Glen Davis

Dana has start­ed using two word sen­tences occas­sion­al­ly.

Usu­al­ly it’s just a stock phrase, like “get down” (please put me on the ground) or “all done” or “thank you” or “hold you” (I’d like a hug, please) or even “wuv you.”

Every once in a while, though, she’ll come up with an orig­i­nal sen­tence. Like “wipe fluffles” (my stuffed lamb has gone poop and needs a dia­per change) or “goose honk.”

But a few days ago she came up with a zinger. I was being my usu­al goofy self and she looked me straight in the eye and said, “Dad­dy sil­ly.”

Ouch. So young and yet so per­cep­tive.

I’ve held off on post­ing this for a few days because I’ve been on the busy side. As my broth­er men­tioned, our fam­i­ly dog died last week back in Louisiana. Her name was Mis­sy, and she was one of the best dogs ever.

She was a pret­ty fun­ny dog. For instance, she used to try to herd my par­ents as though they were sheep. Quite com­i­cal.

It sounds as though she died very peace­ful­ly, but I know it’s a hard blow to my par­ents. They both loved her very much. I did, too, but I’ve been liv­ing a few thou­sand miles away from her and so it less­ened the blow.

My dad says he does­n’t want anoth­er dog, but he’s a big soft­ie. Some pathet­ic look­ing ani­mal will turn up on his doorstep soon­er or lat­er, and he’ll adopt it.

But it will nev­er replace Mis­sy.

Dana is a source of une­nend­ing amaze­ment to me. This morn­ing when she woke up we had the fol­low­ing con­ver­sa­tion:

Me: “Dana, did you have any dreams last night?”
Dana (in a lit­tle 19-month-old just-woke-up voice): “Dream?”
Me: “Dreams are the pic­tures you see when you’re sleep­ing and your eyes are closed.”
Dana: “Goose.”
Me: “You had a dream about a goose?”
Dana: “Ya.”
Me: “What did the goose do in your dream?”
Dana: “Honk honk.”

I was melt­ing.

I had been try­ing to get her to under­stand the con­cept of dreams off and on for a few weeks now, and while she’s always seemed inter­est­ed she’s nev­er actu­al­ly answered my ques­tion with any­thing oth­er than “ya”.

In case you’re skep­ti­cal, I’m pret­ty sure she under­stood my ques­tion and did actu­al­ly have a dream about a goose. She has­n’t seen a goose in weeks (not even in her pic­ture books). If one was on her mind it arrived there some­how oth­er than a recent real-world expe­ri­ence.

Besides which, she told mom­my the same sto­ry, “Dream. Goose. Honk honk.” when we went to get mom­my up a few min­utes lat­er.

Grand­par­ents are rat mag­nets. At least, that is the con­clu­sion I am rapid­ly com­ing to. As faith­ful read­ers no doubt recall, we had rat prob­lems when my in-laws last vis­it­ed (cri­sis, cli­max, ambigu­ous con­clu­sion).

Any­way, back to the present: my moth­er is vis­it­ing and we have anoth­er rat to con­tend with. We saw evi­dence about a week ago but we set out some poi­son in a child-inac­ces­si­ble loca­tion and the rat con­sumed a lot of it. We assumed it was dead, but today we saw its tail while prepar­ing lunch.

We were mind­ing our own busi­ness when my moth­er noticed a humon­gous rat tail stick­ing out from beneath the dish­wash­er. It was larg­er than a very large worm and small­er than a small snake. Prob­a­bly about 7 inch­es long. Assum­ing it was­n’t moon­ing us I’ll assume a tail length of around 8 or 9 inch­es total.

Paula is less than pleased. I think she views it as a per­son­al insult to her home­mak­ing skills. I pre­fer to think of it as part of a larg­er eco­log­i­cal issue involv­ing our apart­ment com­plex, the weath­er, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing a her­met­i­cal­ly sealed apart­ment.

But Paula is on the warpath. To delve fur­ther into cliche, it’s on.

updat­ed 11/7/2005 to soothe the sav­age beast that is fam­i­ly