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Grabbing some access at Panera's. Sarah and I are out and about. Cathy cleaned up the house as packing went on, and I took Sarah to the motel we would stay at for our last night in town. Sarah and I had a final sushi meal at Oishi, and said our goodbyes to Mr. Dong, our sushi friend. He made us egg rolls for a treat, then at the end of the meal, as Sarah was clamoring for green tea ice cream, he said he would make her a fried banana. "But I want ice cream," she said to me a dozen or so times. Finally, I said that Mr. Dong was making her a special dessert and she could have ice cream later. When dessert arrived, it proved to have fried banana segments, chocolate-drizzled whipped cream, and -- with a candle burning on it -- a big scoop of green tea ice cream. Sarah was so excited, she put the whole thing on her fork and gestured with it, over the floor, of course. Mr. Dong was nice enough to clean it up and give her another. Then we went swimming at the hotel pool, which was middling cool.

Next morning, we went in again, and this time it was warmer. Then we poured into two cars (mine was so full of stuff, including all our computers, scanner, printer, and my piano, that nobody could ride with me) and drove about 300 miles. There was wi-fi in our motel and I could still read newsgroups and my mail. There was wi-fi in the service plazas, and I could read email but not groups. There was wi-fi in the motel room in Pittsford, but I couldn't read newsgroups. If anybody knows a way to read newsgroups without having a provider (comcast, warner, that sort of thing) and without using Google Groups, which look like a huge tangled mess of headers, all alike, I'd sure like to know. I found a page of supposedly free services, and not one of them was there when I clicked on it.

We went to the apartment that will be our home for the next two weeks, and the key wasn't there. I tried calling the number they posted there. Then we took Cathy to work and went back to the motel, had breakfast, and swum in the pool. It was warmer than it had been the night before. I conclude that motel pools are warmer in the morning. We spent an hour in the water. Sarah can do flips in the water. She is almost swimming.

At noon, having not gotten a response on the phone, we went back to the apartment. By this time, the office was open, so I asked the guy there for help, and he took us to the front door of the unit. We had been at the back. The key was at the front. I thanked him profusely. We got lunch from Wegman's, then I moved all the stuff from my car up the flight of stairs into the apartment, and took a nap with Sarah. I was awakened by the phone, which was the lady we were renting from. I had called her phone to let it know we were in the apartment, but she wanted to find out why it had taken so long. Then it was time to get Cathy from work.

Today we both have cars. There's a parking space and a garage unit for us. We went to the library, to the school district, and to the Y. When I have proof of residency, I can finalize arrangements with these worthy institutions for future services. Now we'll drive around a little and maybe look at an amusement park (from the outside). Pittsford, we are here.

Kindergarten, by the way, turns out to be half-day only. I won't be getting a lot of work done, it appears.
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Sarah sits on the seat, feet on the pedals
Hands on the handlebars. I steady her.
With a gentle push on her back, she starts
And off she goes, down the street of houses.
Her legs pump, her arms hold steady.
Her shirt's a dwindling spot of yellow
Down the sidewalk. She wavers confidently
Passing one house, two houses, ten houses.
How long, I wonder, will she keep coming back?

A week of progress for the youngest Williams finds a number of benchmarks. She has played Sudoku. She has swung and grasped all seven hanging rings at the playground, lighting securely on the far side. And her bike riding has gone from one to sixty.

In previous parent-child exercises, I have pushed her up to speed in our driveway and let her stop herself in the soft grass of the back yard. Then I have run down the block, awkwardly guiding her and the bike until I could let go and watch her wobble along, sometimes bringing herself to a successful stop, sometimes crashing and wailing. Then we let it rest a while.

This week, she had the urge again, and this time it was all easier. No long running, just a grip on the center of the handlebars for balance and a soft, firm push off, and she has headed off down the block, stopping three houses down and waiting for me to come give her the next push. At the end of the session, Sarah seemed to be able to start herself once in a while.

