Several months ago in a parking lot on Mill Street, Tita said this thing about how when her emotional brain takes over in the night, she has to put it in its place because her rational brain is sleeping.  Until she said that, I’m pretty sure I took middle-of-the-night emotional brain far too seriously.  Since then, I just tell it that if whatever it has conjured for me to worry on is still an issue in the morning, we’ll deal with it then.  Usually, in the light of day, Aunt Margaret as a sinister Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and Edie running into traffic are less terrifying.

Yesterday I had a work “training” that only served to deepen the website issues we’re having.  The lady spent a good five minutes trying to show me how to upload a picture of John Milton—the whole time telling me we really shouldn’t put pictures on the new website—even though I told her we had no reason to put up any pictures, especially ones of John Milton. However, the question I did have—how to upload ADA documents with this new system—I’m still unsure about.

When we buckle Edie into her car seat, we always ask her to help us.  We say “one, two, three” going through the three buckles.  Yesterday, I said “one” and she said “two” and I know all kids do this, but nonetheless it floored me.  The process of learning language is fascinating because what she copies sheds light on what she hears which causes me to think about the things I say, and with what pitch/rhythm I say them.  Like when she started saying (to all cats), “Hey, Maizie” J.B. realized she was greeting her the exact same way I greet Maizie whenever I see her.  I think this is the only way I’m ever gonna learn Spanish or French, if someone teaches me the names of animals or says the same things over and over.  That’s how I finally learned sign language, from 1st graders.  The things they talked about were things someone with limited language ability could understand—and respond to—and they also had no problem correcting me.  Adults just smile and nod.

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