I seem to have this problem with politeness in many areas, but most notably when it comes to pretending that I understand what people with thick accents are saying to me. This happens frequently when I take cabs to the airport, but also happens when certain people are staffing my local Subway. And this becomes a bigger problem because once I pretend that I understand the words in the accent, and do so the next half dozen times I order my tuna sub, it's too late to go back to hand holding.

What's freaky is that I always seem to guess the right responses. So I end up in long conversations with somebody who is happily telling me a story about the thing I just said, while I strain to try to pick out any word I understand to supply an ounce of context.

I hate being misunderstood, and I think that's probably what drives this urge to feign understanding of language.

I was also over 35 before I began to ask people the definitions of big words I'd never heard.

Anyway, the point is I wanted to give you all an update on the state of the Willum. And I intend to do so pretty regularly for the next few weeks at least. Some very big life events are coming up and I want to be sure to document them in some fashion.

This weekend was crazy. Thanks to a sudden lack of work, I turned my attentions to a very sweaty, tiring, and back hurting series of tasks in the housecleaning, pest removing, recycling vein which took me until very late at night Friday to complete. Saturday, I spent 13 hours with imtboo and trochee in a combination of wedding errands, eating, drinking, and theater seeing. Again, got home late enough so that the cats flipped on the light and were seen sitting and tapping their claws on the carpet, paws crossed against their chests.

"Do you KNOW what time it is?"

Today was my Do Nothing Day, which I spent mainly thinking about my upcoming visit from streamsandpools, who is staying with me for a few weeks. That happens next Monday and kicks off a month's worth of adventures, which seems to have a wedding in the middle of it that I am officiating. I'll be posting updates along the way, and who knows, maybe Team Sprout will be tossing pictures of our travels to the Internets.

For now, cartoons. Lovely cartoons. And some porch sitting awaits.