More Termites!

Sitting here shaking my head in wonder . . .The tree in the side lot next to the house has almost all the bark stripped totally away from the trunk from about a foot off the ground to about the height of a boy. True, the tree was already dead; but seeing the corpse standing there waiting for—well, what does a dead tree wait for? A good fire?

All three boys took part in stripping the bark from that old elm, and they probably worked harder at that task than anything that their parents ever required of them. Funny how a task like that can be fun if it is THEIR idea. Now if we had wanted that bark for some reason . . .
Little girl spent most of her weekend painting fingernails, playing with her new pink ‘cell phone’ chap stick holder, and doing an awesome job of very detailed coloring of all the ‘hello kitty’ pictures we could print off on the computers. She used her spare time to watch the boys build a fire, throw dirt clods, and dig in the dirt. But for the most part, she preferred the company of her Aunt J, her Paw Paw, or Oliver the cat. In fact, her bedtime partners had to include ‘Heavy Baby’ and the cat.

‘Heavy Baby’ actually had clothes on this weekend. A few times she has accompanied the girl and somehow managed to leave her clothes at home. However, on at least one of her visits, some of her clothes were applied to Oliver the cat. Oliver was patient, but not overly impressed by the selection of cat couture. But ‘Heavy Baby’ showed no resentment. She is the perfect little girl’s baby doll. Miss R’s other grandfather was asked to care for ‘Heavy Baby’ once while the little girl was waiting with him at a restaurant. Suddenly Granddaddy realized that the baby he had on his shoulder and was patting ever so gently was NOT one of his grandchildren. ‘Heavy Baby’ really doesn’t seem to mind if she is carried like a football.

Oh, my friend Carla says that all the greatest questions really all boil down to two: should I get a dog, or should I have children. My answer: why not both!