this'n'that

Pretty good day yesterday. Went to Daniel's school with Justin to help out for Pizza Day, and both boys were absolutely thrilled. I'm not sure why having us there for Pizza Day is such a big deal for Daniel - all we do is come into his class and distribute the pizza among the students - but it makes him very, very happy when I go, and he nearly went into orbit to see both me and Justin there. And Justin was very, very proud to serve Daniel's class. Gosh, they're cute sometimes.

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Justin, BTW, has developed quite the potty mouth. To wit:

April and her kids Garret and Evelyn are visiting, at one point Garret comes downstairs and says, "Justin said the f-word."

Oh dear. What a great first impression.

The next day, he comes into the study and says, rather upset, "F***. My mosquito bite is still itchy."

Gaaah.

Later on, he says, "Jesus Christ! That was a big truck!!"

And "Hey - what the hell is that?"

Fuck Yowch. This is not good. I've talked to him about it, warned him that there will be hell heck to pay if he says those words again, taught him some acceptable swears (although he didn't want to say "what the heck" because that's rude) and made a promise to watch my own language. It's weird, though. We never had this problem with Daniel. I think he swore once, and that was it.

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Queer As Folk is showing Season 4. And I think I'm falling in love with Brian Kinney.

Brian: (paraphrased) Ted, you may be a worthless loser who's alienated every friend you have and gone down as low as a human being can go and lost everything because of your pathetic meth addiction-
Ted: Nobody gives a pep talk like you, Brian.

(Brian is shown a case full of prosthetic testicles)
Brian: Sometimes you feel like a nut... sometimes you don't.

(Justin tells Emmet something about Brian's recent bizarre behaviour.)
Emmet: Hm. That definitely doesn't sound like the Brian Kinney we all know and feel ambivalent about.

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Have spent my spare time the last few days redoing my story dividers on ff.n. Still miffed that they were gone for months without me even knowing. And no, I don't know why this is bothering me so much. ( Note for me: status on section dividers: )

worst nightmare

Sometime this week apparently one of our neighbours was cooking in her kitchen while her daughter played in her front yard. She looked up and saw a man trying to get her daughter into his car. She ran screaming outside and he drove off.

Good lord.

I let my boys play in our front yard without supervision all the time, and I let Daniel go down the street to his friends' houses whenever he wants. I've recently started to allow Justin to accompany him. They're 7 1/2 and 4 1/2, and our street has very little car traffic; I don't have to worry about them running out into the street and getting smucked by a car. But Jesus. Snatched from the front yard in the middle of the day? It's worrisome when you read a story about it happening in Toronto; terrifying when you hear about it happening in your own neighbourhood.

I'm going to call the cops and see if they know what actually happened. I got it as third-hand gossip from Daniel's babysitters at the bus stop today, so for all I know it may not even have happened. Still.

Mixed Nuts

Have been unable to find out anything about the attempted child-grabbing in our neighbourhood. The Ottawa Police Dept website has a warning about a man who's been posing as a repairman and stealing from people's apartments, but no warning about our incident. Does that mean it didn't happen, or that our neighbour didn't report it, or that the police didn't think it merited a warning on their site? No idea.

So, I'm distracting myself with the following:

A giggle from Sarah: ( The Potato Garden )

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( Justin's Book Report on Moby Dick: )

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From sangerin: let us now take comfort in the fact that no nation has a monopoly on stupidity.

Wait - did I say 'take comfort'? I meant 'bemoan'.

Concern over 'Gay School'