Claudia's Freind
Part 1
http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/418064.html
Part 2
http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/429710.html
And now for the (not so) thrilling conclusion, where we find out who has been leaving the BSC those mystery notes among other boring topics.
Chapter 10
Babysitting chapter. We learn right away that a good sitter doesn’t take her mood to work. That’s actually how I knew it was time to quit this one job I had. I worked at the same restaurant on and off for 10 years. Towards the end I would wait at the kitchen, make sure the coast was clear, rush out and refill the salad bar, and rush back before a customer could approach.
Jackie is NOT referred to as the Walking Disaster in this chapter. Jackie and Archie are still scheming, so they make themselves scarce so that Shea can tutor Claudia and the title of the book can make sense. The peer tutoring actually is a good idea for these two. Claudia brags about being EXCELLENT at art and then tells Shea how great he is at playing sports and teaching his brothers baseball. Then they commiserate about having tutors who boss them around. Shea asks Claudia for help with his spelling homework but ends up teaching Claudia how to spell. Ms. EXCELLENT artist does not know that peach is a color, or even a fruit, for that matter. She sounds incredibly confused when Shea tells her she has to spell that word. “’Peach,’ I repeated. ‘It’s the color of a nail polish,’ explained Shea. ‘Oh,’ I said.”
After Claudia finishes her sitting job (where she pretty much ignored Jackie and Archie, making this the first time that I ever recall reading a Jackie chapter and him NOT breaking something or getting locked somewhere) she’s all excited to call Stacey and tell her how great her afternoon was.
And then she remembered they were fighting. Claudia admitted that she needed to apologize to Stacey but was still pissed that Stacey was being a tutor, not a friend. Out comes the secret journal. “Today Shay asked me to tooter him! I helped him with his spelling.” Well, at least she spelled spelling correctly, but that poor boy is going to fail English class if he doesn’t find another tooter. She passive aggressively writes about how Shea really cares about her feelings and that her other tutor is a bitch. And Shea is “a peach.”
Chapter 11
Stacey babysitting chapter. Her club notebook also contains some passive aggressive jibes at Claudia. Everyone at the Brewer-Thomas house had dates: Kristy was watching Bart play basketball, Charlie was with Janine, Sam went to the movies, Watson and Elizabeth went to a film at the college (“there’s a difference, you know”), and Nanny was going to a dinner party.
After very rudely reacting to Nanny’s outfit (“You look so NICE! I mean, not that you don’t always.”) STFU, Ms. NYC. Outfit description: Pink silk dress with a wide twisted silver and pink sash, sparkly earrings, and pale sliver slippers. Parts of that do sound beautiful but I’m not sure about the sash or the slippers. But then again, I think I’m missing the girl gene, so I’m sure these are more like Cinderella slippers than my fuzzy lion slippers.
It’s just David Michael and Emily Michelle. DM must be missing Karen because he suggests they play haunted house. Because he’s DM and not Karen, there’s no problem discouraging that game. Stacey reads from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (My favorite story was the bloody fingers one.), DM disappears, so Stacey and EM play high five. If it was Gabbie Perkins they’d be playing all those hand-slapping games that I was never coordinated enough to master. The power goes out, which sucks for DM because he was in the basement trying to figure out a way to scare Stacey and EM.
Stacey puts the two to bed then makes a bunch of phone calls because even though watching TV is evil, tying up the parents’ phone line is appropriate. Logan asked Mary Anne to the dance (Seriously, this is a surprise? My boyfriend of ten 8th grades had better take me), Kristy was asked by Bart, and Mallory was asked by Ben. Oh, and Jessi is going with Curtis Shaller (I don’t think I know who he is. Someone want to clue me in?) and Stacey is going with Sam…unless he ends up taking the movie “friend” instead. Everybody has been asked accept for Dawn, ha! Maybe a ghost has been sending them notes. Or maybe Dawn is trying to make her self feel special. I think I’d rather believe in the ghost.
Chapter 12
Claudia tutoring Shea. Three freaking babysitting-type chapters in a row. This will be a very brief chapter recap. Shea knows his times tables, Claudia does not. She does make graphing fun by pulling out her colored pencils. Have you ever read the book Tough Luck Karen? This girl is not a great student and one way the teachers end up helping her improve is by having her write her assignments in the form of a letter since she loves writing to pen pals. I’ve been pen palling since I was 11 but my teachers wouldn’t go for that since I was a good student already. I was kind of jealous of Karen.
