Pictures and Vignettes

My digital life is all behind. My work life is very, er, fulfilling these days. And my personal life is what Professor Willauer used to call “rich and full”. (Read: I’m still doing bills at 10:45 on Tuesday nights.)

But the thing is, I’m not using euphemisms. My life is fulfilling, rich and full. There’s laughter, giggling, serious discussions, rough-housing, beautiful spring days (at least through a window), lilac-sniffing, Miso-soup-eating, meeting-attending, project-planning and baseball-watching. Sure, I had 492 pictures to go through last night, multi-tasking as my husband and I watched Red Dwarf (we’re up to Season 6). Granted, I haven’t ordered prints in like a year, and my digital picture frame shows a little immobile bowling-ball of a Thane. And yes, my retirement funds need to be reallocated and the IRS sent me a nasty notice (I believe I’m in the right on that one, which just makes it worse. It’s easier, although much more expensive, to be wrong.) But hey, I’m never, ever bored. And really, it’s quite a joyful tumult, except the bit about cat vomit in the morning.

In the vignette department, I would like to record for posterity that this week marks the first time Grey begged for a cell phone. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If you ask me now, in the throes of preschool and my own fuddy-dud-ness, I’d say that maybe 14 would be an appropriate age for a cell phone. One without a camera or digital plan. That’s 10 years from now. Do you remember where we were 10 years ago telephonically? It was my senior year of college. We had an outrageously expensive plan in our dorm rooms, and I remember one or two people my senior year actually had their OWN cellular phones. For real. One of my very friends had a (wait for it!) car phone! It was so expensive you only used it in extreme emergencies, of course.

So that is to say that in 10 years from now, who knows what telephony looks like? I can’t predict what will be normal and expected. (For example, in less than 15 years email has gone from a cool thing that some people had to pretty much mandatory for civilized life.) So I can’t say what choice I’ll make about when it is appropriate for Grey to have his cell phone. All I can say with confidence is: not now.

In other communication news, Thane has started speaking in very short phrases this week. I will record as his first sentence this one, used to communicate key information to a babysitter on Monday night: “Dis Mama” (pointing at me). Yes Thane! I am proud to be your mama!

In funniest baby phrases of the week, Grey was asking what a copy was. You try defining a copy with out using a synonym. So my husband, reaching into a vast store of knowledge, explained that a copy is like “Echo Echo” on Ben 10. Grey got the concept, but Thane immediately blurted out “ECHO ECHO!”. Perhaps you had to be there, but the irony of your little echo saying echo was, er, ironic.

So with no further ado, the pictures. I didn’t have time to caption them or to edit them quite as much as is my wont, but I did shut my computer off for the second episode of Red Dwarf, so I regret nothing:

http://picasaweb.google.com/fairoriana/May2010#