Dog Dandruff and John Deere

April 21, 2008

Happy San Jacinto DayI I wonder how many of you are airing out your fighting duds in preparation for joining the Sabine Volunteers in the annual reenactment of the Battle of San Jacinto.

Erin has suffered severe allergies like the rest of the Brazos Valley has lately. If you'll pardon the mental image (especially if snot is not your thing), it takes about a third of a box of Kleenex each morning to empty what has accumulated up her nose and in the crannies of her sinuses before she can make it to the breakfast table. Last night she swam at the A&M Rec Center pool as part of the festivities of her soccer club Fun Day. The pool is mildly salty. She thought it did wonders to clear her sinuses, and I'm glad she didn't get caught snorting slime into the pool. Walter and I have actually marveled at how much her allergies have flared, especially since she takes Sudafed, Claratin, and Singulair every day. I even speculated about Teddy's culpability, since Erin sleeps with her every night and might have a sensitivity to dog dander.

Anyway, Erin may be filling up her bathroom trash can and the Aggie pool, but she not letting a few little allergens slow her down. She just brought home a(nother) stellar report card, enjoyed playing in her school's recorder concert last week, finished up one big school project (she researched and wrote a Civil War newspaper with at least eight articles--I'll link it when she gets it back) and started another (she's inventing a solar-powered floating car with exercise options--I'll get back to you when I can actually explain this). About a week ago at a teacher conference, Ms. Kutzenberger told me about her plans to pick up the pace on vocabulary lessons for the class. To that end she was sitting with each student and their vocabulary book, sort of pre-testing them to see what lesson they should skip ahead to. She would pick what she thought were challenging words from each lesson, and ask the child the definitions. Erin got to Lesson 39 (out of the 42 Lessons in the book) before she missed the first one. Ms. K ordered her a new book that day. . .SAT prep vocabulary. Here are the words from Erin's first vocabulary list in that book (I can unashamedly say that I didn't know them all without looking them up.):

acidulous
avaricious
baleful
bellicose
bilious
bumptious
captious (this is one that tripped me up)
churlish
complaisant
contrite
convivial
craven (should have known this one, but oops, I didn't)
debonair (one of my favorites)
dyspeptic
lachrymose (I guessed and got it right)

Lest you think that Erin is a "know it all," let me assure you she is completely fallible on the vocabulary front. On the way to school after the conversation about Teddy and her possible contribution to Erin's allergies, Erin asked me, in a rather pathetic voice, why I accused her [Erin] of having dog dandruff. I have to admit that dandruff and dander sound similar, and in fact are similar, but she misunderstood my comment completely. After I explained what I had said and meant, she responded by saying, "Well, as long as we are on the subject of words, can you tell me what a John Deere letter is, and why it would hurt someone's feelings to get one?"

I guess there something to be said for knowing contrite and dyspeptic, but not knowing dog dander or a Dear John letter.

Speaking of vocabulary prowess, when my three-year-old niece, Emma was here a week ago, she demonstrated her own amazing command of the language. During the master naturalist party at our house she was playing on the fort in the backyard and took a tumble. Her mom ran over and picked her up, brought her back to where we were sitting, and wiped away the tears. Someone asked her if she had fallen off the swing, and she replied through a few sniffles, "No, I fell down and scraped my leg on that coarse rope over there." Coarse rope? Descriptive and uncommon adjective out of the mouth of a girl who turned three in February? Too cute.

That's it for now. Tomorrow is monthly blood labs. I'm hoping for normal, even though I know that normal is just a cycle on the washing machine.