BSC meeting also happens in this chapter. Another secret admirer note shows up. “To the baby-sitters, Please come meet us at the Rosebud Café. Come on Saturday afternoon. We are inviting you because we like you. You are very special and we want to treat you.”
The letter is drenched in Cokie’s perfume. Kristy vows to come up with another Great Idea to get Cokie and Grace back. Meeting adjourned! Stacey demands the journal to correct but Mary Anne stops to talk to Claudia, so Claud tells Stacey to fuck off and get the journal herself.
Chapter 13
FINALLY a non-sitting chapter. It’s Saturday, the day that the BSC is going to confront Cokie and crew at the Rosebud Café. Kristy’s Great Idea is to dress as hideously as possible. Get ready for a bunch of outfit descriptions. First up, Claudia: Torn jeans, lime green shirt with a bleach spot, Kelly green socks, aqua sneakers, and orange-red lipstick. She also grabs a whoopee cushion and joy buzzer.
Since Claudia has time to kill before meeting the others she decides to do some journaling…and that’s when she realizes that Stacey took the wrong journal. Uh, oh! After panicking, Claudia reassures her self that she’ll be okay. After all, Harriet the Spy survived when her secret journal was discovered.
Arriving at the café we get a glimpse of Claudia’s conceited side: “Good grief! Who were those tacky, horrible, fashion victims standing around outside?” Honey, I bet that’s what most of SMS thinks whenever they see you standing around.
I’m bummed that no one else gets an outfit description, and all we learn is that Kristy has a water pistol and Dawn is snorting through her nose trying not to laugh. Soooo mature, these girls are. Ten years of being in the 8th grade has not helped them at all.
“Surprise!” It wasn’t Cokie who sent the notes at all. It was…the Rodowskies, the Arnolds, and the Braddocks. They’ve arranged a special party to thank the BSC for being the greatest baby-sitters in the world. This is actually kind of sweet, especially if you take the time to realize that the BSC probably spends more time with some of these kids than their own parents do.
Ice cream is ordered, and frozen yogurt for Dawn, of course. All Stacey gets is a diet Coke. I’m surprised this Rosebud Café doesn’t have any sugar-free sorbet or anything.
Along with the sweets, the sitters are given pictures drawn by their charges. Shea has written a note to Claudia, thanking her for helping him. When it’s time to figure out the tip amount Shea comes through by figuring out the proper amount right away.
Chapter 14
Shea’s note to Claudia helped her remember that “a freind is a friend no matter how you spell it.” She flops down on her director’s chair and announces “This meeting of people who formerly had best friends will now come to order.”
She calls Stacey, who says they need to talk, and eventually they kiss and make up. Claudia admits that she was being a whiney bitch and Stacey hadn’t realized she was also being a jerk, though honestly, I did not see anything particularly mean about her tutoring style.
The next day is Claudia’s big spelling test. She does a good job of staying focused and calm and ends up with a 97! Awesome, but the next book she narrates is probably that Middle School Drop Out book.
Chapter 15
The Dance!!! Austin Bentley asked Claudia at the last minute, Dawn asked Pete Stone, and Shannon brought a boy from her school. I didn’t think Stoneybrook Day Students mingled with the commoners but what do I know? It’s a community dance, so of course all their babysitting charges are there. The Arnold twins are hooking up with two of the Pike triples, and Vanessa has a dreamy, poetic look on her face. Stacey and Claudia actually don’t snark on Jenny Prezzioso’s dress for once and then Claud wonders what she and Stacey will dress their kids up in. A black NYC-chic romper for Stacey’s little darling, and something more colorful for Claudia’s.
Mary Anne blows off Logan and is spending the evening cuddling Lucy Newton. When Jamie asks his mother to dance, Claudia decides to ask Shea to dance. They end up foxtrotting, which, do kids in the 90s even know how to do? I enjoy ballroom dancing, but I didn’t develop that interest until after high school. Anyway, they dub the “Resource Room” the “Challenged Room,” which honestly sounds more condescending to me, but if that makes them feel better, that’s good.
The parents eventually take the younger kids home and the BSC and their dates get it on.
