Wild Binky Hunt

Last Thursday, I did a little babysitting. My 2 1/2-year-old nephew.

He wears a binky all the time. It's attached to a strap that's attached to his clothing. But frequently it falls off.

The third time he asked me where his binky had gone, I had no idea. (The first two times I knew exactly where it was and pointed it out.) I asked him when he had had it last.

Yes, I know that was a stupid question to ask a 2-year-old. I did it anyway.

Then we went on a binky hunt. Where could the thing be?

For some reason, this hunt required me to affect an accent. It was sort of quasi British with a bit of a Southern twang thrown in. It was a strange voice. BooBoo thought so as well.

"Stop talking strange," he told me.

I suppose I should have. But I was in a silly mood. So, even though I knew I was annoying the child, I kept it up. Probably to annoy him.

Since "stop talking strange" didn't work, BooBoo asked me to just "stop talking".

We found the binky. It was under the dining table. And then BooBoo found Russian cartoons on YouTube and mellowed out for the night.

The silly voice? I was done with it by then.

Cold

"Girl Scout cookies! Get your Girl Scout cookies! Four dollars a box or five for twenty!"

On Sunday I supervised one of my niece's Girl Scout cookie booth shifts. Archer Girl is very motivated to sell. Last year she did a ridiculous number of boxes. I don't know what her goal was this year, but I'm sure she wants to beat last year's number.  

Two weekends ago, we had very nice weather. But at the end of last week, the temperature dropped. Saturday we had some major rain. Then Sunday the sun came out, but it remained chilly.  

It was cold for us. A forecasted 55 degree high is a very cold day around these parts.  

I broke out my heavy jacket. I've never worn this jacket before. I was glad I bought it, though.  

Our location was in the shade. And the wind blew. It was so windy that we didn't take the cookie boxes out of their cases for fear they would blow away. They might have. The wind was blowing that hard.  

Then the first of our three hours was slow. Very slow. We sold a grand total of three boxes.  

It was kind of a pathetic sight. The girls were bundled under several layers. They shivered in the cold. And Archer Girl is on crutches. (She broke her ankle.) You'd think more people would by sympathetic.  

Things picked up in the second hour. I don't think it was the girls looking pathetic, though. Girl Scout cookies are popular. It just took time for those who had not been hit up by another of the many booths that have been set up over the last couple weeks to bump into us.  

My job was to keep a tally of what was sold. At the end of the shift, I attempted to add it all up. My arithmetic skills are kind of weak, but I should be able to count hash marks, right? It was more difficult than it should have been.

Apparently, the cold makes me stupid.  

As we were driving off, Archer Girl asked me if I had seen her gloves. I hadn't. She was sure she lost them. Turns out that I put them in with our stuff without even realizing that I had done it.

We ended up selling...um, yeah, I can't recall. 60-something boxes. I was really kind of out of it at the end there.

It's supposed to warm up tomorrow. Maybe then something of my intelligence will return. Maybe?  

Modern Games

It was Monday. Or Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday. Oh bother. This past week has completely run together. What day is this, anyway?

I was watching Blondie, Detritus, and the baby. I think I was watching the baby's show, or perhaps I was tracking the baby as he tried to get into anything that he wasn't supposed to have (because it would have been too easy if he only played with that he was allowed to have). Blondie and Detritus were keeping themselves busy, so it took a moment before I started listening to their game.

Blondie had her Nintendo DS. Detritus had a toy cell phone. Blondie pretended her DS was a cell phone, and she was getting a text from somebody or she was texting her mother or both. Then Detritus took off his shirt ("I'm hot"), and Blondie "snapped a picture" of him.

Blondie: "I just emailed that to all your friends. Now I'm putting it on Facebook."

Detritus: "I'm putting this on my Facebook." (I'm not sure how Blondie's appearance would have shamed her on Facebook, but Detritus phrased it as a threat.)

Blondie: "I'm deleting your pictures from Facebook and putting up this."

Blondie had "snapped" another shot of the shirtless Detritus. Before Detritus could figure out another threat, I told him that if he perhaps put his shirt back on, Blondie wouldn't have anything to threaten him with.

Threatening to put up embarrassing photos on Facebook. That's a game I didn't play as a kid.