Fine Young Fauves

I'm at a public library and using a — sniff — public computer. I feel like Princess Anastasia scrubbing the hearth. Or like our dog Lena, who gets that miserable look on her face when eating her dinner, a look which seems to say, "And so it's come to this… reduced to eating dog food from a dish on the floor."

I need a new computer, since mine died its sudden death. Or at least a new hard drive, but putting a new drive in the decripit thing looks like throwing good money after bad. But needing a new computer and getting one are two very different things. If this is 1929, it's going to be a long time until 1940, and it's not a good idea to run around spending big money that we don't have. It pains me to say it. I feel that my right arm has been severed. But… there it is.

We just painted the peeling, lead-hazard garage at a computer-like cost. We're getting the new kitchen shortly… and there's the well. Well, it's not a done deal yet. Although pretty shiny water runs freely from it, we're still total coliform positive (i.e., bacteria laden) apparently because of the pipes. My next step, today, is to call the well drilling guy and get a new "check valve" put in. This will prevent the yuck factor from going backwards from the house to the well. Then we will go through the icky bleaching process again. THEN we will test again, at a point before the well water touches the pipes of slime and germs. If negative — please God– then we will at least get the well approved and get the Summit County Water inspector, nice as he is, to move along. Then we can sit here and try to sterilize this mess on our own time.

"I re-plumbed my whole house for only about a thousand dollars!" he said cheerfully, implying that that's where we're headed. Don't. Go. There.

I spent much of the day Monday trying (without success) to find the lost power cord to our ancient iMac from the dawn of time (i.e., 2001?) While looking through boxes in the basement I was further traumatized by a loud defiant squeak from creature or creatures unknown. I called my mother and she diagnosed it as a chipmunk, and I went out and got a sparkling new trap– this is a small squirrel and chipmunk version. It caught nothing, though. And the next morning it squeaked again, much louder, and seemingly right next to me in the kitchen. This jangles my nerves so! What the fuck is it??

Elias was home with a fever and he helpfully pointed to the source of the noise, "Chirp chirp UP HIGH!" he said. But I couldn't see anything up high, down low or otherwise. As the day wore on, it seemed that there were two things going on– the basement squeak (a bird? the pipes somehow? a chipmunk?) and the upstairs squeak, which seemed ultimately to be issuing from the world's tiniest frog, which we caught just the other day. Or coming from its cage at least. I could never see the bitty thing, much less in the act of making all the racket. All I can say is that when I finally moved it outside, the upstairs squeak stopped at least, and that was a blessing.

My friend Colin, who knows about computers and swims in the sea of geeks, has found me someone in Ohio who may be able to help me retrieve my data, at a cost within the realm of human possibility. This is pending. I'm going to bring him the whole mess later on today, so we'll see.

the public computer is quite nice, despite the other-people cooties, but it has a time limit. So, bye!

"Everyone loses data ONCE in their life," the Mac Genius said yesterday. "I myself lost $50,000 worth of images, so I know what you're going through." Well, maybe he does. I know I am not alone. A quick glance online will confirm that this sort of thing happens all the time. Still, it's horrible.

On Friday, I was writing a simple e-mail (Pippa: I'll get back to you soon.) when my laptop froze up. It just… ceased. The screen stayed stuck. My cursor clicked nothing. I turned it off and it wouldn't boot back up. Over the course of the day, while being repeatedly interrupted, I went through the apple.com troubleshooting list of steps. I took the battery out; I pressed various combinations of buttons to reset this and that. But all I got, when I got anything more than a blank screen, was this ominous black file with a big blinking question mark. I tried reloading the software… nothing. So then Ben brought it into the genius bar to see what was up (while I took Isaac to his acting class… he's going to be the Tin Man in the Wizard of OZ!). 

Later on Ben called with the bad news… it's DEAD. It's gone. The genius took the phone for a moment and suggested that I call the data recovery people, those "surgeons" who work in a "clean room" and who can get it back. I did call… they can get it back for $2,000.

All the while Isaac was with me, telling me knock-knock jokes as we drove home: 

Knock-knock

Who's there?

Glock.

Glock who?

Glock fart burp head.

