Man Date

Isaac and I just got back from a boy's night on the town: We went up to the Chatterbox Pub up the street and had dinner and played "Tee Vee Games" (as Isaac calls it). Isaac has been talking about going there again for weeks, and loves playing Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo, and a game of Candyland too. Mostly Mario. He likes to play Mario, and asks me to play "Moe-WEE-gi" (Luigi). Of course my Mario chops were honed to a fine edge from my year at La Maison Francaise, where my Super Nintendo not only dropped several students' GPAs, but also gave the Native Speaker Jean Michel the idea to go back to France and start Guillemot, which became UbiSoft, which basically was a hugely successful video game company.

Anyway, Isaac and I had a great evening out. He had a hamburger, I had a jerk chicken pizza, and we spent almost 2 hours just having fun.

Other things:
Bella woke up in a TERRIBLE mood yesterday: Pamela and I had tidied up the house and had inadvertently destroyed a space station she had built (a blanket on the floor surrounded by dining room chairs). She saw this first thing and was in tears. She stormed off to the basement. After a few minutes I went down to check on her, and she wasn't talking, but I could see she was drawing something, and wanted me to leave her alone. This was good - we've been working on having her have creative outlets for her feelings.

5 minutes later, she came upstairs with a thundercloud, with raindrops, cut out of construction paper, held over her head with pipecleaners. I almost died, it was so adorable. She got a big hug, and everything was ok. We talked about other things she could have over her head (lightning for anger, sun for happy). But I was very proud of her for recognizing her mood, and doing something to lighten it. And did I mention it was completely adorable?

As Friday was kind of nice, we let Zinsser out the back door (full yard access, not just his poopoo palace). Pamela saw him chomping on something, and shortly thereafter he seemed to be choking - coughing up phlegm. Got us all worried, and by 10pm Friday night we were sufficiently worried to take him to the emergency vet. We got x-rays, and found that there was no pinecone his trachea... but still the coughing and gagging continued. Monday we took him to the daytime vet, and he has Kennel Cough. Turns out a cough sounds a lot like a puke for a dog. Poor Zinsser is now on Antibiotics, and he really needs to rest. He tries to play, and runs around for a minute, then falls down coughing. It breaks our hearts.

So we're giving Zinsser lots of cuddles.

Isaac is in the bath now, and I'm hoping it chills him out a little - he was excited to the point of speaking in tongues when he found out I was taking him to the Chatterbox. I even asked if he'd prefer to go to Edinborough Park, and he said "another day, tonight Chatterbox!!!". So with the 'Box out of the way and a lot of Mario played, I'm hoping he'll fall off to sleep nice and easy.