Work

No new comments from Tim. Zip. He's mainlining books. That seems to provide sufficient social interaction.

The neighbors hired Zach and Alex to dig flower beds around the edges of their front lawn. This involves removing quite a lot of sod. This has reminded me that Alex loves to dig. When he was a little mite of two, he used to walk crisply out the door each morning and go straight to his "office," a little hole in the dirt right next to the house. His "work" was digging. When I say that the hole was right next to the house, I don't mean roundabout. And when I say he worked...well, anyway, he successfully laid bare about a yard's length of the foundation, right down to the foot, of our little house on Radford Drive. He loves the neighbor project too. Today he got off the school bus, dropped his backpack, started digging, and didn't stop until called for dinner at 6:30. (Of course, he left his backpack in a heap right next to the piles of sod, see previous post.) I wonder profession this indicates?

Nigel, at any rate, is going to be a fire fighter. This was always in the cards, but then we went to the fire station on a preschool field trip today. Those field trips to the fire station are always fine--all the moms get scared and collect the red dots for the windows; moms are also the only ones who ever ask questions and the questions are always about pulling over in traffic and whether or not Firefighter Jeff REALLY wants us to sit tight in the left hand turn lane when we hear the siren. This time, though, the station boasted only two firefighters (budget cuts) and either because they are both naturally great with kids, or because the lack of laughing peers reduced their inhibitions, they did a terrific job. One donned all his bunker gear and crawled around on his hands and knees, sounding exactly like Darth Vader, smiling through the mask and urging the kids to pound on the floor so he could find them and get them out. The other took us out to see the vehicles. He let the kids sit in the ambulance, crawl around the engine, open doors at will, sit in the drivers seat and wiggle the wheel, and finally lined them up against the wall, opened the bay door, turned on the truck, and fired up the lights and siren. The moms then asked their questions, murmured approvingly to each other about the obliging firefighters, and turned to go. At that very moment, just like they had one of those "page me" buttons Brett is always talking about, their radios crackled to life and they got called to a fire. They said a speedy goodbye, donned the gear, jumped into the truck, and sped off, lights flashing and sirens wailing.

I've been thinking that it's not a bad idea. You sit around, do preschool shows, tidy up the gear, shine up the truck, have competitions to see who can get on the gear fastest, and then every so often speed off to a fire. Might work out for Nigel. Thank goodness, since I think he's completely and totally sold.