This comedy did little to soften my sadness. I spent the whole afternoon actually crying… crying my eyes out. What it amounts to is two years or more of lost work. Work that means nothing to anyone else in the world and is worth nothing in financial terms, but to me…

It's journal writing really, writing through my pregnancy with Elias, his first days on earth. I am feeling like a friend has died. I am so upset with myself that although I had a little wonderful 4gig flash drive rattling around in my purse I never took the one-second step of moving the documents over there. I will now rend my clothing and sit in ashes.  How did I not see this coming??

Hard drives are mechanical, the man said. They break. But don't be too hard on yourself. Even IT guys do it. We even have repeat customers.

On the up side, we did find a bunch of photos I thought I had lost on another computer. (Project of the day, back them all up!! Send them to snapfish!!) Some of my writing may be still there in a dusty computer in the garage that has no power cord. (Project 2 of the day, seek and find a power cord to an original iMac.)

Trying to keep it in perspective. People lose things. People lose things like other people. People lose everything they own in fires (like my mom and max did 8 years ago), or hurricanes, or other disasters … it happens.

So, I guess you grieve and then you move on.  

It's that time of year again: mice madness. So far the kitchen floor trapping total is 7. These all are smallish, half-grown white-footed mice of exactly the same size. Like, a litter. Like, mom and dad mouse said, "Kids, why don't you head on up to the kitchen and get yourselves a snack?" 

As we were walking out to release the little bastards down by the creek, Isaac said, "Mom– there's no reason to be scared of mice. They're just little fur-covered balls of fur." To which I replied, "They are little fur-covered balls of ick!" And this amused him no end, so that's what we've been calling the mice lately. Little fur-covered balls of ick.

The new kitchen is being built off-site as we speak.  Our builder is a genius of his craft and all is looking on track. We hope that in three weeks or so the off-site piece will be complete and he will come and rip out our existing mess and put in the new. I am now spending my erstwhile free time studying cup pulls and single basin sinks.

I mentioned the whole mouse problem to the builder, and showed him as exhibit A this lovely little door the mice had gnawed in some molding he put around the new dishwasher a while back. It's like a door on Tom and Jerry, only real and slightly more shallow. He was appalled. He studied the situation and said, "They chewed through three-quarter board! Just regular mice???" I explained that they are the slightly more vigorous white footed mouse, but yes, mice. I asked whether he could put metal flashing along the baseboards or something like that, to discourage them. He said that we must patch up all the holes in the basement where they are getting in, stop the flow, and poison the rest.

It could be that he is right. Although the task of patching all nickel-sized and larger holes in our basement is beyond daunting. Although it's clear that the basement is much younger than the living room (177 years old), it's still not what you would call young. I was just down there looking at the situation and I think short of skim-coating the entire place with cement, it will be impossible to go the route of sealing them out. Still, it wouldn't hurt to discourage them by shutting down the obvious super highways and byways, and I'll look into that. 

The next question is poison, yea or nay? On the plus side, it would kill them. On the negative, they might crawl in the walls and die and stench things up; the poison might sicken or kill our cat, who eats at least some mice and who lives in the basement most of the time; and lastly there's always the risk that a certain little toddler would get his hands on it somehow. I'm not all the comfortable with poison. Lethal trapping? But the blood and the screams and the canibalism we got all too familiar with at our Cleveland house… pure horror show… So what does that leave? Live trapping, non-toxic, which we do now, and perhaps some attempt at preventing entree into the house in the first place. The only downsides there are the blatantly minimal effectiveness, the infinite supply of mice, and the hassle of then dealing with the mice you catch. 

On a related topic, I spent all of Sunday and Monday flat-out convinced that there was a varmint in the heating ducts someplace. We heard unexplained thumping inside the duct, which jangled our nerves during an otherwise lovely moment of sitting by the fire and reading the paper. Indeed, on Sunday morning we heard a strange stirring under the floor of the sunporch, which implied a large furry mammal trying to wedge himself in a small dank place. Then it progressed to the duct thumping. On particularly chilling theory of mine was that our friend the huge snake from the terrace had decided to look for a cozy place to hybernate and had found his way under the house in the crawl space and into or on top of a duct someplace. 

