2004-02-20 - 10:14 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "A Little Help From My Friends", Beatles

Thursday, February 19th

Lalalalala.... ok.

I'm having a spring fever moment. It's almost 50 degrees outside, and after weeks of 20-ish daytime temps this feels MILD. I actually have a window open on every floor, and I'm loving the fresh air. Wheeeeee! I finally put all my Jack Frost pansies back outside from the garage and hopefully will not have to bring them in again. It remains to be seen whether the ones in the wall trough actually come back like they guarantee they will.

(Later that evening...)

I tell Poindexter on a near-daily basis, "I LOVE LIVING HERE!" He never says it himself, so I worried a bit that he's not as happy as I am. But after we got back from our February Thaw in the 'burbs, he said found himself really happy to be home, and had the feeling like this is where he belongs. He's a city mouse, is all, and the only place you can get a real city (by our definition, not necessarily yours) is in the northeast. It's a shame that we have to put up with crappy winters to live in a place that we really love. I still think we should check out Miami and Jacksonville, but unless P can establish a career for himself where his physical presence is not required in a specific place, we won't be going there for quite a long time.

Tonight (February 20th)

My niece Kelly is nine now. She's a damn smart kid. She was writing a "report" about her weekend and she was up to six pages (on wide-ruled lined paper) when she left. Something would happen (like when I let her and Christie pick through some jewelry I didn't want anymore -- they actually took most of it) and when the event had concluded she'd go write down what happened. It was so cute. I asked her if I could read it, and I was absolutely floored at how well she writes. I know adults who can't write as well as she can. Aside from a few creative spellings, the sentences were grammatically perfect and flowed well.

My SIL, Lynn, told us when we first planned this that Kelly didn't want to come to the Thaw in the first place, I think mainly because it's a long drive. Her mother said, "But Gramma will be there, and Uncle P and Aunt Evelynne." Kelly said, "They're boring. All they do is sit on the couch and sleep."

"Boy, she's got us pegged," Poindexter said.

Then Lynn said on the phone a couple days ago that Kelly had written an earlier report for school about another trip, which was the Christmas 2002 in Florida. In it, Kelly wrote something along the lines of "My aunt and uncle were there. They were boring. All they did was sleep."

All right. I don't pretend to be the most interesting person in the world -- particularly not to a kid -- but my memory of Christmas 2002 would be along the lines of "We played Fantan, Slaps, Uno, and Kid Monopoly a lot. We went swimming in the pool. The girls came out to the boat and woke us up each morning they were allowed to do so." And when we visited last August, we took them to Boomers and I took Christie out to breakfast (Kelly declined my invitation). So while I cannot deny that we do sleep a lot, none of the other adults are that exciting either, so I'm not sure where this resentment is coming from. :)

My guess is that Lynn kinda paints us to the girls as overgrown kids, so they are expecting us to be a lot more fun than we actually are. We do play games with them more than any of the other adults, but we do sleep 'til 10am too, and I guess that is just WAY TOO LONG for them to have to wait for their first game of Uno.

I think she'll like us a LOT better in about 5 years.

When we were getting on the plane, there was a woman in front of us traveling alone with her kid, who looked to be about a year old. The PILOT came out of the ... pilot place (whatever it's called... OH! the cockpit!), and picked up the baby so the mother could handle all her stuff. He carried the kid all the way back, talking to him and other passengers, and was carrying him on one arm almost like a football at one point. I got the impression he'd been around kids a lot, maybe his own. I've never seen a pilot be so friendly. And when I got off the plane, he was leaning around his seat smiling and waving at everybody. He was great.

Gratuitous photo of the day:

Definitely one of the best photos of me ever. And: No. I don't drink.

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