The kids were weird today. Isabella read a whole book in ten minutes with hardly a mistake. The book was about Peter whose family was moving -- unhappily for Peter. So Peter's sister Lee helped him box up his books, and Grammy helped him box up his toys, and so on; and on the other end everyone helped him unpack everything and set it all up, and Peter was like, "it's my room again!" Isabella is moving back to Colorado some time not during first grade, but other than that she's not sure. There were some parallels drawn but she's not going to mope around so everyone does all the work for her. Mainly she was just anxious to get to gym, which is where the rest of her class was for some reason. Anyway, it's amazing how a month ago she'd have read only half that book in 30 minutes. And believe me -- I didn't do it. It seems her new fluency hatched during April vacation.
���� Amoi was basically delirious. I met him in the computer room where he was slowly uncovering a drawing of a teepee by correctly adding for example 39 and 48. As we walked up to the library (he walking backwards, neck craned straight back) he told me how he only liked five things: grilled cheese, chicken mcnuggets, videogames, gym, and motorcycles. I know for a fact that's not true, but the point was that he doesn't like math. There was a book fair at the library (he doesn't like them) so we had to use his classroom. I decided we should try to match our tone of voice to content, in the book we were about to read. Our secondary focus was to use different voices for the different characters' speech. We arranged nine paper clips on the desk -- stood them upright and imagined them to be our audience. Until Amoi laid them all down and declared them sleeping, they got a real show. Amoi wasn't really in the mood to read; despite his moods though he's always game, and today there were some absolutely manic, neck-whipping, arm-flailing results. Our book was about a king who had more wild and farm animals than any other king on Earth -- but no successors. The king devised a contest that involved these two preoccupations of his: children around the kingdom would try to impress him with their animals and the winner-child would become heir to the throne. Well, out in the kingdom there was this girl whose name I've forgotten and her old work horse, Gus. I'll call her "Lee." Gus didn't do any of the fancy song and dance (literally) that the other animals (pigs, dogs, ducks) did with their children, so on the day of judgement Lee had no animal to submit and figured she'd just ride Gus into town to watch the proceedings. You can guess what happened. You'll have to guess -- I don't know for sure. With Lee in her shrill girl voice admiring pigs jumping through hoops and the king in his deep booming voice dismissing the same pigs, Amoi decided to depart from the written story and book Gus and a bunch of ducks on a bus trip for which they were horribly late. It goes on, but my butt is starting to hurt.

���� I went running on the beach after work. It was warm and there were a lot of other runners. They all stayed on the road though.

���� Later on, I went to Stop and Shop. It was my first real grocery shopping trip in about a year. There was quiet, groovy music playing in the store. As long and patience-requiring as shopping with Becky used to be, I really missed her there tonight. I took my time and was there for almost 90 minutes. I bought what looked good.


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