At one point I suggested to Isaac that we go downstairs and investigate. He was initially thrilled by the adventure of it, then dismayed that the light at that end of the room was burned out. We heard the thump sound and soon were both so terrified that we ran upstairs like frightened schoolchildren… Isaac has the advantage here, as he actually is a school child. I don't know my excuse.  Anyway, my fear of doing laundry and having a large snake leap out at me, or going down to feed the cat and encountering unfamiliar beady eyes glowering at me from the shadows, or finding that something had indeed wedged himself into the duct and then died, only to fill our house with putrescence, caused me to make inquiries. 

The animal catching people: we can't open ducts. 

The duct cleaning people: we don't catch animals. 

Right… so this would mean that you BOTH need to be there at the same time… one dealing with the ducts, and one dealing with the varmint. This logistically challenging and expensive sounding concept stopped my progress completely on Monday. 

Luckily, yesterday, it was all cleared up. Perhaps it is our good fortune that our grungy plumbing still harbors bacteria. Yes, sadly we still total coliform positive around here. Will it never end??? The new well, and the $8K, and the 1.4 gallons of Chlorox bleach did not solve it yet… So the Summit County water inspector, whom I've gotten to know much better than I care to lately, was again in our basement, testing the water. So while we were there, I mentioned the whole varmint concern, and just then the ducts went THUMP very loudly right before our eyes. I would've run away like a school girl again, were it not for the obvious explanation: the new well piping is actually sitting on the heating duct, and when the pressure tank turns on, which it does at will, it bonks the duct. 

Hurray! 

I will now change the name of this blog to This Old House (Special Varmint Edition).

We are getting ever nearer to having a clean safe water supply. What a hassle. It's taken:

• two bacteria tests
• three visits from the county water quality inspector
• one spirited conversation between husband and county inspector
• three meetings with three different drillers to hear their competing, mutually exclusive plans
• some small marital discord over what to do
• six weeks of hassles refinancing the mortgage on the Cleveland house, in part to raise the funds
• two days of sitting here to help the installers and answer questions, while enduring bone-rattling machinery
• a mini excavator tearing up part of the yard, which now needs to be landscaped anew
• guys pouring bags and bags of concrete-like stuff into the old well. "It's older than Moses!" observed one of the workers.
• $7,809.50
• a huge bottle of bleach to sterilize the pipes… involving running around turning on and off taps, sniffing for bleach and in the process inhaling a fair amount of the stuff… and now we're without water for 24 hours while it sits in the pipes working, we hope, its magic.

All that remains is… one more bacteria test and complete installation inspection by the county dude, which will happen later this week. IF we pass, then… hello faucet! Clean and potable water will be ours. And… if we don't pass, MORE hoops and hassles. Dread. Let's all pray together…

A note to all city slickers: you take for granted the whole faucet, running water thing. You carp on about arsenic and lead and chlorine, but honestly… isn't just turning the water on a lot easier than all this? Get a filter and you're good to go!

Well, if and when this all works out, we will have true "Jurassic water" — the accurate term actually used by Mr. County. And it comes out of the earth sparkling clean and numbingly cold. The new water pressure is already wonderful– it makes every shower feel like a shower massage. Soon, we will be on the road to glory. 

This brings to mind what a summer it has been, with major projects stacking neatly against each other, leaving no daylight. Since I'm into bullets today, let's review: 

• deciding to rent the Cleveland house, seeing as it simply wouldn't sell, that was in May
• putting in a new kitchen seeing as the old one was falling into ruin– many trips to Cleveland and meetings and hassles
• having the interior repainted– see above
• meeting with the 4 20-something renters, nice young people!
• haggling over the lease ad nauseum, annoying little bastards!
• dealing with the insurance and utilities
• putting in new carpet– see above
• getting new dishwasher, sitting in the car in a violent thunder storm waiting for it to be delivered; watching a tree go down only a block away
• Refinancing the mortgage so that now our payments are slightly less than the rental income– i.e., the house is now break even instead of sucking up tons of money
• dealing with the whole well situation, see above
• and now… rumor has it: good news! Our new kitchen in the new house might happen soon. This is great… long over due… much needed… much wanted… AND it will be, you guessed it, a huge project and hugely disruptive.

