too darn cute

It's too darn cute when you're having races down a double slide with a 4-year-old friend and you both want to let each other win:

Ben:  "Ready, set, go!"

Neither of us budge.

Ben:  "Go!"
Me:  "You go."
Ben:  "No, you go."
Me:  "You go first."
Ben:  "No, you go first."
Ben's mom:  "Are you trying to give Auntie Kerri a head start?"
Ben:  "Yeah, but she's not going!"

feeeelings, whoa whoa whoa feeeelings...

I've discovered evidence that may prove that most males' discomfort with talking about their (or anyone else's) feelings is ingrained into their DNA.  One day, at the end of a visit with my friend Ben, who was 3 at the time, I held him and looked into his eyes and told him I loved him and loved spending time with him.  Immediately, a look of yikes/ewww/I gotta' get out of here came over Ben's face, and he shrank away from me and changed the subject back to Legos.

Then one day I took his older brother Sam, age 7, to school, and as we walked toward the building together I told him I really enjoyed the days I took him to school and the time we spent time together.  Sam responded, "Brr, it's cold out here."

That's okay, boys.  As long as you guys still talk to me when you're teenagers, I can deal with it.  :)

"little" blessings, big impact

Yesterday I left Grandpa's a little early and realized I'd be getting home right when my friend Ben got out of preschool.  As I'm sure you remember, he used to come visit for a bit after preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays until it was time to pick up his brother Sam at grade school.  So I called another friend, who just happens to be Ben's mom, and asked if Ben could come over.  She was signing Ben out, talking to someone, and had just changed purses and couldn't find her phone, so I had to leave a message.  (If mothers couldn't also be multi-taskers, what would this world be like??)  Anyway, Ben called me back and I asked him if he wanted to come over and play.  "Yeah!"  So Ben came over and caught me up on Legos and his mom and I caught up in general when we could fit words in edgewise.  Ben got on the Legos website, Mom left to get Sam, and Ben and I printed some pictures of Legos characters.  I had the brilliant idea of putting them in sheet protectors so they'd stay nice.  (Look for my "Nerds Having Fun" calendar coming out later this year - instead of pics, there will be fun tips like, "Make a list!"  "Make another list!"  "List your lists!", etc., and the month pages will be blank so you can draw your own lines and write in the numbers yourself - fun!)  Thought I'd commemorate the visit with camera phone pics - I'd like to say the quality of the pics is due to Ben moving, a rare Kansas earthquake, or your caffeine buzz (vs. mine), but you're probably smarter than that.  And can't you just hear Sam in that last one thinking, "Are you going to start pulling that thing out every time you see me?"  At least I don't pinch your cheeks, buddy.

 

Last week when I sat for Bella, I ate the family's entire box of Peppridge Farm assorted cookies - hey, the box was already open, one or two cookies were gone, and Christmas was over - what did they expect?  Today, our favorite hospice worker came to see Grandpa and brought me a belated Christmas gift - hot chocolate and...cookies!  I whooped in happiness and when Grandpa heard her coming down the stairs, he started clapping.  Y. always brings joy into our lives.  Then Grandpa asked her when she was going to hurry up and bring the batteries for the remote-control helicopter she gave him 2 weeks ago.  Taskmaster.

movie with Sam

Sam and I saw "Despicable Me" today at the local see-it-late/see-it-cheap theater.  We figured this was our third time going to the movies together; we're hoping to make it a regular tradition.  Here we are waiting for the movie to start:

And here we are afterward:

Nowhere to go but up, as far as my taking-pics-with-my-phone skills go, huh?

a few new "boys"

I've been so thankful to have a few new "boys" to play with and cuddle since losing my own.  My cousins have 2 boys (3 if you count the human).  Once in a while the dogs come play over here.  Diesel is a toy fox terrier who loves to fetch.  Or maybe he feels compelled to fetch.  Aren't most terriers Type A?

Again!

I bought that toy for my own dogs - they loved squeaky toys, but you have to push hard to make this one squeak, so they decided it wasn't worth the trouble.  I'm glad it's finally getting some love!

Axl is a doberman with a heart that is about ten times bigger than his brain, I think - which is why I like him so much.  His favorite game appears to be catch the shadow.

When we first met, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why the dog kept staring at the ground.  Then I threw the toy for Diesel and saw Axl move out of the corner of my eye.  I moved again, and he pounced.

After he pounces, Axl tries to bite the shadow - keeps slamming his nose into the ground - then digs at it.  A couple of times I was having so much fun watching him "attack" and dig that I didn't notice the hole he was creating.  That's a big no-no.  I stopped him, checked to see if anyone was looking, then shoved some of the dirt and grass back.  If my uncle asks, it was a giant squirrel.

