37 and 364/365

Tomorrow is my birthday. Not a significant one, I'm turning 38. That's not old yet in Jorja's books. That happens at 40. When I turn 40, all my hair will fall out and I will be totally bald. Or if I was a girl, all my hair would be white. At least I've got a couple of good years left. Perhaps I should grow it out while I have the chance, relive my youth, long locks flowing out from under the hockey helmet....ahh, those were the days.

The other day we were running some errands, and I had to stop to get gas. The girls were famished (or so they said) so I picked them up a bag of mini Ritz sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade. They were in heaven. They've got some work to do drinking out of a bottle yet. I took a peak down the neck at one point, and there were a lot of cracker crumbs in there. At one point, the crackers had just been finished, and Ginny was having a drink. Jorja noticed a rather large crumb on Ginny's cheek and picked it off and proceeded to eat it herself. Sheesh. Kind of reminded me of monkeys at the zoo.

I think the pool is back in business. If it would stop raining that is. I shocked it with chlorine again last night, and today it is all clear. It still smells like there is a lot of chlorine in there, but that will be gone soon if the sun comes out. I guess I'll have to keep on top of things now.

Pouting, the zoo, and cleaning

Today turned out to be a particularly trying day. It rained all day for starters, so there wasn't much to do. We had a couple of errands to run, so we decided to go to Market Mall. They have a little play center there that the girls have had fun on before. I sat down at a table with CeCe while the girls went to play and Julie went to Fabricland for a minute. We were barely there and Jorja was coming over to the table moping - 'I'm thirsty...Is it lunch time yet...I'm tired.' I kept telling her to go back and play. Finally she went back and then just kind of sat at the top of the slide area, slightly out of direct sight. After a while, she peeked around the corner, and started to come down the steps toward me. She was kind of pouting, and then she slipped on the stairs and fell on her butt. This was all the excuse she needed to burst into tears, flop down at the table and feel sorry for herself. Shortly after this, Ginny came over to investigate what was going on. Then Julie came back and all of us were sitting at the table. I explained what was going on, and we sent the girls back to play. Jorja continued moping around, so we packed them all up and went home. We gave her a time out in her room after lunch to think about things, and it was a bit better this afternoon, so hopefully we got through to her. Well, that wasn't very funny was it?

Yesterday we went to the zoo. It was a gorgeous day out, and we hadn't been in a couple of years. Ginny asks every day what kind of animals are at the zoo, so we thought we would finally go and show her. The first things we saw was the grizzly bear. This kind of freaked her out - she was pretty scared. We got her convinced nothing could hurt her, and then she had fun after that.

And we managed to keep out of the duck pond, so that was good. The last time we went, we only had Jorja, and we had stopped to feed the ducks. We left the stroller at the top of the hill, and forgot to put the brake on. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the stroller careening down the hill toward the water. It hit the bottom of the hill, ramped off some rocks, paused in the air for a moment, and then sank. The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion, like it was right out of a Mr. Bean skit. Without thinking, I raced after it. I was balancing on some slippery, slimy rocks while trying to reach it. Yes, I fell in. Half way up to my knee in duck poop infested water. And it was early in the spring, so I was wearing jeans, socks and shoes. It was gross, to say the least. This time was much better. We only had to leave the area when the mother goose though we were getting a little too close to her young. We got out before things got ugly though. Our children won't have a fear of geese.

We had some friends over for supper on Saturday evening. Naturally we were running around trying to get the house cleaned up. Jorja asked me, "Dad, are you cleaning up because we're getting company?" Busted. It shouldn't be that obvious should it? Later.