dajamou

Where's the village?

Friday, October 27, 2006

Friendship.

I have some friends who live a few hours away from here, L and D. They're friends from when they (and I) lived in Portland. Not my best friends, but close enough that we try to get together whenever they come down to the burgh. And close enough that we can while away many hours gabbing and not have those uncomfortable social silences.

They actually come to town more frequently than they'd like, because D has a liver condition that requires that he come to UPMC for treatment a lot. They don't have the facilities he needs in their little town. So down they come, driving 3 hours each way. For a while it was every other month.

This past spring D went on the liver transplant list. Last Thursday, he got the call that there was a liver for him and he should drive down to Pittsburgh right away. So his wife, L, called me at 5:30 on Thursday and asked me if I could find them a hotel.

Pshaw, I said, why not stay here? We've got the room, even with dajamou's grandma staying with us for the week.

They were profuse in their gratitude, and couldn't stop saying thank you thank you thank you every time we talked over the next couple of hours. I understood that this was a last-minute thing and it's hard to ask for help like this of someone you don't see or talk to very often. But I was fine with it. I was more than fine; I was actually grateful to them for needing help from me.

I kept meaning to tell them this, and even prepared a little speech in my head in between the numerous phone calls to plan things like who would sleep where. It went something like this: "Honey. Listen. In the two years I've lived here in Pittsburgh, I have yet to have a friend who is a fraction as close to me as you and all the other Chicks were when we were in Portland. So I can't tell you how good it would make me feel to have someone who doesn't think twice about dropping by and plopping their ass on my couch -- or guest bed, as the case may be. I miss that, I really do. So please. You're doing me a favor by letting me do you this favor."

Or something of the sort. I was feeling all good and clever and eloquent.

Of course, when she called and tried to thank me again, all that cleverness and eloquence came out thusly:

"Shut up, already."

Fortunately, I think she understood anyway.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

BTDT

Found a link to this site on b-may. Dammit, now I have more blogs to read. Fie upon ye, Evany! Fie!



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Friday, October 13, 2006

Hope for the evening

Last night I had one of the worst anxiety/depression episodes of my life. Dajadaddy held me and rubbed my head until I could sleep. It was a low point, let me tell ya. Kind of colors the whole next day and then some.

But.

I spent the whole day playing with the dajamou. And at some point I actually started to enjoy it again. And then this evening I came across this. Not that I had to dig around for it; it was like #2 on Youtube or something. But it was what I needed to see.

There is beauty in the world beyond our ability to comprehend. Thank whatever greater power you like for that.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

And now Mrs. Kennedy to the rescue.

I can do this forever! Just copy and paste things that other clever people say or write! I'll never have to be creative again!*

Over on Fussy, Mrs. Kennedy describes a dog thusly: "And when she sleeps it sounds like two drunken lumberjacks are cutting through a rotten redwood with a rusty crosscut saw."










*Actually, I just wanted to post this because it's been a shitty day and it's one of the only things that made me laugh.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Dajamou to the rescue.

I have a drop-down menu in my Safari bookmarks bar, just for blogs I read. (Let's not even get into the fact that I don't do RSS feeds or any of that other hi-tech optimization stuff. I'm comfortable with where I am, thank you.) And tucked in there, between Dad Gone Mad and Dooce, is this blog. Not out of any narcissistic desire to read what I've written, because usually it makes me want to sink through the floor. It's there so that I can remember that I have this blog thing and I'm supposed to be actually writing in it. The problem is that, due to its alphabetical placement (yes, I'm a nut-case who alphabetizes her blogs) between two of the funniest blogs EVER, I get this total inferiority complex every time my little arrow cursor stumbles across the "dajamou" title in the menu. So I wince a little and skip it most of the time, thinking I'll write something later.

Then the dajamou (the real kid, not the blog) comes along with one of her gems of cuteness, and I'm saved from actually having to think of anything creative.

To set the scene: She was having a snack of frozen fruit, and she was asking me how to make grapes, pineapples, peaches and such. And I was telling her that they grew on vines and trees and such. Then she asked me how to make water. We had talked before about water getting treated and cleaned before it goes in the pipes for us to drink; but this was all dajamou:

I know how you make water! First you check it to make sure there's no poop or pee in it. Then you add a little bit of salt to make it more sweeter. But you can't really taste it because it's all mixed in. It's VERY important to mix it all up. And then you add lemon to it to make it stronger for grownups.

And then it goes in the pipes. And one pipe goes into outer space, and one pipe goes to airports, and one pipe goes to the cities, and one goes to all the houses!

And then there's a pipe that goes around and around the world and it carries asphalt.

(There was more here that I was unable to transcribe, about the asphalt not being real asphalt but actually an asphalt drink that has chocolate and bread in it.)

And that's how you make water pies!

And then you put it in the oven, and when the timer beeps and it cools, it's READY TO EAT!

Except if it's melted you can drink it.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

A moment in the life of the dajamou.

The dajamou was talking to the picture of dajadaddy on my phone:
"Hi Daddy, I miss you too."
And when the screen went dark to save the battery she said, "Daddy, where'd you go?"
She pressed a button to get the picture back and said, "There you are Daddy, peek-a-boo!"
And then she looked at it for a minute like she was listening to something, and snickered and said, "You're so funny Daddy. Good-bye!"
Then she closed the phone.