After the children went off to school, MJ and I went to the nearby Hokey-Pokey diner to talk each others heads off. I like diners. Not a shred of fibre to be found there of course, but made do with immense piles of eggs, bacon, pancakes, sausages and coffee, and I enjoyed the smiling turkey posters for forthcoming Thanksgiving.
A lively discussion with MJ about the diner's name. MJ wrongheadedly debating the fact that the dance is actually The Hokey Cokey. Apparently in the American version they poke their butts in and not merely their left leg and so on. No idea which is the authentic one of course, but just found this which suggests that Hokey Cokey was invented to mock Catholicism.
Then a lovely walk through woods by the coast to burn off some of the breakfast excesses. A fresh morning and Long Island is beautiful in a highly-coloured late autumn. We walked along discussing haiku, and Buddhism and how we were both big and clever.
Afternoon, and an immense bout of playing games with Kate and Genny. First was duvet monster where they leapt about being chased by a snappy-mouthed duvet with a taste for children's toes. Then there was the dust bunny game: me growling at them shuffling about on the floor and allowing them to scream piercingly. In fact five year old Genny screamed so piercingly into my right ear that it rang afterwards for a minute or so.
Finally we told stories. The girls contributed scenes and the plot had to accommodate Genny's demands to be a wild cat or a werewolf. The two little divas definitely had to be in the story too. I mistakenly started the first story with only a single princess. This had to be quickly adapted to two twin sister princesses with different colour eyes but even then there was some suspicion that the other had got the better deal. In the story, the princesses spotted a crocodile in the moat of their castle but nobody believed them till it tried to bite off the king's head. The next story was about two vampire twins who were terrorising the local village.
All in all really good fun, and I have definitely lost my invisibility with Kate.
Also played a game called Heroscape with Jack. Which is a bit like chess with different pieces of things like a T. Rex or robotic cyber beings or special troops all fighting each other. Quite fun too once I got understood it. As each piece is killed off Jack describes the scene in his head of how this eventuality happened.
After the kids went off to see their dad, MJ and I had an enormous Chinese meal and rented Amityville 2. I was sleepy by then but I managed not to scream in front of her. Interestingly Amityville is quite nearby in Long Island.
Two blurry views down at the water from the path. Need use a camera rather than my phone. The lens isn't that great and gets covered in crap and so these are unusable pictures... An impression however.
A lively discussion with MJ about the diner's name. MJ wrongheadedly debating the fact that the dance is actually The Hokey Cokey. Apparently in the American version they poke their butts in and not merely their left leg and so on. No idea which is the authentic one of course, but just found this which suggests that Hokey Cokey was invented to mock Catholicism.
Then a lovely walk through woods by the coast to burn off some of the breakfast excesses. A fresh morning and Long Island is beautiful in a highly-coloured late autumn. We walked along discussing haiku, and Buddhism and how we were both big and clever.
Afternoon, and an immense bout of playing games with Kate and Genny. First was duvet monster where they leapt about being chased by a snappy-mouthed duvet with a taste for children's toes. Then there was the dust bunny game: me growling at them shuffling about on the floor and allowing them to scream piercingly. In fact five year old Genny screamed so piercingly into my right ear that it rang afterwards for a minute or so.
Finally we told stories. The girls contributed scenes and the plot had to accommodate Genny's demands to be a wild cat or a werewolf. The two little divas definitely had to be in the story too. I mistakenly started the first story with only a single princess. This had to be quickly adapted to two twin sister princesses with different colour eyes but even then there was some suspicion that the other had got the better deal. In the story, the princesses spotted a crocodile in the moat of their castle but nobody believed them till it tried to bite off the king's head. The next story was about two vampire twins who were terrorising the local village.
All in all really good fun, and I have definitely lost my invisibility with Kate.
Also played a game called Heroscape with Jack. Which is a bit like chess with different pieces of things like a T. Rex or robotic cyber beings or special troops all fighting each other. Quite fun too once I got understood it. As each piece is killed off Jack describes the scene in his head of how this eventuality happened.
After the kids went off to see their dad, MJ and I had an enormous Chinese meal and rented Amityville 2. I was sleepy by then but I managed not to scream in front of her. Interestingly Amityville is quite nearby in Long Island.
Two blurry views down at the water from the path. Need use a camera rather than my phone. The lens isn't that great and gets covered in crap and so these are unusable pictures... An impression however.
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