Axl is smart enough to figure out where I live, though, which happens to be a former sun room at the back of the house.  So when I stop playing and come inside, Axl comes to the window and watches what I'm doing and whines for me to come back out and play.  Of course, I love it.

To see more of Diesel and Axl, and the most ridiculously cute baby I've ever seen - oops, I mean one of the most; your baby was cute, too - visit http://thedreheradventure.blogspot.com/ 

Bronco is a mastiff who belongs to a student's family.  I will never forget meeting him; they live out in the "country" and the dogs roam freely.  I arrived for our first tutoring session, parked my car, leaned down to get some stuff from the floor on the passenger side, sat back up, and found a dog standing right outside my car door, staring me straight in the eye.  Having a huge dog suddenly appear at eye level can be a bit of a shock, so I sat there for a few stunned moments until I heard N's mom yell to his brother to go rescue me.  But the only danger I was in was getting slobbered on.  Bronco is extremely mellow - he just oozes good vibrations, man....  He's also very loveable, and hard to resist.  He likes to shove his head into your lap and against your chest so that you'll pet him.  He's done this a few times while I've been working with N. at the table, and I respond as if I have the attention span of a two-year-old: "The first thing we're going to do today, N, is-....Look, a doggy!"

And here's a couple of self-portraits of another favorite boy of mine, my student N.

He's smarter than he looks.

for the love of Benji and Ben and Sam

I started feeling the need for a dog fix this weekend and got one of the best I could've asked for.  We're always on the lookout for cheap/free movies for Grandpa to enjoy.  Yesterday I was "just browsing" in the movie section in Target (I'm getting much better at looking with my eyes, not my wallet) and found a collection of four Benji movies for $5.  With the combination of missing my dogs, being in Target, and finding a bargain, I was in no condition to resist.  Plus, I wasn't just buying it for myself, I was buying it for Grandpa, too!

I fell in love with Benji in the mid-'70's, an adorable, loving dog who could do amazing tricks.

Today, my "crush" came back.  Grandpa and I watched the first movie, Benji (only because "Gunsmoke" was pre-empted by a movie Gpa didn't want to watch).  I'd thought this was the movie where I'd first discovered Benji, but a look at the release dates makes me think I saw the 2nd movie, For the Love of Benji.  I was in 2nd grade, and I have a clear memory of leaving the theater that night with my parents and running into my teacher and her husband.  I'd made the shocking discovery that teachers were regular people in Kindergarten when I saw that teacher pass us in traffic.  But teachers also have fun?  They go on dates?? 

Anyway, I'm a bit relieved that this first movie wasn't the one I'd loved, because the dialogue and theme song were so hokey I wouldn't have been able to stand it had I not first loved Benji as a little girl.  There's even a slo-mo scene of Benji and his new dog "girlfriend" running through the park and drinking out of the same birdbath together.  Perhaps a clever spoof, but then who wrote the rest of the movie?  (The theme song won a Golden Globe, but that was in the decade that also brought us "Feelings" and "Muskrat Love."  Okay, I was a Captain and Tennille fan then, too, and I liked "Muskrat Love," and anything sung by John Denver, especially "The Garden Song," and I liked the ice skaters on "The Donny and Marie Show" and I had huge crushes on Donny Osmond and Lee Majors [the bionic manly man!]).  Oh well.  Grandpa and I had fun watching Aunt Bee from the AG Show play "Neighbor lady with cat." 

The movie I saw 30+ years ago, For the Love of Benji, is much more sophisticated than the first one, I'm sure.  According to someone on Wikipedia, "In this film, Benji is lost and becomes a stray animal in Athens, Greece, trying to reunite with his family while secret agents pursue him, trying to get a formula which was glued to his paw in order to get it past customs."

In spite of the sap, however, I ended up teary-eyed at the end of the movie today because Benji reminds me a lot of Oliver, and he was trying to save the kidnapped children and no one was listening to him and he made gut-wrenching sad puppy-dog faces.  I hate to ruin the movie for you, but it has a happy ending, and I got some of the dog fix I needed.

Later, my friend Ben called.  Ben is 3 years old (almost 4) and is the youngest son of a very close and old (in the good way!) friend of mine.  He and his brother Sam call me Auntie Kerri, and I love it.  Ben called me a few times last week to ask me to come over and play, but I had a cold and couldn't go.  He goes to preschool right across the street from my new digs and comes over with his mom to visit sometimes after school.  Today he called and I was honestly thrilled to tell him I was all better and just about to call him, too!  We played at his house and he told me everything about Legos. 

Actually, I doubt it's everything, because Sam has the ultimate memory for facts. I need to get into his will before he goes on "Jeopardy...."  Sam is the friend who will teach me next summer how to jump off a diving board all by myself.

I love being a grownup.