T has been struggling not to speak English at home. It's causing a lot of squabbling these days - lots of scolding, reminding, frustration. It's harder for her than it was for Q, because Q had no one to talk to but us. T can talk to Q, and we gave up a while ago on insisting on Spanish between them. It just seems like too much to expect. All the more reason for us to get out of the country for a while - something we're looking into doing in a year and a half or so.
Uruguay is the country we're the most interested in. Economically advanced and stable, veeeery little crime (for Latin America - they have more than Holland, but not more than Italy), and very close to Argentina, which we would like to visit. The kids are less and less horrified by the notion these days - we point to the Puerto Rico experience, which, while fading into memory, still has a lot of positive cachet. It's hard to think of leaving here for a while, but the experience would be too huge to say no to, we think.
Q has a basketball game Friday, but we're not both going to be able to go. And I'm only going to see the first half. We have a tri-family movie night scheduled for that night, and Q is going to be brought home by the mother of one of his friends, and I'm going to take him and the friend there. I'll probably get to see one half. I'm much more healthy in my basketball-viewing than I typically have been in soccer - somehow, deep down, I know that this isn't going to be Q's game. Maybe I'm wrong, but the odds of him getting to six feet tall are pretty slim, and he doesn't seem to take to basketball with the same liquid instinct that he has on the soccer pitch. He himself was just a little bit iffy about even playing this season. The three-on-three tournament was great, but he was hardly a key player...Anyway, I think the odds of my being reasonably quiet while watching are pretty good. But we'll see.
Still no luck on the deer front, and my energy is petering. Saturday night, I just couldn't bring myself to set the alarm for 4:30. There was snow Saturday afternoon, meaning that Sunday would have been the first day with any tracks, but honestly, I don't see myself tracking deer for miles this year. It's getting harder and harder to justify being away all, day, long. I like to get out there and stand during the morning and the evening hours, since that's when they move, but mid-day, it's really hard to stay motivated. I've seen deer, but they were all does / fawns, and I had no doe tag when I saw them. Now I have one, since it's the black powder season, but you watch: I'll never see another one. This is me, after all. I don't kill deer. It's just not meant to happen.
Although I did see a porcupine a couple of times. He leaves the tree I stand next to every morning around 6:30 and walks in front of me, right-to-left. I tried to take a picture - hey, I still haven't uploaded that one. Let's see if it came out:
Nope.
Q's hair is really getting long, and frankly, it looks phenomenal. A couple of different people said at the 3-on-3 tournament, "If there were a trophy for best hair, Q would definitely win."
Definitely.
Skittles has been piddling on the floor again. Not sure what that's about - and she does it on the kitchen floor, sometimes right next to the litterbox. She does it in streaks, doing it for a week at a time and then nothing for six weeks. It's annoying. Nothing beats stepping your bare foot into a cold puddle of piss.
Except, perhaps, stepping into a warm puddle of piss.
Well, hell, I guess I should hit the hay. Packers are up 17-0 at the half...I can probably sleep soundly in the knowledge that we'll be 8-4 in the morning. Who'd have thunk it when we were 4-4?
I say "we" because, as many of you know, I played safety there for three years back in the late '80s.
Also: I am tall.
