Sunday

So I was getting over the flu and then I got sick again, just a cold, I think? But wiping. Me. Out. Three weeks post-flu and I was still feeling draggy, and now I’m useless.

Or mostly useless. I just submitted my Downton recap (watched it earlier via DVD), which will go live at GeekMom tonight or tomorrow. [Updated: here it is.] I’d love it if you’d drop by tomorrow and join the conversation there. (Trying to keep Downton comments off this blog because Jane isn’t caught up yet.)

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Yesterday, Rilla came to me (lolling in my bed, trying to read, mostly coughing) wanting to play a game. She had two small foam circles, each about the size of a silver dollar. It was a guessing game: what are they now? The child’s inventiveness was spectacular. She started me off easy: boy (one circle) with rainhat (the other circle folded into a tiny triangle). I mustered a ladybug. She countered with an eclipse. My efforts: a taco, some earrings. Child’s play compared to my six-year-old’s contributions.

Once, she rolled both circles into little tubes and held them side by side, bending them a bit with her fingers. I was stumped.

“They’re wavy smell lines!” she explained. “You know, like in comics? How they show you something’s giving off a smell?”

Safe to say I would not have guessed that, not it a million years.

At another point, she held both circles up to her face, pressing them haphazardly against her chin and a cheek.

Chicken pox.

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We also spent a long time yesterday—Wonderboy, Rilla, and I—playing with Google Maps, visiting our favorite local park…Grandma’s house…the Eiffel Tower…Australia. The kids’ favorite part was “walking” up our street in street view, trying to figure out how long ago the Google car drove by. Daffodils in the neighbor’s yard and oranges on the tree across the street, which means it was about this time of year. Last year, because the new owner of the house over the way hadn’t taken down the little pomegranate tree yet. (Why’d she do it? We don’t know.) Sometime after Scott and I switched sides of the driveway, because the minivan’s on the right. There’s a smallish window of time there, and it’s a bit creepy to think of all this quiet surveillance. And yet fun to wonder what we were doing right then, just beyond the camera’s reach — reading a book? eating scones? messing around on Google Maps?

This reminded Scott of the day a few years back when he was on his way home from work and found himself driving behind the Google car for several blocks. We did a search for the street, and sure enough, there he is—signing “I love you” to me.

Man, that guy knows how to play the long game.