Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM)

I must say that we had a really, really good Labor Day weekend. For starters, this was the first time in ages that we could open the windows and air the house out. It was also the first time in a long while that I found myself looking for reasons to go outside and do chores. The garden was positively dumbfounded by all the attention it suddenly received.

An image I'll probably always remember: We went to a pool party Saturday afternoon. The two elder Llama-ettes spent most of the time hurling themselves off the diving boards, the seven year old on the high and the five year old on the low. Every time she jumped, the five year old would flash me a huge smile and give a thumb's up. And after she came out, she would literally prance back to the board to do it all over again. Absolutely priceless.

It saddens me sometimes to think that this girl - who is posivitely the sweetest-natured child on the planet - may some day turn into a snarling, sulky teenager. Her elder sister is and always has been a tempermental sort. We're used to that. When she hits adolescence, I expect it will be just more of the same thing. Somehow, it will be harder to take with the sunny one.

Speaking of such things, the gels have been pestering me a lot lately to tell them "the old stories", in other words Greco-Roman myths. Although I am not very good at it, they prefer me to tell the tales myself rather than read them out of a book. The seven year old has been being rather troublesome the past few days (we think it is nervousness over going back to school), so I got the brilliant idea of telling her the stories of Icarus and Phaeton - as lessons about what happens when wilful children don't listen to their parents. I don't know whether the moral sank in at all, but she was agog and demanded more stories. So I told her (briefly) about Jason and the Golden Fleece, Odysseus and the Cyclops and the Trojan Horse. I really need to pull out my copy of Bulfinches' Mythology and brush up if I expect to keep pace with demand.

Speaking of nothing in particular, I took the three year old out to breakfast Saturday morning. On the way back, we popped in a Dora the Explorer CD. Now perhaps I was just hallucinating, but one of the songs - something about "what do you want to be when you grow up?" - seemed to be an almost perfect rip-off of the Blues Brothers version of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love". I didn't enquire further, since I didn't want to confirm this badly enough to force myself listen to it again, but somebody might want to check it out.