Friday was the night of the sleepover. Sarah invited five friends over, four of whom couldn't sleep over, but they had good, noisy fun until bedtime. They tried a sort of indoor baseball while I moved the Hummel music box out and tried to redistribute other breakables to better spots. They pummeled each other with floor pillows.

At one point, nobody knew where Cathy was. Sarah got increasingly freaked out, while Colin made helpful suggestions. "We know she wasn't murdered, because we would have heard the gun, or the sound of stabbing," he said. "We can call the police." Cathy turned up shortly, after we'd searched the house and sheds. She had thought nobody would notice if she took a walk, but had reckoned without the needy daughter.

Then it was over. In a pig's eye.

Colin and Sarah kept each other up and making noise until 1:30, and then Colin got everybody up at 6:30.

After a while, Colin and Sarah wanted to go to Mittineague park, so I accompanied them. As usual, whoever was in front wanted to keep going, and whoever wasn't wanted everybody else to wait. Colin justified being blocks ahead of everybody else, as he does everything, with a barrage of words. "I was going a hundred miles an hour and I couldn't stop." That was my favorite one.

We got to the park, and Sarah wanted to play on the swings, and Colin wanted to race ahead to Block Brook, so we ended up at the brook, where Colin encouraged whichever behavior was the least safe at the time. He egged Sarah into crossing some water on a log while I was locking her bike and mine to a post (leaving his as an offering to potential thieves). I got there and told them to come back, because it was about time for me to get Colin home to go to his swimming lesson. Sarah, predictably, was less eager to return on the log than to go over, and froze up partway. Colin offered encouragement. "Just don't think about the current," he said. "It could pull you away and you would drown." Taking his dad's advice, I told him to shut up about it.

At any rate, the stimulus of going to the park got Sarah starting herself on the bike quite well, and she was getting good at it. I told her that next time she wanted to go to the park, I would remember that she was making me bring her bike back, and not go. She eventually got the message and rode the rest of the way home, though by that time, of course, I was the mean daddy who never ever did anything for her. Ever.

Around 11, per previous arrangement, the electrician came to replace the breaker boxes in the basement with one that was up to code and had all the same kind of breakers in it, and to restaple most of the wires. We left him working -- he said it would be about four hours -- and headed off to Southwick's Zoo (which is in Mendon, down near Rhode Island, and nowhere near Southwick). We drove and drove, trying to follow the directions I got from the recording on the zoo's 800 number. ("Step one: take 90 to 146S to 16. Step two: ??? Step three: Profit!") We saw some interesting parts of Massachusetts and Woonsocket, Rhode Island. We looked at animals, ate some food, watched Sarah ride a pony.

We drove home, pausing for dinner at a 99 Steak House, and got in about 7:15. The electrician was still at it, the job having turned into a nightmare from hell. Part of the meter housing fell off and had to be rebuilt. He got shocked three times (which, he says, never happens). He finally got out after 8, leaving us with power, and came back this morning to finish the cosmetic parts of the job.

Sarah has been enjoying her new-found freedom, which (for now) extends to the other side of the street at the end of the block away from the highway. With good behavior and observation of safety rules, she'll extend her territory. I've been enjoying it too, sitting at the computer catching up on LJ and not having to listen to Nickelodeon.
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Five years ago today, on the other side of the planet:

( photos )

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Sarah woke herself up last night by being rather sick. She's convalescing today -- better, I hope -- and she wanted to color. Rather than look for a coloring book, I went to the computer and made a couple of coloring pages from family photos.

( results inside )

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I took Sarah to the dentist for a cleaning this morning. I'm going in for my own appointment later. She has been complaining about a sore tooth. I keep telling her to brush more. She does brush more if she brushes while watching TV -- she'll brush and brush and brush until we take the brush away from her. Lately, she's been running upstairs before I finish my exercises and coming down, saying she's brushed. It didn't seem to me like she'd been brushing long enough, though, and the dentist said that the sore tooth is a new cavity. We talked about fluoride, and a more aggressive treatment was recommended.

