Here comes the tooth

For Abel:

Karin took Daniel to the county fair.

I was very worried. I thought he’d run away or climb out of the Ferris wheel. He didn’t.

I visited ancestors with Abel and Samuel. Samuel doesn’t like the fair.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m reading Pride and Prejudice.

I’m re-reading Lewis’s Space Trilogy (it’ll be my first time through Perelandra, actually). It’s better than I remember it. Then again, I was twelve or thirteen when I last read Out of the Silent Planet.

I’d forgotten that Weston, the baddie, is a longtermist.

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A good bit from a good Substack:

LARPing as an Inkling is at least 15% of the point of the classical education movement. I say this with only love in my heart.

Samuel: “Dad, what’s LARPing?”

John-Paul: “You don’t need to know, Son.”

House hunting, pt. 1066 and all that

Karin & I took Samuel to the St. Joseph County fair, and, for the first time, he saw cows, chickens, horses, hogs, goats, and kangaroos. Then we drove across town and walked through a well-kept house with fifties decor. Martin, Mary, and David were with us. Everyone was very positive about this house, and so, a few hours later, we made as handsome an offer as we could; it was refused.

Tonight: two more houses.

The 4th, etc.

Our son is able to distinguish light from dark. Karin shone her phone’s flashlight onto her belly, and I could feel our son kicking.

Ana & David also are expecting their first child. Her name is Ada, and she’ll be born this month.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On the eve before July 4, Martin baked beans so that he & Mary could take them to his family’s outing on the lake.

Morning arrived. Martin’s brother called to say that the boat’s motor wouldn’t function. The outing was canceled.

“We could still go to the lakehouse,” said Martin.

“No,” said his brother, “it’s no use.”

It was rather like “An Evening on the River,” the penultimate chapter of Stuart Little, in which Stuart’s boating troubles make him so sulky that he cuts short his date with little Harriet Ames.

Martin & Mary took the baked beans to some other friends in South Bend. They ate the beans with some pasta.

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Karin & I also had a disappointing Independence Day. We went to the county fair. Karin couldn’t go on the rides, of course, so our main goal was to view the livestock. But it was painfully hot and bright, and, like us, the beasts were suffering. Even the chickens were panting with tongues out.

We got ice-cream which melted in our hands before we could gulp it down (and when we tried to do so, the cold tore up our insides).

We wanted to view the monster truck show at seven o’clock. But at that hour the sun was still beaming down on us from an unsparing, cloudless, California-like sky, and we could hardly stand to remain out of doors (besides, the metal benches at the monster truck show would’ve burnt us). We cut our losses, went home, and watched The Hangover.

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The next couple of days brought torrential rain. I would’ve been glad, except that today’s rain coincided with a graduation party for the son of Karin’s boss. The party was held out of doors, in a park pavilion, with water, water, everywhere.

“You look like you’re having fun,” said the ungracious teenager.

“I am,” I told him. “Congratulations.”

He didn’t say any more to me after that.