sentence, mill, mowers

After all my venting of the last post, I feel I may have done j a disservice. I am trying to focus on the positive things right now. This morning j said, "Mama, j want-a applesauce" when he woke up. I was only too happy to oblige. Real, actual sentences with nouns and verbs: they are so wonderful to hear. I give credit to the applesauce; it is very--in j's words--"mmm, tasty!". P makes it himself, and it's much easier with the food mill he just bought last month. The man loves his food mill.

Today I went to work in the morning. When I returned P was ripping down the ceiling paneling in what we hope will be the basement playroom... in the 95 degree heat. Yikes. Hopefully the garbage people will take the bags of this stuff tomorrow, though it just stormed tonight so I'm sure it's a nasty mess. If they do take the stuff, tomorrow we shall treat the room to some serious shop-vaccing.

Later, after a trip to the grocery store and then dinner, I decided to pick up the assorted random things lying about the yard and somehow ended up mowing the lawn for 30 minutes on the mower's way to the garage. Sadly, 30 minutes only does a patch of the yard, in part because we have a good sized yard--but mostly because we use a push mower. We do this to avoid using gas. We are trying to avoid using gas for environmental reasons, but P has told the neighbors when they ask (and they do ask--I think they think we're nuts) that it's because gas is too expensive. I should have been better prepared with this excuse when a man driving down the street literally stopped his car to reminicise about how his grandfather ("not my father, my grandfather--and I'm 58!") used to use one, to ask how much it cost, and to mention how he heard on talk radio how people are now buying them "to be 'green'." I detected a little bit of distaste in the last comment, so I just nodded and continued mowing. But then he kept looking at me expectantly, and before I knew it he had jumped out of his car and was asking if he could try it out. He pushed the thing around in amazement, and then decided that he should tell me how to use it ("let's pull the blade up a little higher" and "be careful of your toes").