The end! Next up, I want to snark the postcard booklet, but since it’s taken me about a month per installment of this book, I’m not making any promises.
http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/418064.html
Part 2
http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/429710.html
And now for the (not so) thrilling conclusion, where we find out who has been leaving the BSC those mystery notes among other boring topics.
Chapter 10
Babysitting chapter. We learn right away that a good sitter doesn’t take her mood to work. That’s actually how I knew it was time to quit this one job I had. I worked at the same restaurant on and off for 10 years. Towards the end I would wait at the kitchen, make sure the coast was clear, rush out and refill the salad bar, and rush back before a customer could approach.
Jackie is NOT referred to as the Walking Disaster in this chapter. Jackie and Archie are still scheming, so they make themselves scarce so that Shea can tutor Claudia and the title of the book can make sense. The peer tutoring actually is a good idea for these two. Claudia brags about being EXCELLENT at art and then tells Shea how great he is at playing sports and teaching his brothers baseball. Then they commiserate about having tutors who boss them around. Shea asks Claudia for help with his spelling homework but ends up teaching Claudia how to spell. Ms. EXCELLENT artist does not know that peach is a color, or even a fruit, for that matter. She sounds incredibly confused when Shea tells her she has to spell that word. “’Peach,’ I repeated. ‘It’s the color of a nail polish,’ explained Shea. ‘Oh,’ I said.”
After Claudia finishes her sitting job (where she pretty much ignored Jackie and Archie, making this the first time that I ever recall reading a Jackie chapter and him NOT breaking something or getting locked somewhere) she’s all excited to call Stacey and tell her how great her afternoon was.
And then she remembered they were fighting. Claudia admitted that she needed to apologize to Stacey but was still pissed that Stacey was being a tutor, not a friend. Out comes the secret journal. “Today Shay asked me to tooter him! I helped him with his spelling.” Well, at least she spelled spelling correctly, but that poor boy is going to fail English class if he doesn’t find another tooter. She passive aggressively writes about how Shea really cares about her feelings and that her other tutor is a bitch. And Shea is “a peach.”
Chapter 11
Stacey babysitting chapter. Her club notebook also contains some passive aggressive jibes at Claudia. Everyone at the Brewer-Thomas house had dates: Kristy was watching Bart play basketball, Charlie was with Janine, Sam went to the movies, Watson and Elizabeth went to a film at the college (“there’s a difference, you know”), and Nanny was going to a dinner party.
After very rudely reacting to Nanny’s outfit (“You look so NICE! I mean, not that you don’t always.”) STFU, Ms. NYC. Outfit description: Pink silk dress with a wide twisted silver and pink sash, sparkly earrings, and pale sliver slippers. Parts of that do sound beautiful but I’m not sure about the sash or the slippers. But then again, I think I’m missing the girl gene, so I’m sure these are more like Cinderella slippers than my fuzzy lion slippers.
It’s just David Michael and Emily Michelle. DM must be missing Karen because he suggests they play haunted house. Because he’s DM and not Karen, there’s no problem discouraging that game. Stacey reads from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (My favorite story was the bloody fingers one.), DM disappears, so Stacey and EM play high five. If it was Gabbie Perkins they’d be playing all those hand-slapping games that I was never coordinated enough to master. The power goes out, which sucks for DM because he was in the basement trying to figure out a way to scare Stacey and EM.
Stacey puts the two to bed then makes a bunch of phone calls because even though watching TV is evil, tying up the parents’ phone line is appropriate. Logan asked Mary Anne to the dance (Seriously, this is a surprise? My boyfriend of ten 8th grades had better take me), Kristy was asked by Bart, and Mallory was asked by Ben. Oh, and Jessi is going with Curtis Shaller (I don’t think I know who he is. Someone want to clue me in?) and Stacey is going with Sam…unless he ends up taking the movie “friend” instead. Everybody has been asked accept for Dawn, ha! Maybe a ghost has been sending them notes. Or maybe Dawn is trying to make her self feel special. I think I’d rather believe in the ghost.
Chapter 12
Claudia tutoring Shea. Three freaking babysitting-type chapters in a row. This will be a very brief chapter recap. Shea knows his times tables, Claudia does not. She does make graphing fun by pulling out her colored pencils. Have you ever read the book Tough Luck Karen? This girl is not a great student and one way the teachers end up helping her improve is by having her write her assignments in the form of a letter since she loves writing to pen pals. I’ve been pen palling since I was 11 but my teachers wouldn’t go for that since I was a good student already. I was kind of jealous of Karen.
