Technological Lags

As you might have guessed from renewed ranting, we are back online. Moving means all your appliances break down simultaneously and all your possessions get lost at the same time (throw in cranky kids off their usual schedule and surroundings for good measure). One by one, things are coming back into function, although it seems like we're losing or breaking them just as fast.

Anyway, we're back in the twenty-first century when it comes to internet access. Our laundry facilities, however, are hovering circa 1950, as the washing machine is hooked up, but we can't figure out how to get rid of the gas dryer that came with the house so we can hook up our own. (DOB is supposed to call about it, but keeps forgetting because we've also lost his Palm Pilot. Maybe this will help.)

So I've been hanging laundry out on my small rack, on the patio railing, and on a kind neighbor's fence. All those rhapsodies about the smell of sheets fresh off the line are very well, but they didn't mention how many ants and spiders you have to kill in the process. (It might help if one had an actual line and clothespins, and thus it didn't blow in the grass so much.)

The ducklings love the new park, which is much larger and older and more squirrel-infested than the former park. We haven't made much use of the back yard yet, as I suspect poison ivy. Plus all D2 wants to do is climb the stairs, which gives him splinters.

Meanwhile they are growing up whether or not I have time to notice. D2 has learned how to stand on his own, much to his delight. He also is fascinated with raising both hands above his head, perhaps indicating a current career goal of either being a grizzly bear or a Pentacostal preacher. I say "Roar" when he does it and DOB says "Hallelujah!" So far D2's utterances sound closer to the growl.

D1 is, at last, starting to discover the word, "No." She still uses it primarily in an informational context, wandering around muttering to herself: "Is D2 eating pizza? Noooo. Is D1 eating pizza? Essss." She has also started making up random rhyming words ("Pizza-dizza"), something she picked up from Papa. I greet this with mixed emotions, knowing it's an important stage in linguistic understanding and vital for ultimately developing reading skills . . . and also knowing that inevitably, she will quite innocently come up with an obscenity, probably at the top of her lungs in the supermarket.