2002-02-19-10:45 p.m.

Andrew got his lunch box and put an apple and some yogurt in it. He said he was going to his friend's house. I said, no, you're not, it's too far. And he said he was just going to his friend's house pretend.

I said that was okay as long as he didn't go past the mailbox. Why? he asked. (He asks why about everything. If I somehow find an answer to a question like: what do you do when you hit your head, he'll listen to my answer and ask why. And I wonder why he asks me those things and why do I keep trying to find answers to questions that really don't have any.)

I explained about going too far, that I didn't want to have to go find him, etc. Then he told me he was going to go past the mailbox.

"No," I said. "You can't go past the mailbox!"

"Pretend go past the mailbox," he said.

***

The highlight of the kids' day was the dead fish in our front yard. It was a pretty good-sized fish. Its tail had been cut off. We stood around it and wondered where it had come from.

Someone mentioned that one of the neighbor families had been fishing recently. We decided that the family had probably not been watching their fish closely enough and one of the dogs in the neighborhood had drug it off and somehow left it in our yard.

We admired the fish a little longer and then Andrew said, as though he knew the real reason the fish was there, "Chase shot it."

Chase is the boy who lives next door. They're always shooting something or slitting something's throat over there. They butcher deer and chickens and goats. At any given time you could probably find some kind of dead body in their yard or hanging up somewhere.

***

The boys were hitting baseballs in the front yard this afternoon. Daniel and I have been doing that for a few days - taking turns pitching and hitting. We hit away from the house. No problem.

But the neighbor boy came over to play baseball today and what do you know? I'm in the bedroom and I hear a crashing sound. By golly, it's another broken window.

Goody. I think that's four now. A broken window makes the yogurt that Andrew spilled on the new loveseat and the table that he broke today seem not so terrible.

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