things we didn’t want by making us think we needed them. She took those words to heart and has never been swayed to beg for something just because it danced on tv. I tried giving the same spiel to the Monkey to no effect. She’s an out of control addict.

The problem is that the cable channel with the programming I find most appropriate for her (QUBO) is also not the most popular so many, and at times most, of the commercials are for As Seen On TV products. I could take away television altogether if I really wanted to destroy my sanity by giving up that tiny window of time I have to do things like go to the bathroom, cook dinner, take a shower and other assorted life necessities. I could switch to a channel that offers less in the way of values and life lessons if I didn’t mind her mimicking Hannah Montana, Alex Russo, Carly Shaye and Tru Jackson. Or I can come up with a way to help her understand that commercials are a vast wasteland of junk that isn’t worth the money spent producing it. Anyone know how to accomplish that?

Thus, I will not let Monkey watch TV tonight. Nor did I allow her to plant her posterior in front of it last night. The kid is six but is reading chapter books above her grade level independently yet she’s so lazy she’d rather watch an episode of Wonder Pets that she’s already seen ten times. Oy.

Honestly, if the zombies come calling I may let them nosh on her gray matter regardless of whether it’s past its freshness date or not since she seems determined not to use it anyway.