Mowing; puzzling; sketching; x-raying

Earlier today: a difficult mowing, with dull blades, in the August heat.

I haven’t entirely recovered.

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Samuel has been learning the parts of speech. He discourses on pronouns, adjectives, and prepositions. His interest was sparked by Mad Lib-type activities.

He also likes crosswords. He doesn’t solve them himself. He forces his parents to fill them in. It’d been years since I’d done any. This week, I filled in four.

I see how a person could get addicted to doing crosswords. Each correct answer lets in a brief flood of dopamine.

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“Say a ‘A’,” Daniel requests – he means write or draw, not say – and I draw an “A” upon the screen of the children’s Etch A Sketch Doodle. It delights him. He gets his dopamine hit.

“Say a ‘B’,” he says.

And so on. “Say ‘Mercury’. Say ‘Venus’. … ”

Samuel takes the device and draws two thick parallel lines. “I made an x-ray of my legs,” he says.