It is nap time. Or, better to say, it's two-a-day nap time. And in the other room my baby, who is in her crib and in a two-nap-a-day world would be sleeping, is singing loudly. Every now and then I hear the springs of her crib as she jumps up and down.
When I was in high school and college I remember feeling like there were certain songs that were the backdrop of my life--that if my life were a movie (an overly dramatic and somewhat boring movie) these song would be the soundtrack. My personal soundtrack heavily featured Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan (I was pretty nerdy even then).
The soundtrack of my life has changed. It is now made up of a small girl talking to herself and singing. She has one thing that she can actually 'say' and that's "where's Claire?" She says it upwards of 30 times every day and she puts her two little fists in front of her eyes. When she moves her fists away she expects you to exclaim "there she is!" and then she laughs like crazy.
And that little laugh which has been added to the soundtrack of my life is one of most lovely songs I have ever heard.
***I wish that I were brave enough to write a whole post about grammar but I'm not. I feel like it would just be an opportunity for everyone to point out all of the grammatical errors that I make. I care about grammar. I proof-read my posts and I swear that I know the difference between two, too and to and weather and whether. I can even tell you the difference between affect and effect.
Today I sent a letter to the real estate agent who manages our rental agreement asking if the landlord would consider extending our lease for another year and I used the wrong kind of to. I didn't notice it until a second after I hit the send button and I could still see the letter on the screen. It was just too late. Now if he doesn't renew our lease we'll never know if it's because he wasn't going to anyway or because he doesn't think that you can trust someone with your home who you can't trust to use the correct kind of 'to.'
Hee. If you have a Gmail account, you can go to Google Labs and click on the "cancel send" option. It gives you a few seconds after emailing someone to change your mind and get it back! Amazing. There's all sorts of cool stuff under Google Labs--I just discovered in a few weeks ago :).
ReplyDeleteP.S. Love your blog, as always. xo
Ah grammar. As an English teacher I hate it. It could have something to do with the fact that I'm horrible at it and it doesn't matter how many times I proof read I will have made a to/too/two mistake or something just as horrible. I wouldn't worry too much though, with the student papers I read I know that grammar's best days are behind her now. Maybe we need to have a memorial service.
ReplyDeleteGrammar isn't about not catching the small errors you make as you work; it's rather about using elegantly simple phrasing and structure to explain your meaning in ways others can easily understand.
ReplyDeleteI just responded to a student and wrote the wrong "do." I used "due" instead and didn't realize it until the message had been sent. We all do that, and we all feel foolish when we do. Have any of you read the marvelous description of the Goddess Grammatica strangling a bird in the opening chapter of Mike Rose's book "Lives on the Boundary"? It's a classic.
I, too, love Claire's singing. Thanks for writing.
It's okay Sallee, blogging has deteriorated my grammatical sense. It's hard to write correctly when you're writing like you talk, which is usually laden with grammatical obscurities. Anyway, I just used the wrong "our" and wrote "are" in the RS newsletter. How embarrassing. I too, know the difference, but for some reason didn't see that. I also have a tendency to capitalize a lot of things since in German all nouns are capitalized. It just messes me up. Your blog is still fun to read regardless of the grammar. It be good!
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