Monday, April 23, 2007

Walking and Talking

Kind of ironic that taking a writing class has actually slowed me down from writing- at least on my blog. The class ended a few weeks ago and I still have a few things I wrote which I will post in the near future (maybe). I am not in the habit of wrting longer pieces with "editing" and "facts" involved. Of course I took it more seriously because it was for a class even though it wasn't for a grade- we all still want praise from our teachers and fellow students.

Last weekend my niece Rebecca was in town. My nieces' mother (formerly called my sister Abby) brought her to town from Cleveland for several days. Of course Rebecca is one of the few children I will write about in my blog which is usually quite child free. If you remember from last Summer I've been trying to get her to call me "Nernie" like her mother did when she was little. When I saw her in January she said it a few times, but now she really knows it. My nieces' mother must have coached her well because now she refers to me as "Unca Nernie". Rebecca is past two and a half now. It's really interesting to see her making connections and talking in full sentences. Sometimes if I can't understand what she is saying I'll ask her to repeat it and then I'll look to her mother to translate.

"Oh, she wants you to read her a story" or
"She said she has a Dora the Explorer potty seat" My sister is fluent in two-year old of course.

I have little doubt that little Rebecca will be smarter than me any day now. I can say without fear of contradiction that she is the cutest most well behaved baby ever.

There was another thing that came up a few weeks ago that I need to tell you about because it involves sandwiches. My Mother (my neices' Grandmother) told me that when she visited Cleveland she kept saying a certain phrase to Rebecca when they were eating:

"MMmmmm Toasty....."

So of course I say "You know that's form a commercial, right?" Actually Mom did know about Quizznos and had even been to one - probably against her will. She then went on to claim that I had taught her the phrase- becuase I had been saying it a lot. I must protest. Maybe "mmmmm Donuts" or "mmmmm Beer" like Homer Simpson, but I don't repeat the slogan of a national sandwich chain even if they do have some good sandwiches. I do happen to like the commercial when the little character they have eats the logo- but I don't run around parroting their slogan. So we're still not really sure where Mom picked up that phrase. Reminds me of the time when we couldn't remember where we got the phrase "That's crazy Talk". Both Mom and I were saying that. I think we determined it was a Jon Stewart catchphrase for a while. Hey Mom how bout' this: "Mmmmm..That's crazy toasty..."