A lot can happen in a week.
Some of this is just me being a proud parent, but Jonah’s growth in the last week amazed me. I noticed the big increase in his feet first, but that’s not the growth I’m talking about. When I left on Monday morning Jonah could sit and sort of get in and out of the position. He now does this readily. He could crawl forward a little bit, but usually he ended up going backward (much to his dismay). He crawls fine now. Before I left, Jonah would climb on a person laying down, that or sitting being about as close as he could go to getting vertical by himself. Today I watched him grab a table, hoist himself up, and start walking around it. In fact, given a hand to hold onto, Jonah can now walk unsteadily about. He may look like a drunken sailor doing it, but being a biped is a very impressive accomplishment.
The snow and ice of the last week that paralyzed the Northwest has mostly melted away. A lot of tree branches came down out front. Our neighbors Fred and Jeff saw huge branches litter their front yard, in one case splitting vertically a smaller dogwood tree. Although we were unaffected, they were without power for three days. (We ended up stringing an extension cord from our house to theirs so they could keep their freezers operating. Since we couldn’t also supply enough power to heat their place, Fred and Jeff moved out and stayed with relatives.) I’m going to be talking again with the City of Salem about removing the big tree out front. Fred’s writing a letter to the same effect. God knows, if the tree came down and damaged my house in any way I’d sue the City without blinking. But who knows? Maybe after this storm the City will get rid of the hideous thing.
Speaking of hideous things, our Mazda 626 is headed to the mechanic again. I think it’s another alternator problem which, almost unbelievably, would be good news since that particular piece is under a three year warranty. If it’s the ignition switch or ignition module, I guess we’ll pony up the cash to get it working but not happily. Whatever it is, the car is destined to stay within the confines of the Salem city limits for as long as we own it.