The Best of Toby from Today

After Toby was up for a little while this morning and I was getting ready to go to the dump (we haul our own trash), Toby wandered through the kitchen and into the laundry room. The following is our exchange as close to word-for-word as I can get it. Remember that Toby turned 3 last March.

Toby: Mom, do we have an old house?

Tara: Yes, Toby, we have an old house.

Me: Toby, our house is very old.

Toby: Well, we should get a new house!

Me: Why do you think we need a new house?

Toby: Well, this one has a crack in it. [at this point he gestures towards a tear in the drywall or joint tape or whatever. This rip has recently developed, for sure within the last two weeks.]

Me: That's a good point, buddy. But we don't need a new house; we just need to put up some baseboard in the kitchen.

Toby: Baseboard?

So I bought a few pieces of baseboard or casing as Menards calls it and I'm going to try to stain it and tack it on soon.

I closed another important deal today with a client from Lake City. More road trips!

Finally, when we were almost home tonight, Toby made another comment to the effect of, "After Grandpa dies, we get to inherit his stuff!" Yes, he really used the word inherit and then went on to describe how he was going to "wrench things" with Grandpa's wrenches.

So we had another opportunity to remind Toby that it's better to have Grandpa with us than Grandpa's stuff with us.

Speaking of Grandpa, he went to his doctor today because a lump of something has been sloshing around in his upper left arm. Turns out that the muscle separated -- the sinew or whatever holds things together properly either snapped or lost its hold on the bone. So half of his bicep is just sitting there, doing nothing and connected to nothing. On the positive side, it isn't anything disastrous (we thought maybe something was eating the muscle). On the negative, it minimizes his strength in that arm. But he can still carry Avery, though I noticed he had the bulk of her weight on his right side, not his left.

It is difficult to watch your parents fall apart. I suppose it's even harder to watch yourself fall apart. Blasted fallenness.