#20 Kristy and the Walking Disaster Part 1 (Chapters 1-4)

[deathbytamarind]

Here I am, finally snarking the first book I said I would snark! I felt its day had come due to a few stars aligning in my life. One being the fact that I finally found my Kindle, which means I have access to the e-books once again, and the other being that baseball season is almost upon us and there's nothing in the world I love more than baseball

Comments

[road_baby]

What is up with MA taking such awful care of her kitty?! How do you lose him in a room? Pay attention, stupid! I'm gonna report her to Jackson Galaxy!

I also call total bullshit on Gabbie being able to play softball. My cousin has a three year old and she definitely couldn't play in a softball game. How the Hell does Ann think a child that young can not only play an organised sport, but understand all the rules? And talk like a English major? Seriously, 'Children! Things Ann Knows Nothing About!'

[deathbytamarind]

You and shatisarockgod get it about Tigger, which is a point I didn't bring up in my snark: how the hell did she get him out of the house, across the street, and into a stranger's house without him flipping the fuck out? Most cats aren't very portable. she does belong on My Cat From Hell, lol.

[anabellabobella]

Cats who are regularly taken places will be calmer about it. MA takes Tigger out enough that he'll be used to it, and so won't freak out. I had an old cat who I used to take to Pier 39 in San Francisco. Without a leash. Tourists loved taking pictures of the cute cat in the houndstooth kitty coat who sat there all chill and would sit in strangers' laps for pictures, with a kitty smile and his blue eyes shining bright. My beloved boy was very much like a well-trained small dog from how often he went out, only I've never had a dog I trusted to not be on a leash. That cat? Perfect.

I have a couple cats now, and one of them will be chill if you take him out. The other isn't too happy, but will put up with it. Both of them get leashed though.

[deathbytamarind]

I've met a few cats who can lead on a leash, but that required training from a young age. That's entirely another thing to take a cat outside randomly one day and expect a calm kitty. But MA sucks, so there's that.

[shatisarockgod]

Kristy calls Karen "not naughty, but fearless" with "a wild imagination." --Bullshit. I can only imagine the names Jenny would be called if she did half of the stuff Karen does

[deathbytamarind]

You're so on point about the behavior some kids exhibit that BSC members find cute/innocent versus the same behavior that other kids exhibit being offensive. Jenny is the spawn of Satan but Karen's A-OK? All right.

[anabellabobella]

Although there is a point in there about using the notebook to communicate important information about food allergies among baby-sitting charges,

Get a filing box and folders. On each folder, write the child's last name, a comma, first name. In each folder, keep a written list of all of the most important info. Add new pages as needed to ass any new relevant stuff.

Much more efficient than having to read through dozens of notebook entries to find out what food it is that Marnie Barrett is allergic to.

I never thought a kid wouldn’t be allowed to play on a team because they weren't good at the sport.

My dad coached, from t-ball on up. It's expected that kids that young will suck. They haven't had the chance to learn! And girls played all the time.

I remember this book boring me out of my skull. You're doing a much better job at making it interesting.

[deathbytamarind]

I admit I've been frustrated at times in my coaching career, though not with the kids and their skill levels. It's unrealistic to expect young kids to be good at physical things because they're still growing and clumsiness and a lack of coordination is pretty standard. For someone who does nothing but hang around with little kids, you'd think Kristy and friends would pick up on that tidbit of child development knowledge.

Now that I think about it, this book is pretty boring. There's almost no B plot to it. I think the Bart crush is about it. If you don't care about baseball, a lot of this book is unreadable, as opposed to inspiring a hateread like it does for me.

[anabellabobella]

I understand baseball in extreme detail thanks to literally being around it my entire life. My dad was a major league prospect until he was injured, but he still played, both baseball AND softball, and then coached Little League for many years. The baseball books in this series still bored me because it just doesn't work to try having a full game when you've got kids hitting wiffle balls off of T's while other kids can hit pitches. The skill levels are too drastically different for it to work. If Ann knew the first thing about baseball, she'd have realized that the younger kids might had been better hitting off the T for warm-ups for the other kids to have balls to scramble after, basically an honorary "help with warm-ups" position.

For someone who does nothing but hang around with little kids, you'd think Kristy and friends would pick up on that tidbit of child development knowledge.

How can she know when the little kids in her world are Mensa members and can be adopted from overseas and learn English in a day and have no RADD?