Words from the Dust

Hello, everyone! Did I say that dial-up makes blogging "more time-consuming"? I should have said "makes blogging well nigh impossible, especially when combined with painting my new house, mowing my lawn, raking all the winter leaves out of the flower beds, and growing an entire human inside my uterus." Whew! The pictures are, for the moment, impossible. But I have them, and will post them. It looks as though we have some options for internet again.
I leave for Toledo tomorrow, where we will celebrate John's graduation from the fantastic University of Toledo College of Medicine with friends and family. On Saturday, we fly to Utah for one last hurrah before internship year starts with a bang on June 20th. (Or maybe just starts with a whimper, since orientation can't really be that much of a bang now, can it?)
I have two fantastic neighbors here. Our neighbors to the left are recently from China, so communication has been limited. He is a physics researcher here at Notre Dame, and I wish I could pronounce his name. They have two little girls: a baby and a six-year old, Simone. Simone has already been warped by her interaction with the Wells family. She now knows the words "booger" and "bum," and I think her mom is horrified. Sorry, Guang! (If that's how you say it.)
Our neighbor to the right own a restaurant "in the hood" (as we were told), and Bill took great morbid pleasure in telling us that they had recently lost two regular customers. One because he was shot to death, and the other because he had shot the first and had to be put in jail. He then reassured me that our neighborhood is much quieter than where his restaurant is located.
We let our lawn grow until the girls harvested the first crop of wheat in the front yard, and then we decided the task couldn't be put off any longer and mowed it down. I had forgotten how much I like mowing lawns, especially when I don't own a trimmer and therefore cannot be expected to edge around anything. Very nice. John said it made him feel like a schmo to sit on the porch eating lunch while his very obviously pregnant wife was mowing the lawn, but I was hard-pressed to give up the lawn mower. Thinking back, I probably should have let him have all the joy and glory of the first mow, considering that I will probably be doing most of the mowing for the rest of my life. Or at least the next three years. Yeah. . . that was dumb. (But I still loved it.)
Well, I've been lucky to now and haven't been disconnected from the dial-up, but I don't really want to push my luck. I know I have high-speed internet in Monticello. You might have to wait for any pictures until then.