First bell

So now Lucy wants to be a teacher. And this is the way her lessons go:

"Josephine. Josephine. Say duck."

"Duck!"

"Good job!! Say headband."

Silence.

"Say headband. Headband. Head. Band. Headband. Headband. HEADBAND!"

Silence.

"Okay. You don't want to say headband? Okay. Say blueberry."

Josephine does love a K word. Book. Duck. Cookie.

What else is going on with my Lucylu?

I told her about how I took a spill on my run this morning. "Oh no!" she said. "Did you cry?" "Noooo, I didn't cry." "What did you think?" "I thought, 'Oh no! My hands hurt now! Ow! Ow! Ow!'" "Um-hm," she said. "When I fall down I think, 'Oh no! Where's Mommy and Daddy?' Because that's what children think."

More about what I think...I've been searching and searching the house, which is not that big, for a Haitian sequin tapestry that David and I bought in Key West a long time ago. It's a voodoo mermaid. (A good one, I hope?) I've decided to have a Christmas cookie party for my neighbors and I'm pretty sure I won't have to clean or anything, if I could just find and frame my sequin mermaid. Who would notice the dirt on the windowsill?? But I couldn't find it anywhere! Eventually I decided that maybe I had already brought it to the framing shop and just forgot about it. I sort of vaguely remembered standing there at the counter, talking about black wood. But then my sister and I had just had a conversation about real and imagined memories, and I wasn't sure which this was. The only option was to call:

"Um, hi. This is Mary Ellen...Uh, is it possible that I left a Haitian voodoo mermaid at your shop?" "What?" "Yes, it's a Haitian voodoo mermaid, made out of sequins. It's, uh, a rather unique piece. I can't find it and think that maybe I already brought it to you? But it's also possible this is an imagined memory." "We don't have anything like that." "Are you sure? Do you want to look?" "No ma'am, I'm sure."

In a box, people!! In a flowered box marked "Grandma's china," which I can assure you none of my grandmothers ever were called or owned, I found it yesterday -- wrapped in a plastic grocery store bag. So I brought it to the frame shop today and the guy said, "Ohhhh, you're the one who called..."

Hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Oh! Oh! One more Lucy story, speaking of Thanksgiving. I made a turkey last weekend, well... just 50 cents a pound! And we had it twice, or thrice, and then Thursday, of course, and then Friday... "We just ate this," she wailed last night. "Mommy! We just ate this! You do this ev-er-y time! We had this yesterday!" (Isn't she ungrateful? I slaved over those leftovers...) "Well, when you grow up, you can make dinner and it can be different every night. I, for one, can't wait! Won't that be nice?" Silence. "Yes. But it doesn't help me now."