on antibiotics. Or two not on antibiotics, depending on how you look at it. G. joined J. on the penicillin bandwagon today after day 4 of hot burning fever. Eight hours after first dose the giggles began. This proved a marvelous garnish for dinner time conversation as Eli likes nothing more than hearing his brother belly laugh (and especially after seeing him so low for so long). Thus we received choice commentary inregarding the sexual precocity of infants in 1000 B.C. I can still hear them laughing upstairs now while we drink tea and J. prepares for Day One. I am likewise counting down, but with an entirely different sensibility.   

B & J have been struck by our annual, we need to organize the books bug. It is an itch that we never want to scratch, since the process is a bit of a rush hour puzzle . . . if we move this, then we need to move this, and then we need to find a place for this, which blocks this, etc. But the stacks of comics were only getting higher and harder to navigate . . . so we began the mighty task. Surprisingly in the midst of this, J. did not ask, "who doesn't want the kindle now??" E & G have wisely decided to lay low on this particular venture. Gideon is permanently parked in front of his new drawing table (which actually started this frenetic bureaucratic reorganization of the house, since it introduced new matter into the tight geometry of our house). In fact, we're pretty sure he willed himself into a fever yesterday so he could stay home and draw. Eli has coaxed him away to read the Rick Geary Classic Comics version of Great Expectation. Thank god it is a library copy, so I don't have to identify a space for it on the shelves . . . .

Otherwise, a day of grading, syllabus prep, book-writing, and a massive enchilada pie as a reward. Oh, and we rearranged our living room to make room for G's new drawing table (more on that tomorrow).

The delinquency continues, since I was supposed to write about Eli's hobnobby weekend in L.A. littered with delightful phonecalls "Have you ever been to the Newman Sound Stage? Have you ever had toro? Have you ever sat in a professional orchestra while they played? Have you ever had squab with foie gras? Have you ever driven around Hollywood in a jaguar" to which the answer was always no. I ought to have written about JBEG's travels to the beautiful and expensive Bermuda, where E&G met the Premiere and J & E supped on Bacardi's generosity. And then I was to record our brief jaunt to Kentuck to see the Boys, eat spring lamb and buy a ton of flour. But after these solid weeks of break-neck run around--in which J. wrote about 40,000 words and Eli flew about 10,000 miles--we are gonna try to get our business together. Witness: the car is finally fixed; we have a door on our house; and the pantry will soon not be bare.