They were going to give us an appointment in January for the filling, but I said her tooth hurts, and they found us an appointment at 11:30 Friday morning, thanks to a cancellation. Feed her lunch first, they said, so I told Sarah we could go to The Celery Stalk for some clam chowder. This was fine by her, as we had gone there last week and found that they only have clam chowder on Friday.

Then I drove her to school, and we talked about teeth. She confessed to me that instead of brushing, she has been getting the toothbrush wet and jumping on the bed. I acted surprised. Well, I was, about the bed. It didn't seem like she'd even had time for that. I told her that's why her tooth hurts now, and she said she'll brush and floss and use the Water Pik.

I'll be getting my new permanent crown this morning (update: already have, as of noon). I wonder how many real teeth I have. I could count the ones with fillings and find out. Sarah won't learn from my dental mistakes. She has to make her own.
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Building up to the longest weekend until... well, until next month when we'll have a longer one. Sarah's off from Wednesday noon until next Monday. Meanwhile, I'm losing my bus chops. I was heading out to get Sarah, when I had to make an urgent stop in the small room by the front door. As I headed out for real, I saw Traigh and Shane pull up. "The bus is waiting," I was told, so I dashed on over there and redeemed my daughter from the idling bus.

That was Friday. Yesterday I started earlier, and the bus came earlier. I'm going to have to start allowing about ten minutes of slack at this rate. Woe is me. Ten minutes! I've been continuing to take my daily walks. One time I took it in the afternoon because it was so cold in the morning. I've looked at the treadmill and sighed at the thought of having to go back to it again, but I prepared for it anyway -- ordering a new key/clip, the small, easy-to-lose part that it won't run without.

The walks are still enjoyable, if chilly. I've done a little bit of exploratory wandering in slices of nearby real estate I hadn't tried before. Photo subjects on my walks have been trending similarly chilly, though not exclusively. I'm still getting some interesting macro views (I cn haz magnification, rofl), and also seeing what I can do with just plain old snow.

( wuxtry! big pix behind cut )

Yesterday, I wanted to go out and blow some money. Just a little, of course. I searched online for classical CD shops, hoping I'd find a place that might have the new recording of Liszt's "Dante" Symphony (in his arrangement for two pianos and chorus). You'd think Northampton would have something, but it sure doesn't show up online. (Turn It Up might possibly have it, come to think.) Hartford, maybe? Hard to tell. The Enfield Mall claimed to have a CD store. I started out with the intent of going to Enfield, then when that didn't yield anything, I would head up to Northampton. Once on the road, I changed my plan and headed for New Haven instead.

All my searches kept finding Cutler's in New Haven, by the Yale campus, but it seemed too far. Still, I thought, why not just do all that driving in one direction? So I followed the signs to New Haven, and then toward Yale, where I looked for Broadway and found it. All the shops were on one side of the street, so it was easy to watch for the record store, then park at a meter, set a timer on my watch, and go browse. I didn't find the Liszt, but I got a couple of other things, then hastened back to the meter, bought a burrito from a street vendor, ate it in the car while the time ran out, and drove on home. Good thing I did it yesterday, on a nice dry, sunny day.

[I was looking for prices on the food cart and not seeing it. A young woman with similar intent was telling the vendor he should have a menu or a price list. He looked at her with polite uncomprehension, so I asked, "How much for the burritos?" I had just enough cash for a burrito with a little left over. Nice how that worked out.]
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For Sarah, that is. For me, it's been somewhat more.

On Monday, she had a sore throat and stayed home, but since I was committed to the pledge drive at WFCR, Cathy worked around her schedule to stay home and have a mother-and-daughter day. I learned the ropes to be a volunteer supervisor and supervised the 11-1 shift.

Tuesday was a normal sort of day, with the morning routine getting later and later. I'm trying to forestall those $500 energy bills by taking shorter showers and shaving afterward instead of during. I also close off the den and heat it with a space heater during the day. The thermostat's in here, so that effectively shuts off the heat in the rest of the house, except the basement, which is always warm because it's where the water heater is. I've contemplated moving operations downstairs, but haven't so far.

