I always feel like Ma Ingalls when I write something like “today we went to town” like it was a real occasion. For us, it is, since it involves a 60 hour one way trip to get there and then, since “town” is one of those horizontal valley cities, it takes a lot of driving around to get to our various stops. We try to consolidate the various errands into one day and do enough shopping to last for a couple of weeks, not to mention fill up our hungry Suburban. But it’s definitely an event, not to say a bit of an ordeal.
Today on the itinerary: Labs for Aidan, then a therapy clinic for Aidan, then dropping a bundle of discards at Salvation Army, then to Sports Authority to get Aidan a little baseball mitt, then pick up lunch at In-n-Out (a treat since we don’t usually do ordered-out food, but also a necessity since we had left the house at just after eight). Then we took Liam to AMTRAK. By now he’s back at college(sigh). The little ones played near the tracks while we waited; the day was grey and just a bit rainy. Then to WinCo to stock up, then home and unloading the groceries with the help of the kids. Then a quick dinner. By then, about 6 pm. Whew! Then it was snowing, and the little ones wanted to go out in it, so they zipped in and out playing some sort of imaginary game. The little ones have become very good travellers because they have no choice.
I was looking back at old journal entries in this blog. I notice that at the beginning of the summer both Sean and Kieron said they couldn’t write. It’s nice to reflect on progress, because now Kieron considers himself a writer. He has written several story fragments and is presently downloading some sort of interface to make comic strips on the computer. I would say that he has indeed become a writer, though he still can use a little polishing of spelling and punctuation. But at the beginning of the summer he didn’t think he could even spell, and now he is at least at grade level and has confidence and some skills to rely on.
We miss Liam. Since we are doing everything to a Pirates soundtrack recently, I could almost say that parts of my heart are getting put in little receptacles and distributed far and wide…. right now only one distant receptacle but someday there will be seven and maybe more — what about grandchildren ? When he leaves, it feels like the bit of my heart got a bit abraded in a jar of sand. Ok, maybe that is taking the Davey Jones metaphor too far. Kevin keeps talking about all these plans that will result in the kids being able to settle down near us. He would probably not want to conceptualize his wife as having a tentacled beard, so I will bring this paragraph to a close.
Clare can play the whole organ section of the Pirates soundtrack now…. even the prelude part and the music box bit, and even with chords. She is better than I was musically at her age, even though she got a couple of years’ later start than I did.
Aidan has been calling me a “beetle” recently, as in “the beetle is opening the back of the car.” He says it so affectionately that I can’t take it as an insult. No one has any idea where he got the idea. When I asked him about the rest of the family, he said that Clare was a spider, Liam a grasshopper, and he himself was a ladybug. This proves to me that he can classify, even if he can’t do it formally when the speech therapist gives him the cards.
He continues to entertain us with his plays on words. Clare will sit with him and throw names and song lyrics at him hoping to elicit one of his opposite jokes. Fred Astaire is “Fred Upstairs.” Jimmy Stewart is Jimmy Dr Jami — this seems weird but really makes sense since his primary care doctor is called Dr Stewart and his GI specialist is Dr Jami. Bob Hope is Larry Hope (think Veggietales). Jack Benny is Jack Quarters (because he thinks Benny sounds like Penny). I can’t remember the rest. He calls Arnold Schwarzenegger “Arnold Snortilator” but that is not a play on words, it’s because he had no idea how to attack that pronunciation and then he kept doing it because it amused us. We are easily amused!
