Today around noon at the oak-shaded playgrounds of Lake View Elementary School, Ulysses for the first time showed cognizance of the rungs of the jungle gym. One had curved rungs along a concave arc. He stood both feet on the first rung and looked towards the next, about the same height from the ground. He stepped off onto the ground and walked to the next rung, and slung his legs around it, looking to the next rung, a little higher up.

He spent some minutes contemplating the rungs and threading his body under and around them, sometimes stopping to crouch ...   more »

Overheard at Woodman's East grocery store. I'm shopping for canned tomatos. Whole, because I heard enough people on the Food Network saying they're closer to the goodness of fresh because they're the least processed. That makes enough sense to me. Lately that's the only kind of canned tomato I get, and I pour the can into a bowl and crush it with my fingers, rustica, for those nice naturalistic tomato chunks, a la Mario Batali. And unseasoned, natch.

Anyhoo.

Teenage girl is talking on cell phone, trailing behind her mother, who is pushing a cart. "I'm still not done ...   more »

This morning we all went to the Henry Vilas Zoo. This is one of the only free zoos in the country on this large of a scale. The aviary just opened last summer, I think. Don and I went once before. We also visted the Herpetarium, where U liked to look at the fish and the giant Galapagos Turtle. We couldn't find the iguana today, though.


There is a section called the Children's Zoo, but that is closed for the year. They're digging it all up and making something ...   more »

Tonight Don's mother and sister came in on the Greyhound from Savannah, Georgia. They were exhausted and hungry. Janice, Don's mother, phoned from the bus station in Beloit at 8:15. She read off a list of Chinese food menu items she wanted us to get when we picked them up: egg foo yung, shrimp fried rice, egg rolls, and broccoli with chicken. We stopped at the China Wok on Fordem on the way to the bus for a menu, to make sure they had it all. Then ordered by cell phone on our way back. All good. We feasted on ...   more »

The other day Teletubbies aired a film clip about a girl, about 5, making a whimsical face out of a pumpkin. She was in what was apparently the basement of a home. All the craft supplies had been laid out for her, presumably, by some unnamed adult. There were muffin tins of glitter and dry beans, piles of colorful dry leaves and felt, and so forth.

"I'm going to make a pumpkin head," says the girl, and she comments on what she's doing as she glues on leaf ears, straw hair, bean eyes. mouth and nose made of something crafty. ...   more »

This is Ulysses's favorite picture. It came from Ocean Meir at James Reeb Unitarian Universalist Congregation in May, along with a thank-you card she sent me for making baklava for the month's International Lunch, Greek theme. You can see where he's affectionately sucked on the edge of it. He carries it around in the seat compartment of his Sesame Street rider. Every now and then he takes it out and holds it up to admire, looking at the faces of the three animals and saying his word that means "animal": a baby-pitched "Woof, woof!"   more »