Mr. Vocab

Eli has put the writing of his novel on the back burner, in favor of comic book reading, model painting, and taunting his younger brother, but his penchant for using just the right word for every situation has not weakened.  I just found out from a friend that he answered the phone this morning while I was gone and assured her that I would be home 'within a span of 30 minutes'.  And the other night at dinner, while we were working our way through a pizza, I cut off the tip of one of the pie shaped pieces.  Later, Jon asked if anyone wanted the piece that mom had 'stunted'.  Eli said, "I'm not eating that truncated thing."  Me either. 

I challenge you to a jig-off

That's what Theo did the other night.  I had never heard of such a thing.  But he clearly had.  Knew all the rules.  One person challenges the other, if they accept, the music is started up and the last person to keep moving their feet (rather wildly if you are Theo) is the victor. So I accepted his challenge.  He went over to the speakers and queued up some Black Eyed Peas and off we went.  I made sure that the first thing I did was jig over to the living room curtains and shut them.  I have a student living next door and I don't want any tales told in school.  I lasted for 3 or 4 songs, but between my own energetic jigging, and my laughter at Theo's wild dancing, I had to throw in the towel first.  He was a good winner.  He let me rest for a while.  Then went to get his sash on (see below), bowed before me in my chair, and asked, "May I have this dance?"  We took a victory lap around the room.  I can't wait to be challenged again some evening soon.

May I have this dance?

Theo has a new habit.  He takes a scarf from the front entryway, ties it around himself like some sort of fancy sash, then hunts me down wherever I might be in the house,  He sidles up, takes a low bow, extending one arm, and asks, "May I have this dance?" in a slightly swarthy accent.  Melts my heart each time.  Sometimes I accept and do a little number with him, other times I just grin and he spins off, dancing by himself.  There is usually not any music on- who knows what is playing in his head.  But I like it, and I hope this song doesn't end anytime soon.

Just a little bit miraculous

It amazes me each and every spring how good it feels when we hit daylight savings and all of the sudden the sun is out until after the dinner dishes are washed and put away.  The neighbor kids have all emerged from their respective caves and the posse runs free once again.  There is no way I can pass by the window upstairs, catch a glimpse of litle old Meredith in the back yard, holding her own against the pack of 8 year old boys wielding wooden weapons, and not smile.  She's out there in a bright blue jacket, crazy striped tights tucked into her snow boots, blond hair flying, and I think, this is what we have been missing all winter- color.  And smells too.  Now that things are starting to thaw a bit the winter's habbit of tossing the rabbit litter box in the garden instead of the compost bin that was buried under 6 feet of snow is proving to be, perhaps, a mistake.  Unless the smell that is completely rendolent of a horse stall is something you favor.  But really, I don't care- it's a smell, proving that we are once again winning the war against ice and dark and cold. 

I've lived in a climate that doesn't change all year, and there was something great about the fact that you could go for a swim in the ocean any old day, and the sun always rose at 6 and always went down by 6:30, and everything was just so dependable, but it also lulled us into complacency.  Visitors from up north would come to our little carribean island home and gush about the sun, the sky, the palms, that blue blue ocean, and we'd say yep, it's hot, isn't it?  Here's some more sunblock and careful why don't you move back here into the shade with us?

I'm a northerner to my core- and not a bitter one either.  I bike from March til November, then trade in my bike happily for my skies, getting out there in all temps as long as there is a bit of snow on the ground.  But when it melts, and the sun comes out stronger, longer, I'm the first one to cheer.  And it is that change, that joy that comes with the warmth of the sun, that keeps me here. 

I mean, if I lived somewhere that didn't experience a freeze/thaw cycle, I wouldn't have felt such wonder and excitement at the site of a swarm of ants, coming up between the cracks in the sidewalk in front of the Y today.  Ants!  It's only 32 today and we still have 3 feet drifts of snow out front, but ants!  Yeehaw!  I bent down to check out their frantic excitement- and to be truthful, they looked to be in a panic to get back underground- like they had mistakenly come out too early- but there they were, causing me to crouch and watch and smile.  Until someone came up behind me and wondered what in the hell I was doing crouching on the sidewalk in front of the Y, but let them wonder- the ants are out! 

So even though the view from my window right now is of dirty icy snow piles that promise to linger a while longer, and the wind still has a sharp edge, I can't help smiling.  It's happened again.  Winter has been vanquished. And it feels just a little bit miraculous.

Dangerous squirrel underground active once again

A couple years ago I went on a bike ride and experienced what I think had to be a united attack by a highly organized squirrel underground military force.  Only they work overhead.  I was pelted with about 10 acorns in a row as I biked under a canopy of oaks.  I know you are thinking that acorns grow on oaks and do fall off.  It's nature.  But these things were pelted.  It was more than gravity.  My family does not believe me.  And they will be woefully underprepared when the squirrels take over. 

I must admit that even I have been getting complacent lately.  Forgetting about the dangerous squirrel operatives lurking all around me.  Until today.  I was out for a ski with Becky D at Lebanon Hills and we were passing through a lovely pine forest when a huge chunk of wet snow landed smack in the middle of my head.  I mean it was so big and heavy I think my spine got compressed a few inches and I'm now about 5'7".  It could not have been a more direct hit.  Becky and I both nearly died laughing, until I came to realize that this was no accident.  It was a warning!  The squirrels are back in action, organizing, plotting, carrying out surprise attacks.  Ok, you might be thinking, I was in a pine forest a few days after a big snow storm and there's a serious thaw happening right now.  But how do explain that we didn't see any other snow chunks fall the rest of our ski?  Anywhere.  Except for the one that konked me on the head. 

