Happy-making things

* Last month, B's union voted to approve their first contract since 2009. A good contract, even, with none of the nonsense like unlimited furlough days that had made them understandably balk before.

So B is getting a raise, and has raises guaranteed for two more years. Yippee! I had almost forgotten what it's like to have our income go up.

* We got to go see a movie in the theatre last month. And it was rated higher than PG! Captain America, to be specific. Good golly, that was a great movie. And B and I both have Friday off, so we could conceivably abandon our children at the baby warehouse and go see another movie. The mind boggles.

* That the elderly man who came into my library last weekend and told us he needed to drink a lot of water because of a medical procedure did not then actually tell us about said medical procedure. Because last year, he came in and started telling us the world's most boring and convoluted story about slipping on the ice. I had managed to mostly tune him out despite the fact that his indoor voice is only slightly quieter than a jet engine, when suddenly I heard "And then they stuck a needle in my male organ!" Then he went on to say he didn't know why they would stick a needle in his penis and since he was in a Catholic hospital, maybe it was because he's not Catholic?

That... certainly gives a hair-raising impression of Catholic hospitals, no? Of course, the last two times I've been in a Catholic hospital, they stuck a needle in my spine (maybe because I don't have a penis?), but since they then proceeded to slice open my abdomen while I was awake and remove a baby, I was really pretty grateful for the needle in the spine. Who knows what they would have done to me if I were Catholic.

Two

Today, my baby turned two. It doesn't seem possible, but with all he's doing these days, he's clearly not our tiny baby any more. He just started walking downstairs holding onto the railing, and figured out how to open the patio door so he can run out into the backyard, a paradise from which he feels he is far too often barred.

Happy birthday James. If your third year is half as delightful as your first two were, we will be very lucky indeed.