(Too Much) Stuff and Nonsense.

I love the copy/paste function on computers, especially when one has to email 20-odd people on Freecycle to tell them that the item they covet has been promised to another, and most especially when a coveter-come-too-late has phrased their polite "request" in this spare fashion:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

will take.
(gives phone number.)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

What I don't love is the lucky winner promising to pick up a bulky metal cabinet at 11 o'clock in the morning but not appearing even at now nearly two. Most especially when a John-husband and an Abigail-wife thumped and crashed their way down the stairs with it at one o'clock in the morning so that it would be waiting for that lucky duck to pick up. Sigh. Freecycle's a great idea, but it's not nearly perfect yet.

Look below for a picture of red + green plastic bins saving the environment. They've promised me years and years of festive companionship, and storage, though still stuffed to the seams with what else but stuff, doesn't threaten to burst through the roof.

I've lost my wallet. Again. If it doesn't give up its wandering and come home by the week's end, I'll have to get new insurance cards and a new driver's license. Again. (Give me a break, though, it's been two years since this last happened.) Of course, it wouldn't seem nearly so flighty if I hadn't lost the car/apt. keys three weeks ago. (In my defense, I think Annika squirreled them away somewhere in the apartment, and there are only so many squirrel nests into which I can squeeze in my present state of body.)

Speaking of which, look below for a tasteful rendering of my present state of body. (Thanks to my parents for sharing their thank you card with shotsnaps-at-large...no pun intended.)

Apart from a dowager's hump that rivals the most dowagerly of dowager's humps and aching hips for accompaniment, I am doing very well. Baby Berry stretches, squirms, and beats out nightly rhythms. How strange it is that one can become so accustomed to living with another living within. Stranger yet to me is that in four weeks, I may be cradling that beloved being in my arms instead of snugly inside.

In the last month of Annika's belly-dwelling, I was lumbering about for Dave's film. No incriminating evidence has been captured this time around!
I am sylphlike....sylphlike.....sylphlike. (See #3.)

OH! Here's a nuisance. I've loved the name Isolde ever since I first read Tristan and Isolde in Sr. Seminar English class and have kept it filed away for a possible name for our next girl. Well, lookee here....grrrrrr. They stole it right out from under me. No matter that this legend has resonated through centuries; if we named a girl Isolde now, people would say, "Oh yeah....uh, from the movie, right?"

We enjoyed the company of Tim and Dani on Saturday. We graduated with Dani, and she and Tim are cool, cool people. Plus, they played "Bang!" with us four times in a row. Now that's cool. (It may not be a very layered game, but, boy, is it fun to play as midnight approaches.) Why must tortilla chips pair so perfectly with salsa? That night, we had the first taste of the garden salsa I canned at the end of the summer, and it's yummy. If only carrot sticks paired so well...

Millie anecdote:
Millie and Annie were quietly in the bedroom, presumably asleep, when I heard Millie yell something incomprehensible three times in a row. I took no action while trying to decipher her urgent SOS. She yelled it a few more times before I realized that she was saying, "Mommy Ostrich! Baby Ostrich got out of bed! Mommy Ostrich!" Then Annika poked her head out the door, looking remarkably like a baby ostrich. (Now when did Millie discover that I was an ostrich?)

And, to end this ramble of a post, here's a relevant selection from one of Isaac Asimov's short stories:
_______________________________________________
He said, "How's Pete?"

"Fine, fine. The kid's in the fourth grade now. You know I don't get to see him much. Well, sir, when I came back last, he looked at me and said..."

It went on for a while and wasn't too bad as bright sayings of bright children as told by dull parents go.
_________________________________________________

Spot on, Mister Asimov.
_________________