It could be worse, though. My family received something in the neighborhood of 8-10 inches. I'll take this "already melted off" version over that.
Potstickers version 2.0 (in contrast to the beta that I made inedible with a liberal application of red pepper) looked much prettier. I'm finally figuring out how to fold them correctly without tearing them. Unfortunately, the social stigma against tofu is alive and well amongst certain of my friends, so I have a large quantity of tofu dumplings for my supper this week. This segued into an amusing little tete-a-tete with Cris over whether pork (his preferred dumpling base) is red meat or white meat (we agreed to disagree) and concluded with me deciding to try chicken next time.
Finally, I should be touched that Alec chose me, out of her available options, to sit with her in the bathroom and hold the bucket while her parents cleaned the results of her unplanned stomach voiding from her bed last night. We had a nice little sleepy/queasy/giggling conversation about how everyone gets sick now and then. Kyle slept like a rock through the entire thing.
Provided for your enjoyment, my first real experiment with the new 17-40L lens. I'm not that impressed with the photo results (the twins of course were as impressive as usual). Either I'm really out of practice or even an L-class lens doesn't make me a good photographer.
The twins, while finishing the coconut-pineapple smoothies they helped me make, were watching one of their DVDs, one I had not seen before from a television series entitled "Charlie and Lola." The protagonists of said series are English, which made for some interesting observations. Kylie and I had a humorous exchange involving one of the characters, a hamster named "Burt."
Kylie: "Oh no! Butt's in trouble!" Me: "Who?" Kylie: "Butt." Me: "Oh, right. Burt." Kylie: "No, Butt." Me (laughing): "I'm pretty sure it's Burt." Kylie (shaking head): "No. It's Butt." Me (looking directly at her): "Burt!" Kylie (staring back defiantly): "Butt!" Me (still laughing): "Okay. You win."
A few minutes later I was quoting along with the show in a mock accent when Kylie, mimicking me mimicking the show, started saying "perfect" in a scarily accurate accent ("puh-fect"), to the point that Lisa thought it was the show and not Kylie (although I tried to get her to do it later and she reverted to her standard accent).
It was an interesting observation on how our brains compensate for anomalies; my brain automatically translated the English-accented context while to Kylie at least some of them appeared as entirely new words. In a similar vein, while listening to the BBC web cast today as I usually do, I sailed along with their accents until I tripped over "alu-MIN-i-um" and had to pause for a fraction of a second to figure out what they were talking about.
I'm babysitting all this week, much to the delight of certain almost-three-year-olds (and possibly an approaching-thirteen-year-old, even if she feigns annoyance when I set up "booby traps" on her iMac . . .). We've been "benturing" ("adventuring" in Alec-speak), worked on counting to 10, played numerous games of hide-and-seek and watched blackbirds and bunnies in the backyard (yay for alliteration). Amidst such a carnival of activity, Lane and I have discussed American pre-WWII isolationist policies, talked about installing BootCamp on her Mac and started watching the "Indiana Jones" trilogy in anticipation of the upcoming fourth movie.
The most memorable part so far came when the twins and I were watching "The Land Before Time" and Kyle was talking about a character that's some sort of purple fish. I asked her if it was a dolphin and she said "No, it's not a dolphin." I asked her if it was a shark and she said "No, it's not a shark." I asked her if it was an icthyosaurus. She looked at me in a very puzzled way and then sternly pronounced "That's not a sticky horse! That's Mo."
Any sort of whining or implied discontent with my lot in life cowers in humbleness at Lisa's week, which, in one day alone, involved a brand-new-yet-broken refrigerator Sears is adamantly refusing to fix on a technicality, an auto accident with an uninsured driver and an overflowed toilet. Bad things come in threes, right?
Saturday my friend Elizabeth and I attended Film Streams, Omaha's valiant attempt at a non-profit art-style theater (showing independent and artistic films), where we saw "Lady Chatterley." The film was good, although the eventual shifting of the audience leads me to believe I was not the only observer who felt 3 hours was probably too long for a movie with a single plot line.
Sunday the twins and I explored the backyard, where Kylie delighted herself with chastising the birds for not taking their baths as she splashed in the bird bath. Later, while exposing Lane to a variety of musical samples on iTunes, we discovered that Alec has a marked preference for techno (she literally had no reaction to top 40 or Weird Al, but started bouncing in my lap and swinging her arms on both of the techno songs I played). As a foreshadow, Alec has also learned to ask "Go shopping? Pweeze?" after Lisa took her on a quick shopping trip to a bookstore.
I've begun rewatching my Sports Night DVDs as a "comfort food" of sorts the last few nights. On the surface it would seem perhaps ironic that someone with such an antipathy for organized sports in general would enjoy a show called "Sports Night," but anyone who has seen the show will agree with the show's one-time tagline "It's about sports the same way Charlie's Angels was about law enforcement."
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Tuesday, February 13
Personal Playground
Assorted photographic and video evidence will attest to the twins' opinion of the new digs (and that roller coaster is pretty damned cool). I'm also told that the twins have started asking when I'm coming back (in suitable one-syllable sentences), which is very cute.