May 9, 1997

Dinosaur Spaghetti

Diane begins her career as a happy mutant by altering a 2-year-old's reality.

The mystery of my car clock has been solved: once the car dried out, the problem dried up. There was so much moisture in the car the clock's mechanisms went haywire.

Last night we had the Boys, Brent and Therese, and Ellie over for dinner and Babylon 5. Darin's quote about last night's episode: "Why is the show sucking so much right now?" He's really annoyed about what's going on with Mr. Garibaldi -- "If this is the fast version, what would the slow version have been like?"

(Make note: must get Darin to write guest entry soon.)

At dinner Ellie was playing with her food (she's 2, after all), which was spaghetti with chicken. I said, "Do you like the dinosaur?"

BIG eyes. "Dino?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "We keep the dinosaurs in our backyard."

BIGGER eyes. She inhaled the food as she peered through the dining room windows that overlook the backyard.

"You can't see them now," I said. "They're sleeping."

I took her downstairs to look through the windows into the blackness of the backyard. "Dinos," she said, her face right up against the glass.

"They're in the bushes, sleeping," I said.

Well, this was the greatest thing that had ever come Ellie's way. She went upstairs and got Brent and Therese to show them the sleeping dinosaurs. She started crying at one point, thinking the dinosaurs were going to come in and get her, until we assured her that dinosaurs weren't allowed in the house, because they track mud in and haven't learned to wipe their feet yet. ("They have very small brains," Brent said.)

Oh. Okay -- dinosaurs aren't coming in, I'm safe. Ellie went back upstairs to get Harry and Darin and show them the dinosaurs.

I told Therese I hoped this hadn't given her nightmares. "Oh no," she said. "But she's going to want to come back during the day to play with the dinosaurs."

Augh! Why am I having so much Resistance to getting back to writing? This is highly annoying.