meaningless minutiae

Exercise pants for all

As we know, Whit is deeply enamored of his exercise pants. Oh, my, is he hilarious. This afternoon I was in my office when Grace and Whit came storming upstairs. Grace was talking to me about her day when Whit came out of his room (wearing his very favorite shirt, from Gloria), a knot of blue knit fabric in his hand.

“Here, Gracie. These exercise pants are for you.” He said, proferring the item with the solemnity of someone offering the crown jewels.

“Whit, I don’t want your exercise pants.” Grace rolled her eyes at me.

“Grace, come on, he is being nice.” I broke in.

“But they won’t fit me!” She protested.

“You won’t know until you try,” I said, thinking of how every single pair of pants she has ever worn has slipped down her hips to reveal her butt crack. My daughter the plumber.

“They are really good for exercise!” Whit, always in sales mode, insisted.

“Grace, just try them on.” I urged her on.

So she did. And they did exercises, together, on the third floor landing.



weekend, in photos

Friday night Grace, Whit, and I had dinner with the Hawkins. The children had such a great time playing at the playground right next door and with Wally the golden retriever (Grace: was he named for Wall E the robot?)

As usual, Jen whipped up an absolutely delicious dinner – homemade pizza, one with pepperoni and one with pesto and sausage. YUM.

Sunset on the Charles driving home. Kids so wiped they both slept until 8 on Saturday morning: hooray.

Saturday night was dinner at the Ungers in Needham. I brought Dana a bunch of ranunculous (my absolute favorite after peonies).
Grace played Wii before dinner. Whit and Sam hit it off like a house on fire though Whit insisted on calling him “Benjamin.” Sam seemed impressively flexible about what name he answered to.
80+ degrees on Sunday. Morning at the playground.

Grace, Whit and I had dinner at Armando’s after taking Matt to Logan. Whit wore his exercise pants and a pajama top with robots on it (an outfit he selected carefully and insisted on). For dessert they had zucchini muffins that I put a few chocolate chips on top of and successfully sold as “cupcakes.”
Grace’s new favorite tee shirt, that I gave her this week.

Binary world

Christina and I decided today that one way to bifurcate the world is into people who go to water parks and people who don’t. This happened because our huge plans to spend all day tomorrow at an indoor water park in Danvers went off the rails when we realized the place was already booked solid.

But it made me think of other binary distinctions in life. Places where people fall into one camp or another, with little venn overlap. If you have other thoughts, please add in comments!

  • go to water parks or don’t
  • Chekov or Dostoyevsky
  • red wine or white wine
  • mountains or ocean
  • french fries or onion rings
  • vanilla or chocolate
  • morning or evening
  • Coke or Pepsi
  • dogs or no dogs (thanks Bouff!)

Dreams

Read the children a book tonight that was called “Dream a Little Dream.” A conversation ensued about what Grace and Whit’s dreams were.

Grace announced that her dream was that “Everyone has food … and enough toys to play with.” I asked her how she could help make this dream come true and she said, “I want to have a lemonade stand next summer and make lots of money and give it to children who don’t have food and toys” Okay. “And I want to go back to Cradles to Crayons.” Better than okay. “And I want to sell some of my Perler bead art (these plastic things they make in kindergarten) and give that money to people without food too.” And I’m sure there is an enormous market for those so this is an excellent idea.

Whit, when asked directly what his dream was, said only, “Racing cars.”

In other news, I put him to bed just now and about 5 minutes later heard him rummaging around in his room. I went in and found that he had changed out of his pj bottoms (not, shocking enough, his exercise pants) into his favorite madras pants. Fine by me.