Wednesday, Sarah was home all day again for another teacher conference day. It went about like last Wednesday, with things going fairly well until I snap and yell at Sarah, then feel terrible about it. We had lunch at Friendly's, which took a fair-sized chunk out of the middle of the day, because our order was late. I spent much of the afternoon getting her pumpkin ready for its light, scooping and scraping to get the possibly flammable fiber debris out. I used one of our electric candles for it, and didn't want to take any chances. Sarah got into her lion costume after supper and Cathy took her over to go trick-or-treat with Traigh and company. She overcame her hesitation and covered much of two streets while I stayed in and handed candy out to the marauding bands of kids whose parents drive them over here from Springfield every year. We didn't get as many as I expected, probably because there weren't as many houses lit up on this end of the street.

Yesterday the morning delays resulted in our arriving at the bus stop as the bus pulled away. Actually, I met them halfway up the block and flashed my lights at the driver, who obligingly stopped for us. Then I did another shift at the pledge drive, back to my humble berth as an operator. It was a slow pledge day, at that.

This morning I tried to get Sarah moving. She was hoping that by watching TV really hard, her juice box, ice pack, snack, and folder for important papers would all assemble themselves in her backpack, which would then stand by the door for her. I nagged persistently to get each step accomplished, and we piled into the car. I scraped the windows perfunctorily, leaving stripes between the frost for me to see out of. We drove a few yards and Sarah announced that the folder wasn't in her pack. Wackiness ensued. After I dropped her off, kissed her and waved bye, I brought the car back and took my morning walk, with my headphones cozy and quiet in my pocket as usual. The birds were noticeably quiet in the 30-degree morning, so I mostly heard traffic and a train down by the river, and trees quietly applauding the breeze.

Soon the weekend will start. We're going out for sushi tonight.

( pictures behind the cut )

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Friday's big priority was to take myself and my piano to the library, set up for the wine tasting, and play a couple of hours, then knock down. I practiced all day, hoping my injured wrist wouldn't let me down. Around 4, I loaded the piano in my car in the light drizzle. Sandy helped me heave the 75-pound instrument up the narrow steps.

I brought a fan and was in control of my own temperature all evening. At 6, the event began. I had to adjust to the somewhat shocking sound of my piano playing really loud to reach the crowd below. I should have put my ear plugs in. Delicacies were being served below. I had some.

The cheap printer did a slack job on the program book. All the greys had dropped out -- like they shot from a copy of the copy I gave them (along with a printable PDF which I doubt they used). I could have done a better job than that on any copier I have ever worked with. I told my contact I wanted a proof, but never got one.

I woke up this morning, still a back-weary. Sarah and I went to Mittineague Park with Traigh and Shane, hiking to the soccer fields, playing a while, then hiking back home. Then this afternoon, Sarah and I hiked to join Cathy for kid activities at Westfield state -- coloring, mask-making, pumpkin painting, sand art, bounce house, and some food -- our parking spot was on the far side of campus, and we went through the woods to get there. On the way back, Cathy gave us a ride to my car.

I had earlier checked on SD cards for my new camera, and found that the neato model that folds and becomes its own USB drive was available there. The 1GB card was $39.99. I checked to see how much the 2GB card was, and it was $35.99. I bought it online, and we picked it up at Circuit City this afternoon, so now I have room for about three times as many photos as we took on our entire China trip.

Speaking of which, I put up a new flickr photoset of some China pictures -- specifically, tea and teapots. Short and stout, tall and willowy, but all with a handle and a spout. Here's one sample, reduced in size so as not to bust anybody's flist window. If you like tea or ceramics, though, please go view the whole set. Or try to (and if you can't, give me the particulars so I can pass them on to the alert folks at the help desk).



Dodecahedral teapot Teapot with the twelve signs of the Chinese place mat. I mean, the Chinese zodiac. This was the second neatest teapot I saw.
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After years of griping, I got a new camera with the proceeds of some of the jobs I've been doing lately. It's a Canon PowerShot A720, which means it's small and light, takes bigger pictures (up to 8MB), and has more zoom (6x optical). It's also easy to find the features. I think I know as much about it after two days as I do about my other camera after four years.

