Elf Sternberg

Although Omaha's allergies have been making her miserable, we still managed to spend Saturday having a good time. Omaha and I spent four hours at Kouryou-chan's school, doing our usual gardening stint. Instead of the gutters-- there hasn't been much rain in the past month-- I mowed the lawn for the elementary kids. You can tell exactly how long my extension cord is, because there's an arc south of the barn that shows the reach from the lawnmover.

Omaha and I also weeded the front flower beds. While we worked, Kouryou-chan kept herself busy reading through a stack of unread Cricket magazines, a pretty good publication for her age group.

Nobody else showed up. Omaha's fed up with parents' willingness to engage in high-profile things like building a new playset for the primary school, or a new gazebo, or running the annual auction, but a Saturday morning every month to do maintenance seems to be too much for them.

After that, we went to a fast-food restaurant, what I've recently heard described as "grease, salt and sugar hurled at you through an open window" (not an inaccurate description). Kouryou-chan spoke for herself, and ordered for herself as well. The woman behind the counter admitted she had a four-month old, praised Kouryou-chan's smarts and poise, and asked if I did anything to make her like that. I ran down the usual list-- be a reading family, have books in the house, give her her own library card and bookshelf, and watch foreign cartoons with subtitles. It's a hard list, because item #1 isn't an action-- it's something you are.

Kouryou-chan and I played a little of our new mutual obsession, Sonic Unleashed, the last PS2 title in the Sonic the Hedgehog series-- in which Sonic becomes a werehog at night, with a completely different set of powers. It's quite fun in its own way, although when you're informed that you must find "99 Sun Medals and 65 Moon Medals" to open some of the doors and get the extra lives and badges, you know you're going to be grinding a lot of levels to get enough lives to defeat the big baddy.

After that, Kouryou-chan and I made dinner: lasagne. We walked to the grocery store together, where I bought the cheese, semolina, sausage, and wine, and some beer as well. I've really been enjoying a beer called "Hell or High Watermelon," which is an unbelievably light and tasty beverage.

Kouryou-chan made the sauce (sausage, onions, garlic, canned tomatoes, wine, basil, oregano, salt) while I made the dough. We traded long enough for her to learn how to separate eggs, through which she said "Yuuuck!" and "Eeeeewwwww!" as the whites dribbled from her fingers.

I rolled out the dough and boiled the strips briefly, then we assembled it into an awesome lasagne of insane calories and taste.

It's really been a great day with the kidlet.