It's the Little Things That Irritate

Like any couple, Sean and Allie each exhibit a behavior or two that the other simply cannot abide.

For Allie, it's Sean's reading aloud. Let me backtrack a bit to explain that my fears about Sean's ability to read have been roundly disproved. He reads pretty well now -- I've marked his progress on the Henry and Mudge scale: he has gone from reading, with vociferous complaining, two pages of a Henry and Mudge book (September) to reading, with occasional prompts, an entire book on his own (February). I couldn't be happier.

Allie could.

She loves to be read to, but I think she has grown accustomed to the fluidity of a grown-up's reading cadences. Sean reads s l o w l y, pointing at each word as he goes along. Allie listens to Sean read for a few minutes, then either gets up and finds something else to do or picks up her own book, flipping the pages pointedly. And sighing for effect.

For Sean, a certain aspect of Allie's diction grates. She speaks very clearly about 98% of the time, but she can't say "th" words correctly. I think it's adorable, her "fank you" and "dat toy", but Sean feels the need to conduct a speech class. "No, Allie, it's THank you", not "FANK you," he'll lecture. "TH TH THHHH".

"Dat's what I SAID, Sean!" Allie replies indignantly. "FANK you!"

I guess I should be working on that letter combination with her, too. Maybe it won't be so cute in a year or so. Or I could just see how much our resident speech pathologist charges for ongoing therapy.

Found

I don't have many good excuses for my silence. In fact, once I admit to you on one particular thing that has occupied some of my time (time that heretofore I would have spent on blogging), you’ll just roll your eyes.

Once a big Lost fan, I fell off the island bandwagon last year. I worked through much of period during which season 3 was broadcast, and I didn’t expect to ever catch up again. Till Christmas, that is, when Jeff gave me season 3 on DVD.

Whoosh! That’s the sound of me getting sucked back in again. In marathon viewing sessions, we watched the entire third season, just in time for the launch of season 4. I then made the mistake of poking about on this here Internet to see what theories and conspiracies and themes and allusions and symbols were being discussed.

Holy moley, people. There are some seriously crazy dedicated fans out there. I have barely scraped the surface, and already Jeff thinks I’m loony whenever I pop up with a comment on the space-time continuum and the philospher-namesakes on the show. And speculations on how exactly the writers will tackle Walt's having aged 2 years in the show-span of 3 months.

I knew there was a reason I had refrained from searching the Internet for Lost information before now. I have another online life to live, after all.

Scrabulous, anyone?