( pictures behind the hyperjump )

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On Saturday we went to Target to try out glasses for Sarah. The nicer ones weren't available in her size and she ended up choosing some heavy-looking rectangular ones.



They should be in around Saturday, and should make it easier for her to read (the diagnosis was actually 'slightly farsighted with some real astigmatism'), and maybe she won't need them when she's dancing or playing outside. We'll see (and so will she).

Saturday was also malibrarian's birthday. We breakfasted together at Friendly's, and Sarah and I gave our present and card to her. We went out foraging for a festive lunch on Sunday. First we tried the Lebanon Cafe in Springfield, to use the coupon I got at Taste Of The Valley, but they were closed for a private function. We proceeded to Northampton and a diner Cathy had gone to before, but they were closed for some other reason and ended up going to a Hunan place nearby that also had sushi. I decided to try their Singapore Mei Fun, along with a couple pieces of unagi. It was a nice place, and we'll probably go back.

Yesterday I got a nice surprise when the client whose book I'd finished e-mailed, asking for some small changes. I named a price of $50, and made most of the changes with him on the phone. One or two were tiny typos; most of them were things he decided to add in after seeing the proof.

With that out of the way, I went back to my self-appointed task of converting the Project Gutenberg etext of Spoon River Anthology to iPod format (text files no larger than 4k). I put each epitaph into its own file (about 1k average) so that they'd be findable by name. The Spooniad took four files. The Epilogue wasn't included, and maybe that's no real loss, even for a completist like myself. (Has anybody out there read the New Spoon River Anthology? Is it worth looking for?)

After that, I spent the rest of the day finishing the fifth Harry Potter book. If Cathy's library has #6, I'll probably go right on to that. Time's a-wasting, and people are working hard to spoil #7 for me. I've already had some of #6 blown, so I might as well hurry along. Too bad I don't know anybody around here who's already finished their copy of the last one. Short of buying a hardcover, that seems about the only way I'd get one any time soon.

By the way, if anybody has an iPod and wants "notes"-formatted etexts, I can offer Spoon River, King Lear (I forget offhand if it's quarto, folio, or conflated version), and Shakespeare Sonnets (original spelling). Also on my pod are the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" and a version of Roger's Profanisaurus, but those three are partly reformatted for optimal reading. I first loaded them in using a program that broke them up automatically, which also broke up definitions in the middle of a line, and the line lengths are jagged and awkward. Now I know what to do with things like that, but it's very time-consuming to fix the files.
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Most mornings lately have started off drippy, either from currently falling rain or from having enough moisture everywhere that it's dripping when I look out the bathroom window.

Monday was another Sarah & Daddy day; she stayed home from school on account of her tummy. It might have been the penny she swallowed last week. The day went more or less okay. I made her turn the TV off after a while, saving it up so I'd have a soft club to use on her. We went to the store to get my prescription, and while there we picked up some sushi and soup. She had her first bite of real fish sushi -- on a plate of mostly rolls, there were three shrimp nigiri, and we just lifted them off the rice and ate them like sashimi. She liked her bite of shrimp. Late in the day, we took another walk together (about 1.1 miles), with an umbrella that we ended up using. On arriving home, we saw that Cathy had come home a few minutes early.

Sarah talks about her birth mommy and daddy almost every day now. She has tentatively assembled presents to give to them, and wishes she could meet them so they don't have to be sad about her. At bedtime, she's been asking for us to tell her stories about when we went to China to get her, and these are sometimes followed by a request for me to tell a story about when I was born.

Yesterday it was too wet out for us to walk together. I took my own walk earlier in the day, and the umbrella came in handy again after I was about 3/4 of the way. Walking with her is a great way to have a long conversation without distractions, and she falls asleep sooner at night on the days when she walks. Last night, she was still making noise after 10:00.
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Sarah and I were on our way to get a bagel (for her) and a souffle (for me) at Panera's. As we passed the cemetery on King's Highway, a backhoe was digging a new grave. Sarah said something about people in boxes that I didn't quite catch. I asked her what she said.