BSC meeting also happens in this chapter. Another secret admirer note shows up. “To the baby-sitters, Please come meet us at the Rosebud Café. Come on Saturday afternoon. We are inviting you because we like you. You are very special and we want to treat you.”
The letter is drenched in Cokie’s perfume. Kristy vows to come up with another Great Idea to get Cokie and Grace back. Meeting adjourned! Stacey demands the journal to correct but Mary Anne stops to talk to Claudia, so Claud tells Stacey to fuck off and get the journal herself.
Chapter 13
FINALLY a non-sitting chapter. It’s Saturday, the day that the BSC is going to confront Cokie and crew at the Rosebud Café. Kristy’s Great Idea is to dress as hideously as possible. Get ready for a bunch of outfit descriptions. First up, Claudia: Torn jeans, lime green shirt with a bleach spot, Kelly green socks, aqua sneakers, and orange-red lipstick. She also grabs a whoopee cushion and joy buzzer.
Since Claudia has time to kill before meeting the others she decides to do some journaling…and that’s when she realizes that Stacey took the wrong journal. Uh, oh! After panicking, Claudia reassures her self that she’ll be okay. After all, Harriet the Spy survived when her secret journal was discovered.
Arriving at the café we get a glimpse of Claudia’s conceited side: “Good grief! Who were those tacky, horrible, fashion victims standing around outside?” Honey, I bet that’s what most of SMS thinks whenever they see you standing around.
I’m bummed that no one else gets an outfit description, and all we learn is that Kristy has a water pistol and Dawn is snorting through her nose trying not to laugh. Soooo mature, these girls are. Ten years of being in the 8th grade has not helped them at all.
“Surprise!” It wasn’t Cokie who sent the notes at all. It was…the Rodowskies, the Arnolds, and the Braddocks. They’ve arranged a special party to thank the BSC for being the greatest baby-sitters in the world. This is actually kind of sweet, especially if you take the time to realize that the BSC probably spends more time with some of these kids than their own parents do.
Ice cream is ordered, and frozen yogurt for Dawn, of course. All Stacey gets is a diet Coke. I’m surprised this Rosebud Café doesn’t have any sugar-free sorbet or anything.
Along with the sweets, the sitters are given pictures drawn by their charges. Shea has written a note to Claudia, thanking her for helping him. When it’s time to figure out the tip amount Shea comes through by figuring out the proper amount right away.
Chapter 14
Shea’s note to Claudia helped her remember that “a freind is a friend no matter how you spell it.” She flops down on her director’s chair and announces “This meeting of people who formerly had best friends will now come to order.”
She calls Stacey, who says they need to talk, and eventually they kiss and make up. Claudia admits that she was being a whiney bitch and Stacey hadn’t realized she was also being a jerk, though honestly, I did not see anything particularly mean about her tutoring style.
The next day is Claudia’s big spelling test. She does a good job of staying focused and calm and ends up with a 97! Awesome, but the next book she narrates is probably that Middle School Drop Out book.
Chapter 15
The Dance!!! Austin Bentley asked Claudia at the last minute, Dawn asked Pete Stone, and Shannon brought a boy from her school. I didn’t think Stoneybrook Day Students mingled with the commoners but what do I know? It’s a community dance, so of course all their babysitting charges are there. The Arnold twins are hooking up with two of the Pike triples, and Vanessa has a dreamy, poetic look on her face. Stacey and Claudia actually don’t snark on Jenny Prezzioso’s dress for once and then Claud wonders what she and Stacey will dress their kids up in. A black NYC-chic romper for Stacey’s little darling, and something more colorful for Claudia’s.
Mary Anne blows off Logan and is spending the evening cuddling Lucy Newton. When Jamie asks his mother to dance, Claudia decides to ask Shea to dance. They end up foxtrotting, which, do kids in the 90s even know how to do? I enjoy ballroom dancing, but I didn’t develop that interest until after high school. Anyway, they dub the “Resource Room” the “Challenged Room,” which honestly sounds more condescending to me, but if that makes them feel better, that’s good.
The parents eventually take the younger kids home and the BSC and their dates get it on.
The end! Next up, I want to snark the postcard booklet, but since it’s taken me about a month per installment of this book, I’m not making any promises.