Afternoon Musings

A few things to catch up on.

1 - Two weeks ago, Audrey was asleep in our room. She had come in the room sometime after midnight and we knew she was there on the floor on Steve's side of the bed. At about 2:30 a.m., heard the cat doing her claw-sharpening thing on the cheap-o cardboard-and-cat-nip thing we keep between Steve's nightstand and the wall. So the cat starts in with this indefinably creepy sound and like a shot Audrey was up and in our bed yelling, "What's that noise? Where's the monster?" Steve and I both knew as soon as we heard Gray Cat working on her manicure that Audrey would react this way, but her reaction time was so quick we didn't have time prepare ourselves. Instead we lay in bed laughing.

2 - Early June. Steve and the kids in the car. I'm at a cooking class. Audrey is crying and whining about something Caleb did. Steve had tried to be tactful and sensitive in order to calm her to no avail. So finally he said, "Audrey, quit crying or I'm going to pull over and give you something to cry about." She replied, "But Daddy - I already have something to cry about!"

3 - I took the big kids swimming this afternoon while Mom stayed here at the house with a napping Julie. We had been there about 45 minutes when all of the pool patrons were asked to get out. Somebody puked in the pool. Nice. So I got the kids' towels and found nice warm spots on the concrete around the pool for them to warm up and dry off before we headed home because they said it would take 1 1/2 hours to clean it up. Yuck. Just then, we all heard thunder. I guess if you're going to be sick in a pool, do it right before it thunders and everybody has to get out anyway. One of the lifeguards was doing a chemical test and she had a little throng of curious onlookers - all under the age of 10. I'm sure it was interesting.

4 - I'm still thinking about Harry Potter. My brain is reeling. Some things I predicted, others I totally missed the mark. Overall though, I liked it. But not the epilogue. Too flat. But I did like the name of the second son who was boarding the train to go to school.

5 - It's flooding something awful in England. I've been looking at pictures and it's just unreal. This time last year was the worst drought they'd seen in years.

That's all I'm going to post for now. Next time I'll try to describe the mini ballet recital I went to last week. The baby made it most interesting.