There is a whole range of motion that one never notices is missing until the ability to twist and turn like that returns. Things as simple as grabbing a sock from the floor or walking down stairs quickly. Things like picking up your child or rolling over on your side in bed. Getting in a car without careful preparation or sitting in an Adirondack chair. Things you never think about until you can’t do them, then don’t realize how much you missed them until you begin doing them again.
Results For "Aside"
First Confession
Congratulations to our Girl, the big girl, and for at least fifteen minutes this evening after her first confession in preparation for her first communion, a saint.
Keeping Me In Line
Cleaning the floor is a delicate matter. Use this on this surface; use that on that surface. I was using the wrong this on the wrong that, and when K returned from shopping with the Boy tonight, she informed me in no uncertain terms that I was not to be using this with that. The Boy was standing and watching. When K walked away, he was kind enough to make sure I understood it perfectly:
“No, Tata, no!” he said, finger wagging. “Don’t use this here. No Tata!”
Echoes
The Boy is in bed, trying to fall asleep. The cat jumps onto the bed and begins pestering the Boy, who stands up and says, “No, Bida!” When the cat doesn’t listen, the Boy says sternly, “When I say ‘No,’ I mean ‘No.'”
DNS Woes
Charter prevented me from keeping my streak going. So I’m counting this. So there. (Yes, I could have changed my DNS settings, but I don’t know any off the top of my head, and lacking an internet connection…)
Updated
It took me four years and two principals, but I finally succeeded in my brilliant plot to take control of and completely redesign the web site for my school. It went live today.
Update
The district decided a year later that WordPress had such significant security issues that they couldn’t continue using it. Funny, Washington Post, Time magazine, and the New York Times all seem to feel differently since they use it, but what do for-profit companies know about using secure software?
I See It!
The Boy toddles toward the stairs down to our transforming basement, cup of chocolate milk in hand. He gets a little excited and the milk soon splashes all over the floor. As I’m cleaning it up, I mutter to myself that this was avoidable “because I foresaw it.”
“No, Daddy,” E corrects. “I saw it.”
Wondering
I’m out mowing, mid-morning. The Girl, who is taking care of E, sticks her head out the door and says, “E was wondering if we could have some of those peanut butter-filled pretzels.”
Sure.
I can just see our two-year-old son sitting on the couch, watching his favorite cartoon, The Littlest Pet Shop (no coercion there), and turning to L to say, “You know, I’m just a little hungry. Know what I’d like? Some of those peanut-butter-filled pretzel thingies. And you know, Daddy’s just right outside there, mowing the front yard. Maybe you could just, I don’t know, stick your head out the door and ask him. I mean, we could try to get it ourselves, but I think we’d probably be better off if we ask permission.”
Yes, that’s probably how it happened.
Packing
Getting ready for vacation — this alone makes you ready for the vacation itself.
Laundry
“G, oh G, why did you do this?”
I was in the kitchen, having just returned from taking out the compost and checking on our garden — removing suckers from the tomatoes, looking in wonder at just how prodigious our cucumber plants will be, winding our bean stalks around the twine they’re supposed to be wrapping themselves around — and so I was confused. “What did I do?”
“You mixed the dirty clothes in with the clean.”
“No, I didn’t. I was in the garden.”
All eyes fell on E, our little helper.