Come on, get in my boat, fish!

Yesterday Andrew made challah specifically so he could make French toast for dinner. He made some delicious fried apples to go on top (which our kids like to call "simmered fruit" because of Zelda). The whole meal was divine. 

When we were taking our little "Victory Lap" around the table, Andrew answered that "making this meal" was...something...either his F-POD or his F-Party...I can't remember which. We'll pretend that it was his F-Party.

"I celebrate making this food!" Andrew said. 

"Me, too!" Phoebe agreed. "Thank you for this yummy dinner, Daddy! It is so delicious!"

She is very quick to thank people for things. And she is very quick to praise people for things.

"Thank you for wiping my bum." 

"Thank you for handing me that crayon."

"You are very good at walking up the stairs."

"Wow! I love that picture. It is amazing!"

She is overflowing with gratitude and awe. And we love that about her.

It's dynamite!

Alexander told me a joke the other day. He made it up about a picture on the cover of the joke book we checked out of the library. It's not a joke in the book. He just made it up about the cover, which features a skateboarding dinosaur (or something like that—definitely a dinosaur, might not be skateboarding), proclaiming, "These jokes are dino-mite!"

"What do you call a dinosaur who might do something?" he asked me (when he was supposed to be brushing his teeth). 

"I don't know," I said.

"A dino-might!" he cackled. 

"That's hilarious!" I said. "...go brush your teeth."

So, chuckling, he walked away to brush his teeth. Approximately two minutes later he came back to me. 

"This is sort of a follow up to that last joke," he said timidly, but you've got to understand that when Alexander feels any sort of fluster or confusion or excitement, he starts hiccoughing basically between every syllable. And evidently he was either really excited about part two of his joke or he was nervous that it was now past the time when he was sent to bed (the punishment for which is...being reminded that it's time to get to bed...so pretty serious stuff...I'm going to go with "he was excited about his own cleverness"). 

"This—hic—is—hic—sorta—hic—a—follow—hic—up—hic—to—hic—to—hic—to—hic—that—hic—last—hic—joke!" 

"Go for it, buddy," I said. 

"Did it..." He waggled his eyes as he said this next part: "Blow. Your. Mind?"

And then he ran off to bed laughing his head off. It was a pretty good follow up joke, I have to say!

(If I were to workshop the first part I would suggest something like, "What do you call a dinosaur who maybe will, maybe won't?" But overall, two thumbs way, way up!)

Li'l Adrenaline Junky

We were gathering for scriptures and prayer the other day when Phoebe decided she wanted to brush my hair for me. She was wielding a comb, however, and I was like, "No, thank you! Not with that! If you want to brush my hair you have to get a hairbrush."

She does not hold back when she uses a comb and I'm always afraid she's going to slice into my scalp. 

Anyway, she went upstairs to find a hairbrush. And it took her a while because she stopped to wash her hands and liberally apply someone else's chapstick to her face and...who even knows what else. She took forever. And when she finally came downstairs she did, in fact, have a hairbrush, but her sleeves were soaked and her face was covered in purple chapstick, so we know she was up to a few things.

Anyway, she was taking so long up there that Andrew hollered, "Phoebe! Come downstairs!"

"Okay, I'm coming!" she hollered back. And then she whimpered, "Oh, no..."

"Not like that!!" I yelped as we heard the first thud. 

A Victory Lap

Guys, my chapter manuscript is due on Monday and it is 2000 words too long. But it's a first draft, and that will simply have to be the way I turn it in—far too long—because I don't think I have it in my to cut 2000 words by Monday. 

But I celebrate finishing that manuscript. 

We've been doing a lot of celebrating over here. In one of my classes (our kind of...initiation course...to graduate school), our professor has us keeping a victory log. At first she told us to just write down victories of the day, bullet-point, nothing fancy, anything goes. So I started listing out a few things from the day that I was kinda sort of proud of, but which really just a list of things I'd done:

• made it to campus and to class
• walked across campus to the IAAS (Institute of African American Studies)
• Phoebe slept in her own bed
• finished reading two chapters of Derrida

You get the picture. Nothing remotely victorious had happened that day, though I was on campus and in class (and if you knew how much I have to pump myself up to go to class, you'd be proud, too); Rachel and I did walk across campus to the IAAS (and made our way back without a map); Phoebe did sleep in her own bed and she so rarely does that so it felt exciting; and then by Derrida I was about scraping the bottom of the barrel. 

Then my teacher said, "Now take your list and rephrase everything starting with I celebrate..."

