What's funny about this is, I saved all the kleenexes because I'm cheap. They're in a pot on our dining room buffet.

There are scant few places we can stash a harmless kleenex box without it leading to this grisly scene. She will find it; there is a way.

Tonight was our first night at ECFE with the girls. I forget what ECFE stands for specifically, but it essentially means "parents and kids coming together in complete anarchy with free tea". It's hard to judge it after just one session, but here are some observations:

- The people running the thing were ridiculously friendly and obviously aces at working with kids.

- Lots of people have very interesting names. I love cool names, and considered lying about mine when I saw other people's name tags. One woman had a boy named Davidae, which I mispronounced as ending in a long 'I' sound, which is thanks to my latin class. Am I right Dad?!? Can I get a latin shout out from Ft. Myers?

- When the parents separated from the kids to hang out in another room, there was tea and coffee and a package with one cookie in it. One cookie. I didn't get it. It's not like I showed up late; that was the layout when we went in.

- I really liked the guy teaching it, a very funny guy named San (see number 2 above. Okay, he was Japanese, so that doesn't count), and was sad to hear him say that he was only a substitute and won't be our normal teacher.

- Because we spend half the class away from the kids and we put them straight to bed when we get home, it really feels like I didn't see them at all today.

- Another parent mentioned how fun ECFE classes are because they get to discuss with the kid afterwards what happened during the separation period. That was not the case with us. I asked Abby and Lily what happened on the way home; Lily said, "Whoooaaaahh whooaaaaaah!", which I take to mean that they were waterboarded.

- As fun as these parents' group things are, they still sometimes feel like an AA meeting. The free coffee. The introductions. The venting. The passing out of forms and handouts. The nodding; the sympathizing.

- Being back in a grade school makes me want to go back to grade school. It was a cool old building, and the coat rooms were first-rate.

That is all. I will undoubtedly grace these pages with more opinions when I've had a chance to form them.

Here are a few random photos.

Day twenty two.

aaammmyumm yum yummm yumm (sic)

I took this from my back porch while trying to get a powderhorn365 photo. I thought it was a cool shot, and notable in that it is a 30 second exposure and Venus has moved a noticable amount. Crazy.

Big ceramic dog at the MIA from two stories up.