"*Illusions*, Michael."

~*~

Cmonkey's verbal centers are a roiling stew of acquisition and alchemy.

She doesn't have a discrete list of words that she adds to, building
day by day until the verbal explosion. She's verbally imploded
instead.

I have no idea how many words she knows because her vocabulary is an
iceberg; for every clear word she polishes like a found stone for days
('shoe' and 'pee' are recent favorites), she has a boxful of prototype
words squirreled away for special occasions. They come out muddy and
far from deft, a little kid pulling quarters from behind your ear, but
they come out in sentences.

"This is my bed."
"You read it to me."
"I give to you."

Diagrammable sentences! With verb phrases! And the inkling of
abstract concepts! [/parental squee]

~*~

In other news, the tilt of the earth has made running impossible
except on weekends. I'm thinking of trying to go out at lunch one day
a week, to tide me over. I miss it and want to do it more, which is
nothing I ever considered.

~*~

Luckily we stopped the truck before we ran over any of the dozens
of kittens sleeping in the road, dots of fur curled up in divots in
the concrete and the grass, one almost tucked under the doom of a fat
front tire. Even with the stitches from my appendectomy and the
neighbor kids' bottle rockets raining down sticks dyed purple and
singed black, I bent carefully and tucked them onto the pockets and
folds of my bathrobe, clawed paws like patches of velcro.

Usually I find and collect tokens and coins. Now kittens. Dreams are
fucking weird.

~*~