42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

It’s Thursday now, which means my lovely week is inevitably winding to its end. I never have enough time for all the things I want to do.

Tuesday:

We had a family cookout. My brother and his wife came over with their kids. Full and always sleepy, I wanted to lay down on the ground, and grabbed a comforter. The baby, Hannah, kept visiting me briefly. Dad snapped some pics and then I was fair game as the rest of the kids used me as a jungle gym.

“Want up!” Hannah demanded, climbing on my back. As soon as I got up to give her a horsie ride, she wanted back down. Several times.

The other kids wanted rides but my back has really been bothering me this whole week and I didn’t feel up to lifting anyone other than a two-year-old who felt as light as a feather.

So the other kids settled for jumping on me, hitting me and rough-housing. When I saiy the other kids, it was mostly the boys but Alley joined in occasionally.

I also chased them around while growling in a Hulk-like manner. Sometimes with Hannah on my back, which usually prompted more “down, down” shouts from her.

I eventually had to call the hitting off, but they didn’t listen to me, so I made my brother intervene.

A particularly fun part was when I was messing with Hannah’s head. She wanted her Dora chair but nobody would get it for her. I told her that I had my own Dora chair, but that Grandpa J had sat on it and broken it.

This apparently translated into toddler brain that Grandpa J had broken her chair, so some time later, my brother came out with her Dora chair and told me to stop telling his daughter lies.

I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. I really love that gullible age in children. In a couple more years, she will only half-believe me, and after that, it’s all over. This is really the most fun time. Is that wrong?

Wednesday

Lunch with friend John E. I bought, and he felt very naughty when he got dessert. Heck, I’m on vacation, and I will eat dessert if I have room, thank you very much.

Then I went to Elkhart to meet with Todd and Dawn. That was great, and I wish that we’d had more time together. Lucy, for the record, is just as adorable as her pictures. It was also great to have a conversation about Doctor Who with people who really appreciate it.

Today

So far, I’ve done nothing. It’s 12:45 and I have not showered. I did, however, get some really great photos of a misty sunrise on my way back from dropping my dad off at work. I’ll post them at some point, probably when I’m back in Fresno and have access to a faster computer with a newer Photoshop.

I was supposed to go to Kalamazoo to meet with a friend, but I’m feeling like I’m getting something and she didn’t want me to pass it on to her child. Which has led to my lazy and unshowered state. I will rectify matters soon, because I need to go to the grocery store so I can make supper tonight. I’m supposed to see my mother’s half-sister tonight, and I thought it’d also be nice to prepare something for the family.

To my credit, I also had a long conversation with a friend that I will be having lunch with tomorrow. Mostly because he doesn’t respond to e-mail and apparently has been on vacation so I can never tell whether he’s ignoring me or really hasn’t seen my e-mail.

Oh, and the last thing in this mostly bookkeeping post of my week:

Just do yourself a favor and nuke all your blogs piling up in your RSS reader. I let it go for maybe three days at first and I had more than 600 to read. Today, it was back to about 600. I had to be ruthless. Stuff related to journalism, almost none of it read. Friend blogs, yes, I read those. But some of my favorite other blogs include Boing Boing, Neatorama, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker were overwhelming with many many many posts. Ugh. I’m on vacation and that number just looks intimidating to me. Thankfully, I dumped the WoW Insider blog when I dumped WoW.

I’m down to 89 right now, and I’m just worn out. No more blog reading. I’m off to the shower.