Recent accomplishments

• Box score. On the way back from lunch on Saturday, I drove by the back parking lot of Archer's school and happened to glance at the recycling area. To my excitement, it was overflowing with cardboard boxes, and as far as I could tell from my vantage point 75 yards away, some of them appeared to be large furniture boxes. Because of an upcoming party which is threatening to become somewhat medium-key, I find myself in need of large cardboard boxes. Why? Here's the story. Back when we got our new media storage cabinets, I had the pack-rattish idea that the refrigerator-sized boxes would make good play equipment one of these days. Then the Legends of the Hidden Temple craze hit our kids in earnest, and at least in Archer's case, has never let up. I realized that those boxes could become a temple layout, and a cardboard fort series on Thingamababy (along with the availability of this facilitating hardware) sealed the deal. That's why I was breaking down Virco boxes and loading them in the Subaru in the 100-degree heat yesterday noon. Despite the manual labor, I was inordinately excited to snag so many big boxes. The temple tunnel I was planning instantly grew from three rooms to ... a lot more than three rooms. I didn't keep track of how many I was grabbing beyond "just one more."
  


• Rip it. After literally months of dithering, I took the plunge (emboldened by the presence of the Secret Knitter) to unravel the crochet straps on Cady Gray's jumper, which I originally made way too long and didn't attach to the front ribbing very well. In a night (should I be so productive) I could get them redone, better, faster, stronger. I have a sudden image of CG wearing the dress to her first day of school. Then I get something in my eye and have to find a tissue.


• Cursed. No, No, Nanette is a baseball trivia answer (and an inaccurate one at that). But it's also the highly-attenuated show-within-a-movie in Tea For Two, a frothy Doris Day/Gordon MacRae musical we watched during the kids' naps this afternoon. I realized anew that I'd rather be Eve Arden than Doris Day. One hopes that if there is an afterlife, this choice will be offered.


• Natural living. After I made a solo trip to the playground with both kids on Saturday morning, an outing which entailed some creative toileting arrangements, Cady Gray announced to her father later that afternoon: "Daddy, a tree is a kind of potty."