Snow Day 3

The kids were in the hallway, staring at the thermostat (which also can give you a 10-day forecast, among other cool tricks) and arguing about whether or not it was going to snow after all when Daddy hollered from his office (where he has a lovely view out the window, the most accurate weather forecast of all): "It's snowing!"

So we bundled up and went for a walk in the freshly falling snow.

Here's Rachel:

Extreme Cold Warning

On the one hand, I recognize that this weather barely registers as chilly in some climes. For my brain, I've turned my phone to Celsius because while my brain can comprehend hot temperatures in Fahrenheit, it completely breaks when it gets cold. I think it's because I have so often lived in warmer places while thinking in Fahrenheit, so I can translate warmer temperatures in my head. Like, "Oh, it's 80°F. That's like 26°C." And I have that all...snug in my brain. 

Room temperature ranges from 20–21°C or 68–70°F. 

Those feel equivalent in my brain. They make sense to me. 

But then I'll see, like, 23° pop up on my screen and my brain automatically assumes that it's in Celsius. I think, "No way is it 70° outside today!"

Yesterday's temps in °F

Books and jokes and jokebooks

First of all, this is the only picture I took today (apparently):

Zoë had quite the sleep-in this morning. After she woke up I asked her why she was so tired and she sheepishly answered that she'd stayed up reading (somehow even after we confiscated her flashlight and gave her melatonin and...)

We did a lot of Saturday chores today (not that the house even looks like we did anything—but I assure you we were working like beavers) and when I brought a pile of books upstairs to put away on the shelf in the little girls' room and glanced at Zoë's bed, I had to laugh. 

She had been reading, indeed. 

(The hair you see in the picture is a doll, not a person...just so you know). 

Someone is the antagonist

I remembered the other story I was going to tell along with the [this door / the store] confusion story earlier: 

Rachel is taking an introductory theater class where they analyze plays and things. She has to attend two live events so we looked at UGA's schedule and one of their plays will fit the timeline for when her first analysis is due. 

"What was the name of that play again?" Rachel asked me as we were driving to campus (just because we were, not for the play).

"Oh...it was...ummmm..." 

The name of the play was just on the tip of my tongue but it was not going to come out.

"Someone is the Protag...no! Someone is the Antagonist!" 

"John Proctor is the Villain!" Rachel exclaimed. "Mom! That wasn't even close!"

I disagree! I think I came very close to remembering the title perfectly: someone (whose name begins with pro) is the antagonist. John Proctor is the villain. That is the same thing!

Bad luck with back tires

Biking to the park was...oppressive...somehow. 

Like, I barely made it there. I had trouble keeping up with Zoë and Alexander and their bikes don't even have gears. I needed to be on such a low gear to even go straight. I powered through things and we made it but, boy, was it ever the hardest bike ride of my life. 

I couldn't quite figure it out. Sure, it had been a while since I'd taken the kids on a bike ride, but I've been running...

Could it have been that my backpack was too heavy? I had my laptop, water for everyone, a bunch of glass bottles (that we stopped to deposit at the collection bin):

Frogging and cabbage and goats...just the worst

There were two stories that I had in mine of me completely misunderstanding someone...but I can only remember one now. So you'll get that one and then you'll get the story of how we juggled vehicles this afternoon.

*****

On the way home from campus, having already had the burning truck experience, Rachel and I decided we'd also stop by Walmart to grab a skein of yarn she needed to finish up the temperature blanket she's been working on for two years now. She's just adding the border, but realized about halfway through that we didn't have enough white yarn to make it all the way around so she had to "frog it," a textile crafting term for when you have to "rip it, rip it, rip it" apart, and start over again with a new skein. 

Why a new skein? Because it can be very difficult to colour match across batches of yarn, so even though "white yarn" might seem like it should always be just...white...in fact there are variations across batches of white yarn. 

So she pulled out the border she'd begun earlier and has started again with a fresh, full skein...which we had to pick up from the store. Walmart is on our way home, so that's where we went.

It was 9:56 pm when we walked in the door, where we were met by a police man and a door greeter.

"This door closes at 10:00," the door greeter informed me.

I glanced at my watch. It was, as I mentioned, 9:56. 

"The store closes at 10:00?!" I said, with some degree of surprise because...I don't know...it just seems like Walmart keeps insane business hours. Some of them are open 24/7. "We'd better hurry!"

"This door," the greeter enunciated slowly, for my sake. "Not the store. You can still use the far door. It's open until 11:00."

"Oh," I said sheepishly. "Okay, thanks. We've got plenty time then, Rachel. Let's go find your yarn."

*****