I was going to use "erudite" instead of "articulate", but chickened out because I wasn't sure if I spelled it right. At my current level of progesterone-induced fog, I often wonder if I'm not making up words. Actually, there are days when I think I must be making up the entire English language. I say things to my kids like, "Do not swing that big stick or you will hit your brother in the face," and all activity continues as if I had never said anything. I know they can hear (they've all been tested), so maybe it's me speaking a foreign language. Or perhaps somewhere in the immature ear canal the words, "Stop" and "No", get garbled into something that sounds like "gr%$#!-beep!" In other words, clearly nonsense.

This morning I rescued the neighbor's dog, who had gotten herself completely tangled around the steel railpost on the steps leading down from our yard to theirs. I discovered a Cracker Barrell in East Greenbush when I got lost trying to follow the mapquest directions to the kids' doctor, but in spite of almost driving to Massachusetts, I managed to get Kate there only 15 minutes late. Then I spent quite a lot of time in the doctor's office saying things like, "Don't bang on the screens, get out of the ficus tree, put the dirt back, calm down, don't be so loud, no, we have to stay in here, don't touch the toilet seat -- no, stop, ack!" -- nonsense again. On the way home we stopped at Walmart and bought cupcakes for Ethan's birthday (he's two today :-) and a woman jammed her cart into me because I was either taking up too much of the checkout with my three kids and already big tummy or because I wasn't moving fast enough, I'm not quite sure which, and then, because they never have those bars that you use to separate your groceries from someone else's, she smushed her groceries in really close to ours and the checker rang up at least 6 of her things on my bill before I noticed and said, "Stop!"

You know, I used to have such a good vocabulary. Now I seem to use the same words over and over again. Strange.

Tomorrow we are going to look at a log house with green and pink carpet and a huge pond and an inflated price tag on which we may actually make an offer. But only if we can put a toddler-proof fence around the pond and talk the seller's price down so we can replace green and pink carpet and also give the house some semblence of a kitchen. The Jenn-Air grill with 2 burners circa 1982 will have to go.

Of course, we also need to sell our house in Missouri, but... details, you know? My immature ear canals are not hearing them today.