lumberjills, thises & thats & Hi

As the legend goes, if you hold a book upon its spine and let it fall open the pages will spread their leaves to the sexy parts of the story because that's when the entranced reader bends the book open the hardest. I try to live my life like this whenever possible, especially these days, when I am a father first and an individual second. So I bend my spine, shuffle through the fallen leaves, speed-read these slender pages because I do not know when my eyes will find the time to next grace a text or dance upon a nape of neck.

My new affectionate term for my lovely ladies is lumberjills, a nice twist to our patriarchal roots here in Cascadia. They seem to like it, strutting around our frigid abode in their insulated pants and thermal long-sleeve onesies. I at last find conclusive proof of foul play regarding the ongoing instances of unscrewed knobs on cupboard doors about our cluttered domicile. Lyli has a fondness for toying with their succulently round shapeliness. Case closed.

They begin to utilize "this" and "that" today in common speech and I listen in fixated fascination from across the room as they point at toys and dub them with this fresh term. From time to time over the course of the day they run up one at a time and shout "Hi" at me in a shrill tone. My favorite is when they both subtly burst into song while doing something and harmonize behind the happenings of the room. They caress the pages of Madeline, softly telling the parts of the story they can wrap their tongues around: the girls brushing their teeth and lying in bed. Second only to their new-found delight in a little magnetic-black-dust drawing board, which takes up hours of each day invested in this quiet cold wonderland we inhabit.

I drift back and forth, build bookshelves, sleep irregularly, eat when I am hungry, piss when I have to, and exult in the tiniest occurrences and the subtly sexy signatures of tomorrow's unread pages.