I'm looking forward to the part where we just live. We just get up, go to school and work, come home, play outside, have dinner, and just… you know.. go along calmly without ten contractors lined up outside the door.

In amphibian/reptile news, we get the feeling we have a snake. A LARGE snake, living on the terrace and perhaps eating … toads! Ben sighted it one night, and based on his description, my mother thinks it's a hog-nosed snake. (There are no venomous snakes in Ohio, so fear not.) In any case, I was walking back and forth putting the kids in the car and suddenly I was accosted by a very loud and hostile HISSSS! coming from the bushes. Other times, I've walked by and heard more of a thump sound, as if someone is sleeping right in or near the downspout, and has been startled.

All was quiet there for a week or so, and I thought… hoped.. the snake had moved on. But Ben heard him do the downspout thump thing yesterday morning. 

A traumatic event a few days ago: Isaac very foolishly decided to let his prized baby bullfrog out of its critter keeper for a short fun hop. The frog was hopping around on the terrace bricks, a brilliant hopper, really powerful and getting lots of air. So then, sure enough, it hopped right into the bushes. And not just ANY bushes– the very bushes where the snake has apparently been hanging out! So Isaac realized what had happened: his frog was lost into the utterly dense foliage, and also had basically jumped right into the jaws of death. 

So he started SCREAMING. I mean, full-on air-raid siren, and sobbing with bone-wracking sobs, and yelling desperately, "What am I going to do!? What am I going to do!?"  Being a devoted mother that I am, I rushed inside and got equipment: a broom and a flashlight. 

"What's your plan?!?" screamed the forlorn Isaac. 

May I add here that I'm afraid of snakes? 

But nonetheless, I began batting the bushes with the broom and peeking under shrubbery with the flashlight. I saw nothing… no snake, no frog, just leaves. I worked around the bush as best I could but still saw nothing, heard nothing. The frog had disappeared, but the snake was seemingly not at home.

Plan B: I went inside and got a flat pan full of water. I explained to Isaac that the bullfrog would want and need water, and maybe it would hop into the little pan pond and then we could catch it. As I was setting this down under the bush, the frog hopped right out into view! I froze. I just FROZE for a second– "Isaac, catch him!" I told Isaac. But he too froze. Bullfrogs are a little, well, slimy. Cold, and icky to the touch. "You catch him!" yelled Isaac. "No, you catch him!" yelled I. "MOM!!!" he screamed. I finally made a go of it, but came up with a handful of leaves, and the frog has not been seen since. 

The fact that the snake-thump has returned does not bode well. The good news, though, is that my mother in Iowa has a whole pond just full of bullfrogs. "I saw one the other night that was a two-hander!" she exclaimed. She and my step-dad Max are coming out in a few weeks, and will bring one, if needed, at that time. 

Our new well is underway. On Monday, a big drilling truck arrived. It looked like this:

And all day long it went along banged and clanged while smacking this big metal thing into the ground. On Tuesday– water! Lots of clear, fresh water. 15 gallons a minute! Only about 60 feet down, which was right where we expected it. We didn't even need a witch. Indeed, the water quality man from the county literally warned me not to use one! I was shocked to learn that they still exist and are in business, but apparently so.

Now we are waiting for the trenching. We were supposed to have a backhoe here this morning to dig from the well to the house but as so typically happens, I'm here and he's not. In any case, at SOME point a trench will happen, a hole will be drilled into our basement wall, pipes will be hooked up and water will begin to flow. Then we enter the sterilizing phase, in which our pipes (bacteria festering as they are) will be scalded with bleach. Then the testing, and the softener installation and the other doo-dads depending on what the water needs to attain some sort of normalcy. All this supposedly will only take a few days. Based on experience thus far, lets say a full week. In any case, soon! 

This will put an end to the tedious problem of carrying a glass of water upstairs for teeth brushing, only to find that someone else has used it up, drank it, or just poured it out for fun. 

I'm incredibly sad about the recent suicide of David Foster Wallace — sad, but not totally surprised. There was a palpable madness about his genius. If you've ever tried to read Infinite Jest, and I have, you'll know what I'm talking about. Actually his fiction overwhelmed me. I really couldn't cope with it. I got maybe a third into Infinite Jest, agog at it and watching it go by, but I couldn't hang in there. Maybe I just didn't have the time and attention that it warranted. Broom of the System had the same problem. Too much graduate school and fancy dancing. 