You have been warned.

Technology

We have been limping along the information super highway with a real slow irritating computer lately.  It's like a bike that is stuck in low gear and you can never get it going at any kind of decent speed.  We finally broke down and bought a new one, and it is real nice.  But before this entered our house, we were using the computer less and less, just because it was so frustrating.  And in the middle of this, we told Ildar our tale of fever woe (see below) from our days in the Peace Corps.  And I got to thinking about those two years back in the mid-nineties.  Granted, we were in the Carribean, so not so far away as Borneo or something like that, but we lived without TV, a phone that could make international calls (and for one year without a phone of any sort) or a computer.  This was right around the time that email and the internet were being introduced at the household level, so it's not like we were used to it and having to do without, we were just without.  Our news came from the BBC radio programs we could find, and letters from home. Today it seems absolutely crazy that you could be anywhere in the world and still have only letters as a form of communication with home.  Not to mention just communication between Jon and I as we both went about our business on the island.  There were no cell phones or texting or any such thing.  All we had to rely on was the market lady where we both stopped for fruits and veggies before jumping on the bus home.  It was often that I'd stop by and be about to grab a few grapefruit or something and she would say, "No sweetie, no need, your husband just bought a handful of those about an hour ago."  She would then go on to tell me that he did not get any onions, and it had been awhile since either of us had bought any of those, we probably needed some.  Texting shmexting.  Not needed when you have the market lady watching over you. 

Fever stories

This household has gone through quite a bout of sickness over the last month.  I was down and out for over a week, Jon has been battling various viral ickiness, and Ildar has been hit with every nasty thing that floats around a Minnesota winter.  The other night at dinner Ildar was not feeling so hot.  Well, actually he was too hot and that was the problem.  He asked me how long my illness lasted and I refused to tell him, but did say that once I felt a little better I was amazed at how great a little better felt.  He was having none of that.  So we started to tell him tales of past illnesses to try to put the current health picture in better light.  I think the story that tops all the rest is our dengue fever tale from our Peace Corps days in the Eastern Carribean.  Or the Antilles.  I alwas thought that sounded a little more exotic.  Whatever you call it, it was a malaria free zone, but did have a different, less severe, mosquito born illness that was to be dreaded.  Dengue.  There are two kinds.  The first and less serious knocks you out for a month or so, but then is gone and you supposedly suffer no long term health effects, although I have my doubts.  The second is called Hemorragic Dengue Fever or something like that and it can kill you.  By causing your organs to fail one after the other.  From my understanding, both exist down in the carribean, but the first is more common. 
Jon and I both ran into mosquitoes who introduced us to the first variety.  And it was awful.  I went down first, with a serious fever and these body aches that made all of your joints hurt horribly.  Especially your eyes.  Now, you may not have known your eyes were joints, and I don't know if they technically qualify, but they do move and every movement you made with them during the dengue caused you to want to cry.  So no quick looks to the left or right.  I mean even the little movement it takes to read a page of a novel could move me to tears.  So a person in the throes of Dengue can't do much but lay still and stare straight ahead.  Under a mosquito net- because you get paranoid as well and I got real nervous everytime I heard the dreaded buzzing.  Once Jon joined me in fever hell, things got interesting.  We were both kind of halluncinating (how do you kind of hallucinate?  I'm not sure, but to this day I am hoping that those cockroaches I saw in our kitchen during one fever-y night were a hallucination, not the real thing.  I mean, I know that we had a cockroach problem in that house, but I mean, that night there were millions) and generally not doing more than sitting and staring in front of us.  Luckily a friend took pity and would stop by daily to cook us a little something and do some dishes.  Until he was hit by dengue as well.
After a couple weeks, I started to feel better and one day I went back to work.  Only, after being there for a couple hours I broke out in this horrid rash on my hands and feet.  At first I tried to grin and bear it, but soon it was driving me nuts.  I mentioned it to a co-worker and she said, "Ahhhh, stage two of the dengue."  Stage two?  She suggested I head right home and said to take showers whenever the water was running, otherwise to keep buckets of water around and soak my hands and feet in those whenever possible.  So I did.  Shower a lot.  I was showering through about day three of manic itchiness while Jon was still laying listlessly and staring ahead, trying not to move his eyes when I spotted a gigantic spider.  Gigantic.  Right above me on the ceiling of the shower.  I mean, we had seen some spiders during our stay, but this thing was nuts.  Or, I was still halucinating.  But sure enough, after I screamed and Jon ran in (looking straight ahead) he saw it too!  So it was real.  Jon went for a broom and started swiping at it, but to our horror we found out it could jump.  Far.  And towards me in the shower.  It was an awful 2-5 minutes after that as we screamed and batted at the spider, me naked and itching, Jon trying not to move his eyes, and the spider making heruclean jumps around our apartment.  I don't really remember how it ended, but I think we were not victorious.  I think it crawled into some dark corner and caused us more paranoia until we moved out of that place.
It was soon after that when my itching started to diminish and Jon's began.  The dengue was sweeping through the Peace Corps volunteers by this time and I found that no one had any pity for your rash stories until they hit that stage.  Whenever anyone entered stage two, word would spread.  Richard's got the rash....Beth started itching last night....Joyce can't stop scratching... calls would come in from around the island at all hours of the day or night.  Because once they had it, they wanted sympathy and remedies and promises that it would end.  And it did.  But it is not forgotten.

I think our tale roused Ildar out of his stupor for a little while- we even got a few chuckles as he imagined us cowering and swatting at the giant jumping spider.  And the next morning he woke up feeling just a little better, and you know what?  He was amazed at how much just a little better can feel.