"That's where there's people in boxes in the ground that are dead." she told me.

So she knew. I hadn't ever volunteered the information that the cemetery was full of deceased people in boxes, but she had learned it somewhere. I confirmed the accuracy of what she had said. "There's a whole bunch of them by my school," she went on. Indeed there were. Her pre-school is across the street from a very large graveyard. I have a photo I took of it while I was backing out of my parking space there -- I took it in the rear-view mirror, with the words "OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY LOOK" showing. It seems that she picked up the information about cemeteries at school. Lucky me! The stuff I'm leery of telling her, she picks up on the street, as it were. We drove past another one, and she said, "There's some more people in boxes."

Then we went to Panera's, and she had a plain bagel with plain cream cheese, and our morning continued.
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I picked Sarah up so we could get ready for her dance class. On the way, I told her I had a job now and that might make it hard for me to get her on Wednesdays (we'll see). We passed the alpacas, and I called them llamas. She corrected me. I said they look a lot alike, but llamas were bigger. (I don't actually know if they are or not.) "Are llamas as big as a house?" I said no. That much I knew.

Then she asked me if I wanted to hear a song Grandpa taught her. (Grandpa leads quite a double life, sneaking over from Texas to teach Sarah songs and stuff.) I said sure, and she led off with a rhythm introduction of near-sibilant tongue exhalations. Cool! An intro! Then she started singing away, a wide-ranging stream of consciousness that eventually seemed to contain many elements of "You Are My Sunshine." After she finished, and after I praised her on her song (glad to see she thinks musically), I started singing that, and she joined in.

Then we got to the gas station, and we "mopped" the windows. They had a thin coating of pale grime from the light snow that fell in the night and melted during the day. Hey, now that I have a job, we can spring for a rear wiper again! Sarah worked with enthusiasm, and I gave her more pointers on technique. When she gets a little better, she can go to New York City and try to squeegee windows at red lights for a few extra bucks.

Then we got home, and there were hugs all around. Cathy was pleased, of course, that I'm gainfully employed at last. I celebrated with a little Coke at dinner. After food, Sarah and I went upstairs to get her changed into her dance garb. After she finally stopped showing me her bottom, it went relatively quickly. I picked her up by the feet and swept the rug with her hair, and she would have had me do that over and over, but we had to go downstairs and get her shoes and coat. After which she had me sweep the downstairs rug with her hair for a minute.

Now she's at her class, and I have been spending more time trying to find a CD I made for Ned Brooks a couple of months back. I'd swear it's probably no more than about six feet from where I'm typing, but I can't find a sign of it. Wah.
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Tonight at dinner, Cathy remarked that Andreas Katsulis had died. I said I'd heard that. Sarah chimed in: "Angie's grandpa died." We said we were sorry.

"Why did he die?" Sarah asked, still looking for information. This time Cathy fielded it. "People die when they get very, very old," she said. "Their body can't repair itself any more."

"I don't want to die," said Sarah in a small voice. Uh-oh. It had hit home this time.

"Oh, honey, you won't die! Not for a long, long, Long time!" Cathy assured her.

"And you won't die?" She looked at Cathy, and then me. She seemed to see us, maybe for the first time, as people who could die.

"No, honey. Not for a long, long time," said Cathy.

"We have to take care of you!" I added, "And we love you."

I looked at her beautiful, dark eyes. She was very quiet, and I couldn't tell where she was looking. I put my hand on her shoulder and leaned closer. "Ow," she said, half-heartedly.

We told her again that we loved her. Then the conversation somehow changed to other topics. The room felt a little colder as we finished our mac & cheese.
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I goofed off around the house. I thought at first I might go out and see the Sponge Bob movie, but after a morning of puttering, I decided I needed an afternoon of puttering. I did some updating of backups and decided to scan a book of standard songs (folk songs through hits of the late teens). After I'd scanned a few pages, I decided to save post-scanning time and adjust the scan settings. That made things oodles faster. As long as I got it straight on the scanner, a scan needed no additional work beyond saving and naming the file. I gave the files names that gave title info as well as the page number, so that was even better. I was pretty happy with it, all in all.