However, his nonfiction is so wonderful, and so much to be admired. It's INSANE. And yet, completely charming and compelling. My favorites? Well, you must read the title essay in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." You don't need to read the whole book, unless you're really interested in exercising your brain HARD. But the title essay, which is a description of a week on a cruise ship, will bring about seizures of laughter and revulsion at our dumb world. (I remember sitting on the couch rereading it through two if not three miscarriages and giggling irrepressibly.) "Consider the Lobster" is equally great– the title essay originally appeared I think in Gourmet Magazine or something like that. The thing is that he's so brilliant and [I should say he WAS] and so adept at spinning webs of words that when he turns his attention to the most mundane aspects of life– a faux-pirate walking through a parade saying "Ar"; an airport in Maine that was clearly recently a house, with the baggage claim in the pantry– it's a compelling contrast. Also, since reading it I have not eaten ANY lobster. I think I will swear off it forever. Luckily this doesn't come up too often. 

Someone is drilling into the foundation of my house as we speak. There's been a glitch or two in the well process today, but I remain optimistic. 

I will have to search the shelves around here and pull out some of my favorite DFW passages. On his game, he had no equal. 

Now and then people call Isaac "Ike" for short. He took to it last year, and for a few weeks had all his little school chums saying, "See ya Ike! Good bye Ike!" Then it wore off, like the wearing of a coat and tie.

The other day I mentioned to him that there's a hurricane called Ike. This really pleased him. "Hey– that's my name!" he said. "Is it named after me?" I explained that no, it's not named after him, it's just a coincidence. [Adding silently that since his birth he has been quite like a hurricane in many ways.]

Then he asked a question I wasn't expecting: "Am I controlling it?" To which I wanted to reply, "I don't know– ARE YOU???" But I could see that he was genuinely concerned… and seeing as Ike was looking like it was going to cause a lot of destruction I didn't want him to feel responsible… so I reassured him that no, it's just a force of nature and no one is controlling it. 

Living in Ohio, I expected Ike to remain in the abstract. We're about 1400 hundred miles from Galveston. And yet, last night Ike slammed us. It was very hot all day, then late in the afternoon the wind really started picking up. We have a new baby bullfrog– at least that's what we think it is– and so we were down by the play structure catching crickets. I noticed at first that the clouds were moving incredibly fast, and a strange direction– from the south. The trees were really whipping around, and after a while it seemed best to go inside before we got hit by flying debris. 

Ben maintained his project of grilling a flank steak undaunted, pausing only to secure loose items and close up the garage. It was sort of fun to watch– we have a lot of tall trees and they were bending and contorting in ways I've never seen before. It seemed very likely that we'd lose some of them– the ground is sodden, too. When I came inside to check the weather, I learned that we had a high wind warning– gusts up to 65 mph. That little fan symbol that marks hurricanes on the weather map was right on us. 

Around 10:00 last night, we got a call from school– cancelled today due to lack of power. Hm… maybe Isaac IS controlling it! I mean, how likely is it that it would take a path directly through Northeast Ohio? I guess over 300,000 people in the area are in the dark. But we have lights and are fine. Of course, just because there's no school doesn't mean we get to sleep in. Elias got up well in time for dawn, per usual! 

Today is the day the drilling is supposed to start on the well. The big rig has been sitting here since Friday. Since I'm desperate for clean potable water I look forward to a day of banging and roaring and clanging machinery (if they come– I hope they haven't been messed up by the storm, too). But on the upside, the boys will not miss a minute of it! 

Today was Elias's first full session at toddler school– 8:45 a.m. to 11:45. Indeed I went back to get him at 11:00 just by force of habit, but he didn't see me and I was able to sneak away and enjoy some more of the bounty: I filled the tank and RAN IN and RAN OUT of a grocery store just to get a few items. Took me about ten minutes!! Those of you who have not been trying to shop while also trying to chase a small person up and down the aisles, or restrain a small person from standing up in the cart and leaping to his death, or plying such a small person with raisins, cookies, WHATEVER such that three items can actually be found and purchased will not perceive the MAGNITUDE of these simple freedoms.

