Archive for March, 2009

Only five weeks to go, if the Ring (sequel to the Hobbit, get it?) is on time.  Odds are decent that she’ll be early, so we’re in full nest-making mode around here. 

The nesting began with last week’s big move of furniture, and it continues now with all the “little” things that have followed from it.  Lots of stuff is being moved from room to room.  Lots of stuff is going out to the shed.  And lots of stuff is going up to or coming down from the attic.  

It’s that last group of things that’s been the fun (and heart-tugging) part of our nesting, as I haul out dusty baby bouncers and carriers, crib parts, mobiles, and wee little socks that are far too tiny to believe once fit the feet of our rambunctious rambling son.

Speaking of which, Samwise, to his credit, is collecting sticks.  He doesn’t yet understand how metaphors work.

I was feeling a bit better this morning, despite a rough night, and so we decided to rearrange the house.

Seriously. My office, where I type this now, is no longer a room of its own. With the impending arrival of the Hobbit’s little sister (a little over a month to go!), the office/guest bedroom is being converted into her room. That meant a whole lot of changes, most of which are now done.

It started with a used dresser I bought for Samwise yesterday: one of those long, low dressers that fits nicely beneath the double window in his room. That was dragged upstairs with the help of a kind neighbor. The Hobbit’s existing chest of drawers and a small desk being used as a changing table — both lovely antiques — were subsequently rotated down the hall to what was (until this afternoon) my office. They’ll serve the wee lass when she comes. The big oak desk and attendant computer station, along with all their various associated bits, were moved downstairs to the room that I believe the folks around here call the “butler’s pantry,” a small room that sits at the crossroads at the bottom of the stairs: smack dab between the kitchen, dining room, and living room. The old oak desk that had been in that area which had been used to hold the phone and the liquor — don’t drink and dial, kids — was moved into the kitchen itself, into the space where the kitchen table had been. That table, in turn, was pulled out into the middle of the kitchen instead of off to the side. And boy is my back killing me.

Feels good to not be moping around all sick-like, though. Hopefully it won’t set me back — I’ve been known to booger up a decent comeback from illness by doing this sort of thing before — and I’ll continue the uptick toward recovery.

It’s Spring Break here at El Cid, and I’ve taken this excellent opportunity to get sick.

Yay.

I felt a sore throat coming on Friday afternoon, and it’s now blooming into something quite unpleasant. So, um, expect relative radio silence hereabouts for a bit. And be sure you wash your eyes after reading this. Don’t want you to get sick, too.

The Wife got a much-deserved night out this evening, leaving me in sole charge of the Hobbit. He’s off to bed now, after a fine meal wrought of microwaved leftovers, fresh strawberries, and milk, followed by a half-hour of running laps after his daddy (a game known as “Daddy Run Fast Truck”) and a viewing of the very awesome film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. None of that, though, is possibly of interest to you.

What may be interesting is to hear what the young master pronounced to me in the middle of dinner. Looking up at me, eyes glinting innocently above his macaroni-strewn cheeks, he smiled and said, “Dolphin jump water. … Mommy, uh, whale. … Mommy. … Whale, psycho, oh boy.”

Lest you think I’m mistaken in my memory, I assure you I’m not. After a few moments of sputtering and gagging as I attempted to prevent my just-sipped drink from spewing forth from my nose (successful, thankfully), I picked up a nearby pen and immediately jotted the, um, communication down.

It doesn’t look good, I know. At first glance it appears that our wee bairn, already too clever for his 2.5 years, calmly explained to me that his mother reminds him of a whale and that, furthermore, she’s a psycho. Oh, boy, indeed.

Never fear, though. Yes, Sherry is well along with spawn, but by no means could anyone — even an odd-thinking Hobbit — say she’s whale-like. No, no. Hobbitspeak, you see, has no sense for semantic spacing in its fledgling sentences. Confusing, I know. But not without sense. The above, for example, is best translated thus:

Sitting here oozing my fingers through cheese-smothered macaroni, Father, I’m reminded of seeing a dolphin jumping in the wide waters of Charleston Harbor on my last trip to the Aquarium. You’ll recall, no doubt, that Mother took me. I had a wonderful time, such that I bring it up now, in this moment of you taking that big, steady drink from your cup. On a different subject entirely, another creature that lives in the water and has, on occasion, been known to jump in and out of its depths is a whale. In fact, just the other day Mother and I watched a film with a whale doing just that. Pinocchio. Truly a classic film, the hauntingly sweet, oft-times lyrical tale of a puppet who wants to become a real boy. How I laughed and enjoyed it!

I know what’s going through your mind. “Sure,” you’re thinking. “He was talking about Pinocchio. Uh-huh.”

I, too, once harbored such doubts as I watched other parents miraculously translating Hobbitspeak into some rationalized thought or request that had seemingly no relation to a child’s utterances. Yet it turns out that it’s all true. Passed from Hobbit to Parent by some mystical osmosis, the ability to translate this stuff is remarkable indeed.

Samwise put this all much more simply and profoundly a few minutes ago, but I suspect you’d just think he was talking some nonsense about fish, a cheese grater, and Beowulf.

Trust me, though, it was really deep stuff.