I also thought I'd be looking online and at LJ more, but for some reason, I just didn't. It was kind of unusual.

A few days earlier, I increased my opera and vocal holdings considerably by harvesting some stuff I'd had for eons. A co-worker gave me all these sampler CDs. There were a couple of opera 'best of the year' disks from '93 and '94, samplers from Sony and RCA, and a whole pile of the CDs that came with Classical CD magazine. Usually, I scorn these, with their excerpts from movements, but with opera, these little chunks can be very entertaining. I ended up with almost a CD worth of mp3 files -- about 650 MB of them -- so I've been dipping into strange operas and enjoying it; finding new stuff.

When I was scanning, I put some of it on, and it helped the work go by faster. Then right at the end, when I'd scanned about 90 pages in a row, and the computer found a clever new way to dump them, it helped me re-scan 90 pages in a half hour in order to go pick Sarah up a little early and try to go to a playground. I say 'try' because Sarah dawdled and we lost a few precious minutes of daylight, and then she insisted on going to the playground that was farther away. It was so cold when we got there, I don't know that it would have made a difference anyway. I wish we had a nice indoor playground to go to.
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I was Mr. Mom this weekend, while Cathy worked. Saturday morning, we raked and mulched in the yard. Sarah worked enthusiastically -- it was what she wanted to do. We went out and had a chicken biscuit and then played at Fort Fun until time to get lunch and join Cathy at work. After lunch, a brief nap, then more fun outside, and eventually Cathy came home. Sunday we did more raking in the morning (Cathy was still here until early afternoon), then Sarah went down for her nap. Light outdoor activities gave way to watching some videos inside. Normal bedtime activities actually resulted in Sarah declaring time to go to sleep before 9:00.

Also on Saturday, we sorted the laundry. Sarah is an excellent sorter. All in all, it was a lovely weekend together. I'm feeling fine, rested and ready for... work? I have to go to work? Feh.
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The day of dread. The nastiest job of the year. I cleaned leaves out of the roof gutters. I didn't have to do this last year -- they put new gutters in, and I figured it was a freebie. No such luck this time.

Cathy and Sarah trailed along as I hauled the folding ladder over to the side with the lowest roofline -- a small bay window with a lower rooflet on it -- messed with the ladder a while. I tried to use it folded in half, but it lacked a feeling of security. I mean, even more than with the ladder fully extended. So, carefully defeating the reluctant locking mechanisms, I put it to its full length and set it up at a nice low angle. It rested on our new gutter, but Cathy said that was okay. I clambered up, clutching a watering head that I planned to use as my mucking tool.

So there I was, hating it, as always. It showed plainly on my face to Cathy, but Sarah didn't seem to notice the frown of fear that decorated my visage. She asked a lot of questions, or at least she asked three or four questions a lot of times. She said when she was big enough, she'd get the leaves out of the gutters. I will hold her to that. The leaves on top were dry, the ones under were wet, the lower ones were kind of nasty wet, and below that was the usual black sludge of asphalt from the shingles. My watering head (about 18 inches long and curved at the end) was okay for some parts of the job, but I still had to use my fingers -- my poor, betrayed fingers -- to scoop the nasty brew out of the gutters. Sarah wanted to go ride her new trike in the street, but Cathy kept calling her back and telling her to stay nearby. I mucked the part around the ladder, then worried my way to the far side of the garage, exposing drain holes that had been largely unemployed with the covering of leaves and ex-leaves. Then I did the patio side and worked my way over the peak to the front side.