On top of that I spent over and hour and a half in the library today, idly reading about Sarah Palin. AND — that's not all– NOW HE'S ASLEEP. 

I'm eating lunch and blogging interruption-free!!! I'm almost feeling guilty to delight in it so much. It's as if I don't love my child, to rejoice so fully at being shut of him. But no, the intense swoon I felt when I saw him walk– nay, STRIDE– in with his cronies from playing outside precludes any lack of love. (his little hooded sweater zipped up tight, his shortness and stoutness and the fresh pink of his cheeks! And I'm so proud of him!) It's just… it's been such a long, long haul to get to this point, long and sans much in the way of respite care. 

If there were a candidate, any candidate, who would stump on the topic of respite care for affluent stay-at-home moms with two mortgages, that person would surely get my vote! 

SPeaking of candidates, the Sarah Palin situation has me all upset.  I was for her (for a few hours) before I was against her, as they say. What did I like about her? Well, at first it was just that I like Alaska. It's like Minnesota (my home state), only more so. I liked the moose dressing and the hunting and fishing aspect of her, which smacks of that frontier, pioneering spirit dear to my heart. I liked it that she's not a sissy. I liked it that she brought all her children to work, and that her hubby took time off from his job to help out when she was governor, and still is home dad for all those kids. 

Then came water-break-gate. As a mother of three high risk pregnancies, two surviving, I was appalled that she would let her machismo and her job take precedence over the health of her baby. Flying while leaking amniotic fluid??? No way. Then, of course, the speech. I HATED that speech. How snide she was, how sneering! She was playing to the worst, most low and base aspects of the crowd. Making fun of community organizing! Encourages chants of drill baby drill! 

I don't even mind the petty scandals about hiring and firing people based on grudges, or the business with the stupid bridge she campaigned to get and now claims she said no thanks to. What REALLY is scaring me is the religious fundamentalism. Even the raped twelve-year-old must bear her rapist's child. Creationism should be taught in public schools. Does she really believe, as Maureen Dowd puts it today in the NYT, that Adam and Eve and Satan were running around with the dinosaurs five thousand years ago? If so, should she really be in the second-highest office in the land? Ben tried to make the case to me today that the vice president doesn't really do anything anyway! But after eight years of evil Dick Cheney destroying the world, this is hard to accept. Also, McCain could always die, and then we'd really be in trouble. 

No. I supported Obama in the first place, and now I'm scared… really scared… I'm scared that the bigots out there will say, "At least she's white" and the homophobes out there will say "she's even against domestic partnership" and the crazy fundamentalist nutcases out there will say, "Finally! A leader we can really get behind!" And most of all I'm scared that there are enough of these dark elements in our society that McCain/Palin can actually WIN. 

I was encouraged however to read this today on Wonkette. And in closing, this cracks me up. Thank you and GOD BLESS AMERICA.

Here is a recent photo of our dear Mr. Lumpy, our sometimes toad.

 mrlumpy2.jpg

However, shortly after this was taken, we found Froggy again (lives in the play structure) and Isaac insisted that Mr. Lumpy be freed and Froggy be recaptured.  I have to agree that Froggy has a certain charm that Mr. Lumpy lacks. Froggy can stick on things (including, one exciting moment, Isaac's cheek) and also can change color.

froggy1.jpg

froggy2.jpg

He also is something of a lonely eccentric. One time I found him sitting somehow cross-legged, upright, facing the sunrise in a manner very like a meditating person. I feel terrible about keeping Froggy. Unlike Mr. Lumpy, who seemed to feel that as long as the crickets kept flowing he was very pleased to gorge himself in captivity, Froggy spends a lot more time focused on escaping than on eating. Indeed, we were very impressed one time when Froggy did pull a daring escape and made his way – -a good 50 yards at least– back to his home. Sadly this was the first place we looked! In any case, at the moment he is ours, along with one plump little toady. And now I fear for Mr. Lumpy's life… Ben spotted a HUGE snake on the terrace the other night and my dread is that our dear obese warty friend has been eaten for snake dinner. One can only speculate…

What an amazing moment. I'm sitting at a Panera (Ben right next to me, but having a meeting). We just dropped off both boys. Elias, as I had hoped, didn't care a hoot about us as soon as we walked into the room with him this morning. He showed us his cubby (marked with a lovely photo of him, seeing as he can't read his name). He settled himself at a tiny table, looking at a book. Bye bye! Kisses! And then the teacher said I was free to go. 

