Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

Bee has arrived in Reno. She and Nana appear to have similar interests.

The Princess, The Dairy Queen, and The Wonderful Playground of Oz

A lovely day today! Our wonderful friend Jen Littlefield is in town visiting from New York City (where everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty) and joined us for a picnic in Hyde Park before an afternoon excursion to the south loop Target, Alcalas Western Wear (to get Baba's boots cleaned), Dairy Queen, and the fantastic Oz Park, certainly the finest playground in Chicago I've yet seen. Statues of Dorothy and Toto, Tin Man, Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, a garden, plenty of space for baseball and soccer, and a terrific play area with some of the best play structures I've ever come across. It makes me wish I was either five years old or an eccentric billionaire who could have a similar (though larger-scale) set up built for myself.

Dynamite Kid

So I have my third ever black eye. The other night, Daisy and I were playing 'Airplane' (the game in which one person lies flat on his back and suspends the other in the air on his knees, not the one in which players take turns doing Leslie Nielsen impersonations) and Daisy slid forward and conked me right above the eye. She giggled "Baba, I bumped my head!" I screamed in pain and held back tears. She laughed even more as I walked around clutching frozen peas to my eye and groaning. And a valuable lesson about playtime was learned.

I did make several references to the pro-wrestling move 'the diving headbutt', made famous by the great Dynamite Kid and the late ... well, I don't care to call him great, what with the filicide/uxoricide, but he was one hell of a wrestler ... Chris Benoit. And here's an example of said move:


The referee disqualified Daisy as well.

One Blonde Down . . .

The furriest member of our household, the lovely Beatrice, left Thursday night on a cross country trip to Reno. Our new apartment doesn't allow for pets, so Bee is going to live with Nana & Grumpy (and their two canine companions, Winston & MacArthur) in the mountains of Nevada. She will have a backyard to run in, two new friends, and a permanent lap to sit in - on the whole, a more luxurious accommodation than we could provide in Chicago. But even though the barking was infuriating, and I lost one half of four different pairs of shoes, and apparently something about the rug in Daisy's room just demanded to be peed upon, I am already missing our morning walks (though in the winter, that will be a different story, I'm sure.)

Bee is making the trip via a pet travel service called Get-M-Home.

I'm trying, alright!?!

It's Facebook's fault ... it makes it so easy to feel like you're sharing deep thoughts and opinions when really you're just making lists of the top five purple vegetables you can think of. Still, the formatting is so pretty ...

Anyway, so much is going on that it seems like nothing is going on, if that makes any sense, which it doesn't. We're moving next month - Heidi and Daisy and I are going to an apartment closer to the Midway and, more importantly, Lab School. A little less space, but also less rent, and a back yard and included heat. Our furry friend Beatrice is moving to the scenic vistas of Reno, NV, to live with Nana & Grumpy, Winston & MacArthur.

Work is going fine; my schedule has changed much for the better. I have the weekend off - the real weekend, Sat/Sun - plus Monday, which is awesome. I have a lot more time to spend with Daisy, and we actually have a day on which all three of us can hang out. And then I have Monday to myself to run errands (or more likely, goof around on Facebook.)

Anyway, Daisy has been curiously preoccupied with death lately, or more accurately with the forbidden nature of the discussion of death. She seems to be testing the subject out and gauging reactions. Tonight in the midst of a round of "say something funny" (typical entry: Today I saw a monkey and do you know what he said? Pickles.) Daisy said, "Today I saw a bad baby who wasn't listening go into the street and get hit by a car. It got hurt and then it got died." It's very difficult because it is of course a horrifying image, but ... her delivery is just so good. I gotta give the kid props for timing. If anyone can make the story of a bad baby getting hit by a car and getting died, it's her.

K. We'll see how long Facebook keeps me away this time ...