Today, Ana ate an overpriced mango! Onna stick!

$3, and how's that for cutting his own throat, eh?

All joking aside, she apparently likes mangoes. So does the baby. (Babies can have mangoes at this age, right? Jenn concurred, but I'm suddenly paranoid that we're all wrong....) It's like I don't even know them anymore!

And Jenn complained that Ana always asks her for a hot dog or an ice cream when we drop by her office, not for a mango or a peach or a banana, which are also right by her office.

Of course, what I didn't explain then (too much to do, not enough time) is that Ana asks Jenn for those things because she asks me for everything! When we pass the various fruit stands, she asks me for various fruits, when we pass the hot dog/ice cream stand she asks me for a hot dog or some ice cream (even if we just got some fruit already), and so on. As we pass it, she decides she wants it.

Well, if we're not seeing Jenn, I remind Ana that she has no money, and claim that whatever-it-is is just too expensive for me to purchase today "but maybe tomorrow". However, if we *are* seeing Jenn, I tell her she can ask Mommy later. But I always make sure to have enough money to buy the fruit, so she never has to ask Jenn.

And that, Jenn, if you're curious, is why Ana doesn't beg you for peaches. She begs me first, and is actually successful at that endeavour. It's only the junk that I fob off on you :)

Most everybody else can ignore this post.

Happy Rabbitrabbit day!

So, I was thinking today....

Swedish New Yorkers get to meet up every year and dance around a maypole.
French New Yorkers get to meet up every year and race waiters.
Burmese New Yorkers get to meet up every year and throw water at each other, and back in Bensonhurst we had Santa Rosalia right in time for my mom's birthday, and we're Belgian and all and....

What do Belgian New Yorkers get to do? It's not like it's just us. We're constantly finding other Belgians in the city. It's a bit creepy, really. And we don't even have a fete. We should have a fete. It's only right.

Whom do I contact to remedy this situation?

Incidentally, if you happen to be curious, it was the Walloons who were first in NYC...

First Europeans, that is. Everybody thinks it was the Dutch, we even use their flag, but it was the Walloons, we beat the Dutch here by six somethings. Months. Hours. Whatever. Point is, we were here first. Second. Before them, anyway.

When you're the Belgian kid in a pretty insular family, you know this stuff. You drive all your teachers and classmates batty. This is how I spent high school. And intermediate school. And probably elementary school, too. Oh, yeah, and college. Somehow, the subject manages to come up, and then I end up having to tell people that, no, people don't speak Dutch, they speak Flemish, and no, French fries are from Belgium, and no, it's not the "Flemish and the French", heaven save us from such a fate.

It wasn't just me. Jenn did this stuff too in class. It's a wonder how it can come up in math, but it does.

It used to be really easy to become a saint, huh?

As near as I can tell, all Ghislain happened to do was exist. And somehow he got saddled with the job of taking care of seizures in children.

All the same, I've always rather liked the name Ghislain. Ghislaine is one of my grandmother's middle names (because her brother got seizures right before he died before she was born, and it seemed good sense at the time), and I've always thought that it'd make a nice name for a kid.

Of course, it's also the name of the Star Wars Kid (but without the e, because he's a guy), so... yeah.

(If you're curious, there are 16 saints for today.)

Happy Canada Day!

If you're Canadian, that is. Everybody else has to just be happy or not as they please.