So now I'm sort of on call– I'm not too far away, with my phone one inch from my hand, in case there's trouble. My fear is that he'll hurt himself in some way and then start crying, and then start in with the coughing and crying and getting more and more upset, and I'll need to rush back. (Basically he's well from his croup, but has occasional relapses brought on by crying.) But– I have to say that all last week I was "on call" in the hall, and he never needed anything from me whatsoever. I have a friend, though, who in week three of the transition got cocky and went to get her hair colored, and then got called, and had to rush back half-dyed and all wet. So one mustn't over-reach.

A couple weeks ago, I prepared a glossary of Elias's sign language to help his teachers understand him. How could I send him out into the world, only able to say "ice" and "eyes" and "map"? And a few other odds and ends of very narrow usefulness. ..

Here's a copy of the glossary: 

Elias: A Glossary
8/24/08

Elias is adding new spoken words to his vocabulary. He can now say: ants, ice, eyes, knee, Dad, Mama, Baby, car, map, among other things. But his primary form of communication is still baby sign—his own special blend of ASL and created signs. Here’s a short glossary to help you get started with him at school.

When Elias…    He’s saying…
Touches his index fingertips together    Hurt/ouch/pain (he then will show you where it hurts)
Touches his index fingertips together, or more fingers together in a bunch    If he’s smiling and happy he means “more” or “do it again.” He tends to mix these up so context is important
Snaps his fingers    Dog
Wiggles fingers under his chin    Frog/toad
Curls all his fingers, palm up, looking back at you over his shoulder    “Come here, I want to show you something”
Curls and uncurls index finger    Worm
Makes his hand “fly” palm out    Airplane
Zips index finger through the air, making a buzzing sound    Bee or other flying insect
Puts his hand over his ear or on the side of his head    Sleepy, tired
Runs his index finger down his cheek    Crying
Taps the corner of his mouth or chin with index finger    Water (sometimes milk or juice)
Pats his chest with both hands    “I need help”
Rubs his chest with knuckles    Bath
Lifts his fist straight up, wrist straight, and wiggles it slightly     Potty (might be “I went potty and need to be changed”)
Touches knuckles of both hands together and turns them side to side    Change diapers
Quickly opens and closes both hands, fingers wide apart and palms out    Light or lightening
Crunches his shoulders up under his ears, clenches both fists, and makes a scared face     Scared
Clasps one wrist with the other hand    Turtle
Taps together thumb and forefinger    Bird
Taps his lips with fingers bunched together    Eat
Flutters both hands    Butterfly
Opens and closes one fist with fingers stacked vertically    Nursing or “I want to nurse”
Sharply shakes both hands up and down    Spider or other crawling bug (crab, lobster)
Turns both open hands over quickly    All finished
Wiggles all his fingers up high    Stars
Moves his hand slowly, palm facing the sky    Moon
Opens and closes his hands, palms together like a book    Book
Spreads out all his fingers and pulls them down through the air    Rain
Says, “HUM!”    Truck
Says, “Aah-gn”    Isaac, his older brother in P3

But even in the two weeks since then, he's been exploding in language. He now signs turtle, and says "toot-ol" and that type of thing. He comes up with more and more words each day. He can repeat pretty much anything in his own adorable accent. At school the other day, he sat with a basket of plastic fruits and veggies, and showed me each one, saying "onion" clear as a bell. (That's a hard word!) He's been calling Ben a cool "Dat" instead of the babyish "Dad'n." 

It's been good for me, too, to see all the other kids his age. One thing I learned is that his language ability is very on par with the other kids in terms of speaking, and has this layer of sign that many don't. The other thing I learned is that on the continuum of insane to calm, he's NOT the most insane by any stretch. He's actually towards the calm end! Really I couldn't be more happy and proud about his debut. He's launched.