#47, Mallory on Strike

I was going to do Kristy's Great Idea next, and maybe do the series in order, but then that felt like work, so I figured I'd just read what I was in the mood for. And today I was in the mood for some Mallory angst. This book has always been one of my favorites. I particularly like the chapters where Mallory has to do asinine tasks for her family, like make Claire a peanut butter sandwich so she can have a picnic with her dolls. Because her mom doesn't feel like it, or is busy, or something, so she finds Mallory and gets her to do it, even though making the damn sandwich would probably take less long than hunting down Mallory and asking her to make it.

This book starts out with Mallory finding out about Young Author's Day, and she wants to go home and finish her homework super fast so she can start thinking up the perfect story idea, but then she has to take care of her younger brothers and sisters. Claire is upset because the triplets are scaring her, Margo is getting into their mom's makeup (and she has painted her lips with orange lipstick, and I want to know why Mallory's mom even owns orange lipstick), Nicky gets bitten by their hamster and then the hamster gets loose and they have to catch him, Mallory's mom wants her to calm the triplets down. I do not know why the hell the triplets listen to Mallory when she is only a year older than they are and there are three of them, but they do.

I sort of loathe Frodo the Pike family hamster. It's not his fault, but he's always getting loose and having to be caught and that just makes me think there's rodent feces ground into all their carpets and it just seems sort of asinine that with eight kids the pet they get (at this point) is one nocturnal caged animal to pester and annoy. If I were their mother I would spend most of my time yelling. Of course if I were their mother I wouldn't have gotten pregnant within months of delivering triplets. Can you imagine? Five kids under three when Vanessa was born. No wonder that in the early books the Pikes are characterized as letting their kids do whatever they want. They had no strength left to fight after they had their eighth kid in six years.

Meeting time! Mallory informs us that Kristy does not need to wear a bra yet. I care deeply.

Claudia can wear anything and it looks great. Like she'll wear polka dot leggings with a short red skirt. Then she'll wear a long-sleeved T-shirt with a black vest (covered with cool pins that she's made herself) over that. Sometimes she decides to go fifties and wear penny loafers with white anklets.

I never understood the big deal about penny loafers in these books.

Mallory sets her alarm for 7:00 on Saturday morning. She tells us it is agony to get up so early and usually she would sleep until at least eight. I work at 6:00 am, so I guess I should consider 8 to be sleeping in, but I don't. On my last day off I slept until 3 pm. So maybe it's just my night-owl tendencies, but I don't consider anything before 11 to be sleeping in.

There's more shit with Mallory having to care for her siblings. Byron spills a glass of milk at the table and their mom asks Mallory to clean it up. WTF. He's ten years old, I think he can use a damn sponge. Hell, I'd expect the five year old to at least make an effort to clean up her own mess. Maybe I'm just unreasonable.

Mallory keeps having to spend a bunch of time looking after her siblings, and she doesn't want to take new baby-sitting jobs. She babysits for the Barrett kids, and Buddy cuts his foot while riding his bike, so she decides she should either be an associate member or just quit the club. Instead, Kristy tells her to take two weeks off.

Mallory goes on strike one Saturday so she can finish writing. She sits in her room all day, not even emerging to eat. The Pike Parents, horror stricken at the idea of actually having to care for their own kids, call Dawn and Mary Anne over to babysit, make up a quick bullshit story about an emergency library board meeting, and head out to paint the town red. Dawn and Mary Anne have to feed the kids pizza. The book says they have to cut the crust off Margo's pizza and cut Claire's slice into bite-sized pieces. My niece is three and she's been able to eat pizza by herself for at least a year, no cutting required. I'm just saying. Also who cuts the crust off pizza? You use the crust like a handle, then leave it on your plate at the end if you don't want it. Or if you are eating pizza at my mom's house you can throw it into the living room and say, "Oh no, pizza crust flew into the living room!" and watch her dog go running to gobble it up. My mom will give you a dirty look, but it's tradition. The dog's getting old now though, so you may have to act fast if you want to get an invitation to pizza night before there's nobody to eat the crust and it just sits there and congeals.

How could you not want to throw pizza crusts to her?

Anyway, Mallory talks to her parents and they decide that from now on they'll try to demand less from her, and then the next day she and Jessi go to the mall, and then her story wins the prize, and then the next weekend she takes her siblings on a totally lame outing, including paper hats, which they all enjoy and decree to be the most fun ever. Even the ten-year old boys. At one point in the day they stop by the Braddock house, where a backyard circus is being held by some neighbor kids.