Do they really do that?

Yesterday I saw an advertisement for puppies! cute puppies! with a one-year good-health guarantee!

Can you seriously return a puppy? What's next? Returning a baby because it's ugly?

A Fourth of July Recap

What's the Fourth of July without patriotic jello shots?
Actually, my friends' and my celebration was actually more about the meat: we had burgers, fancy-pants chicken (Ben marinated it in fancy-pants homemade marinade) AND ribs. With doctored-up store-bought barbecue sauce. It was delicious.
Mostly, though, we just hung out, slept a lot, and watched Die Hard With A Vengeance. And then slept some more. And then barbecued the meat.
All in all, a lovely day. And a perfect prelude to a day-long trip to the USS Constitution with 24 5- to 8-year-olds. Which I may write about in a later post, if I ever recover enough to look back on it with perspective.

p.s. Which is worse, having "I'm Not Perfect" by Laurie Berkner stuck in my head, or having "The Princess Pat" in there? Right now, I'm thinking the old camp favorite is far far worse.

A Delicious Day

Today was a gorgeous day. About 70 degrees, it wasn't too hot or too cold. It was the perfect day to go to my favorite cafe and then walk along the Charles River into town and then sit there for hours, watching sailboats and runners and fancy parents pushing $900 strollers go by and talking about nothing and everything.
So that's what we did.

On a Surprising Lack of Creativity

Today's gift on facebook? A silver ring.
Does this feel like a peculiar facebook gift to give someone? Like maybe the person who's designing it just ran out of ideas?
'Cause I kind of think that if anyone gave me a silver ring on facebook, I would think that they were saying "I wanted to go to the trouble of typing in my credit card information for a $1 virtual purchase, but I don't think you're worth the diamond ring. Or the pearl. Or even the little troll thing."

It's Hot Here

It's nasty here. Hot, and as it often is in Boston, humid enough to make you think you're drowning in humidity.
I want to go to bed, but I can't 'cause I'm doing laundry.
So instead, I'm sitting next to my fan, listening to Laurie Berkner tell me that I'm not perfect, but I hope you like me that way.
It's weird, but I'm kind of enjoying it.

p.s. While I do have an appreciation for Laurie Berkner, I'm listening to her because I'm uploading Victor Vito onto iTunes, not because she is my top-choice for music.

Children, or, Here is Where My Friends Stop Reading My Blog

Have you ever watched a child try to play catch with a doll?
My Favorite Child In The Whole World (who will for hereafter be called The Girl, because her old pseudonym's
just too long) got a doll yesterday. The doll's name is Sophie. We love Sophie very very much, and that is fantastic. She is Sophie's Mommy, and I am Sophie's nanny (while also being her nanny. It's an interesting arrangement). We feed Sophie and put her down for naps and take her with us when we go on adventures. This is especially exciting because we are engaging in symbolic play with Sophie, and that's something kids on the Autism Spectrum often have trouble with.
Today, while we were looking for fish in the Public Garden (a quest that was utterly pointless, but so much fun it didn't matter), The Girl fell into the duckling pond. With Sophie. As soon as I pulled her out, she screamed "I don't want to go in the washing machine!"
She doesn't have to, but Sophie might. This could be a problem.

A previous life

I am a nerd. This is a well-established fact. What changes, however, is the focus of my nerdy love.
In high school I took Latin instead of a "practical," "non-dead" language . I was horrible at it, but our Latin class was small (by senior year, there were only four people in it), and we bonded over the beauty of Ovid and Virgil. I relished my Latin nerdiness. It was one of those things that really defined who I was, in some weird way.
I haven't taken a Latin class in four years now, but, cleaning out my bookshelves at home yesterday, I found some very special books.



Yes, those are two DIFFERENT Winnie the Pooh books in Latin, Cattus Petasatus (by Doctore Seuss, no less!) and the Latin Bible.

These days, there is a whole section of my bookshelf devoted to books on child development and autism.

My, oh my, how things have changed.