So ... Remodeling

The hedline pretty much says it all. About a quarter of the main living space in the house is off limits. We're washing dishes outside. The kelvinator is in the living room (it's really an Amana, but it's more fun to say "kelvinator" than "fridge"). And, in general, nerves are frayed. Details are being recorded at Survivor: Kitchen Remodel.

The Sounds of Dogs ...

... or at least their names.

Back in first grade, it was suggested to Celeste that she not not talk about a certain dog breed at school too much because the name — shih tzu — sounded a little too close to something rude when she said it. Flash forward to breakfast a few days ago when Celeste and Quinlan were both talking about shih tzus; C turned to me with a quizzative look and said: "I know what a shih tzu is and that it sounds like something bad, but I can't figure out what it is. 'zu' doesn't sound bad and I don't know what 'shit' means."

Games People Play

In general, Q doesn't like playing games; the one exception over the years has been Go Fish, although we not too long ago picked up Apples to Apples, and she's loved it. Despite that, she's had a long-standing aversion to "winning games." Instead she usually likes to play Calvinballesque card games where the rules constantly change to ensure that everyone playing is doing well.

Now, Quinlan has branched out into game design with her own version of Go Fish. Using some of my old business cards and the calling cards we had printed up for her a while back, she designed a mermaid-themed deck with numbers 1 through 13, as well as Jack, Queen, and King. There's only one pair of each, which can make the game move quickly. The rules follow the traditional ask for card and draw if you don't get it, but the best bit is the marketing. It didn't quite click with me when I noticed the image at the left that it was an ad for the game, but this morning I found the three other posters placed strategically around the house.


Beyond the posters, there's also the titling of the game — "Go Fish: An Underwater Game" — and the little touches in the card images, from the swirly numbers and the fish as pips on the cards to the little fish the mermaid keeps on a leash and the bubbles coming from the octopus.

Supplement or Country?

This morning, between preparing the different egg, toast, and cereal orders at breakfast. I asked the girls if they'd already had their vitamins or not. Being a bit of a prat, I pronounced vitamin as the British English /ˈvɪt ə mɪn/ instead of the American English /ˈvaɪt ə mɪn/. Naturally, this offended Celeste gravely. After correcting my pronunciation, she stated, "besides /ˈvɪt ə mɪn/ is a country." We all paused for a moment trying to figure out what she meant ... then it clicked: Việt Nam. Which now has me thinking about bánh mì...

Morning Soliloquy

Quinlan woke up overly early this morning. Despite being a little on the fragile side, she was doing fairly well, but while flipping through a book of older pictures of herself she ran across one of her and Big Elephant. Big Elephant is a very large stuffie that came into the house as a baby gift for Celeste; of course, since Big Elephant (as the name implies) is not a dog, it eventually became Quinn's. For a long time BE served as bed and/or covers for Quinlan, sleeping either on top of or under it, but for the past 9 months or so, BE's been more or less an afterthought, stuffed in a basket with other less-favored stuffies.

When she saw the picture, Q started to get choked up and said, "I wish I could cry" [blogger's note: she can, just for some reason the drama meant she couldn't] "because I haven't seen Big Elephant in so long …" After a short discussion, in which she insisted that BE was lost/had been taken away/had been given to the thrift store, Q went upstairs to check the basket of stuffies in her room and then, shortly thereafter, came bounding down the stairs dragging along Big Elephant.

There was playing and laughter and then, eventually, came the morning insight into a child's mind:

Q: You know? As I get older, my stuffies seem a little less real. I mean, Big Elephant used to be real, but not … I mean, when I was little I used to pretend that if I wanted something, it could come out of Big Elephant's nose … and it really would!