To grind fore-done at the wheel of Labour

Julia has an odd habit, after she brushes her teeth, of wanting to breathe in the face of all (i.e. Justin and Lia) who might appreciate the sweet bubble-gum fragrance of her non-flouridated breath. Eli, having observed this over the course of many months, now asks, after Lia brushes her teeth, to smell her mother’s breath. But for reasons unknown Eli frames the request, not as, “May I smell your breath?”, but as, “Can I see your water?”

By small degrees Eli is becoming a helper. Twice today she helped reassemble her army of crayons in the appropriate tin container. On the second of these occasions she remembered that, on the first of them, she had hidden a pair of favored crayons under the baseboard-heater in the living room. So she fetched them. This was a joy to watch—Eli sprawled adorably on her belly with her left arm stretched to its full length, swinging to and fro beneath the heater in the hopes of catching a crayon.

Lia has a pair of clip-on earrings that have captured Julia’s imagination. Today, giving free rein to her heart’s desire, she put them on. When she secured possession of the earrings she smiled; when she put on the first she beamed; when she put on the second, she lit up the world with the incandescence of her visage, modeling the earrings for her mother with appropriate twists and twirls.

Justin has been studying for his Tax final this week--an experience too dull for words. His experience has been like that of the great jurist, Learned Hand, who confessed that “the words of the Income Tax merely dance before my eyes in a meaningless procession.” Or, as Dave Barry once put it, “It’s income-tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta.”