First I worked my way over to the chimney and looked down it. Seemed nice and clean. It got too dark to see before I could see any obstructions. Then I sat down, thinking how nice it was to be next to the chimney, and not wanting to leave the security of that solid brick wall. A friend (rtred) apparently went up on his second-story roof one time to clean gutters, a thought that makes me shudder. To think I used to shinny up onto the roof of our old house to sit and peer at the distant train tracks and other scenic views. Right now, I'm thinking I'd like my next house to be one of those basements with a roof over it that I used to see. The front side is the longest side. As I worked my way across, I pondered what I'd land on if my weight shifted just one inch too far. I wished I had forearms about six inches longer. By this time, I'd abandoned the sprinkler head and was just doing it all by hand. My right hand did all the mucking, but it was my left shoulder that was starting to ache, from the strain of continually saving my worthless life. Thanks, lefty!

Last and least, I went back to the side with the ladder and finished the short side there. Something like a tomato plant was growing over the drain hole. I tossed it down to Cathy, and we subsequently stuck it in the hole we'd been digging with Sarah this morning (she was in a digging mood) back of the garage. Then I sat and breathed a while before working my shaky way back onto the ladder; always the worst part of the enterprise.

Done for another year. I think I'll go break into the minibar, so to speak.
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Sarah draws out some of her words now, especially at the ends of sentences. "Pen" becomes "pay-en."

I hope this is just some kid phase. I really don't want to spend the rest of my life hearing my child talk in a southern accent.
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Quite a weekend. We drove down to Kitty Hawk on Saturday, and spent the night at a Ramada. Sarah didn't go down quietly or early, but she still managed to rise at 4:30, noisily. We visited the beach in the howling wind, watching the foam, and Sarah and I had a dip in the pool. After that we all had a nice visit with Jay and Karen and Kally and Jelena (sp?). Then the ride home started off well enough, with Sarah soon falling asleep. She woke when Cathy took over driving and was quite the needy one thereafter. So it was quite a weekend. Monday, Sarah was sick and woke up at 4:30 again. Today she wasn't so sick, but she still woke up at 4:30. Tonight might be my turn, so I think I'll turn in early. Cathy handled the last two.
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With Cathy briefly out, I have been Mr. Daddy by myself. (Literally. Sarah calls me that sometimes.) Sometimes the solo gig gets tiring, but today Sarah was at her best. She needed a little reiteration on Mommy's exact status, but she basically knew that Mommy had flown on an airplane and would be back. A little fuzzy on when, but she's great for two years old.

We went to Target after I picked her up this afternoon, to pick out a better stool to stand on when she brushes her teeth, and the final decision on which one was all hers. She didn't want to ride in the cart, so I told her she'd have to be good and stay close to me, and she was and she did, mostly. I let her pick out a small toy as well, and then we ate in the Taco Bell "Express" inside the Target store, which was a treat for Sarah. It's so special to eat out, especially a hot dog.

We got home just in time for Cathy's phone call, and Sarah told her she'd had another all-star day at school (technical term, but it's as good as it sounds). Sarah and I watched some of her small library of TV shows, an episode of the Tubbies, and after she was dressed for bed, "Bear in the Big Blue House." There's a part where Bear does three or four little snippets of dances -- a jig, a waltz, and so forth -- and Sarah does them all along with him. Baby, I'm amazed.

We brushed our teeth together, and then Sarah took her cup of orange water (this is tap water that is solemnly declared to be orange water -- the first cup I pour always seems to be green water, so I pour it out and refill the cup) into her bedroom, and jumped up and down a while, then we sang songs, and we drew pictures of the ghost that scared her on Halloween and then balled them up and threw them away and told it it had to go someplace else. We also check the doors each night, making our watchman round in tandem. "I no like the ghost," she comments. She asked me to put her little pillow in her bed, which I did, along with the pillow refusing to go where it should and me acting exasperated and Sarah requesting an encore.

Anyway, Sarah was pretty quick to become calm. The last phase of the evening ritual was the two of us sitting quietly in chairs in her room. Usually it's me on the broken recliner, but sometimes she takes that one. It's good that I fit in her tiny chair, though it's not exactly luxurious. We used both configurations tonight, and ended up with her curled up in my arms. "It's time go night night," she announced. In her bed she went, joining her doll and her Tubbies and her regular blanket ("boo-wah") and the magic blanket that protects her against the ghost. She's been perfectly quiet since then, and I've been quietly tapping keys in the den.
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