Three Thousand

I've been looking at the number of total posts to this blog more frequently recently because I've been approaching three thousand posts and it seemed like some sort of a milestone.  Maybe it makes more sense to do a first post date anniversary, which would have been eight years this past December.  The total post count I see on the left side of Blogger every time I finish writing one of these little entries kept my attention more though.

And then, after preparing for it, I completely forgot and the three thousandth post past me by last week.   It's still hard for me to believe that for close to a sixth of my life I've been writing something here every day.   It seems like it wasn't that long ago that I started.   It also seems like I've been writing for as long as I can remember.  

Blogger has made writing online easy for over eight years.   I hope I'm still here eight years from now, celebrating six thousand posts.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has this personal space thing that has been getting him in trouble a lot lately.   He touches people (his sister most notably) when they don't want to be touched, in ways they don't want to be touched.   His sister pretty much never wants to have a lightsaber jabbed into any part of her body, she doesn't want her witch's hat jerked off her head and then smashed back onto it.   She doesn't want him coming up and doing anything to her, basically.   He does this with other people, mostly getting in their face and yelling like he's a caveman or something equally energetic and unidentifiable.  People don't like it.   We've been telling him it's called assault when you touch people (or punch them in the stomach) and it's stealing when you take their property—even if you planned to give it back when you wanted to at some point in the future.   He's not getting it.   I don't get it, there has to be something going on that would explain it.  

The Swearing Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had a splinter in her foot tonight.  It was one of those that went straight in and was sharp and sensitive to try and get out.   I was doing my best delicate work but it was still taking a long time and my daughter kept pulling away and crying in pain.   She said she wished she were old enough to swear.   I told her there was scientific evidence that swearing actually helped people cope with pain (truly, I just saw a lecturer at The Royal Institution speak about ongoing research in this area.)  I told her in this case, I thought it would be okay if she swore.   She wasn't sure, saying she didn't want to get in trouble.   I told her she had my permission, but to stop when her brother came upstairs.   So she swore.  It was all I could do not to laugh.   She knows all the words, as evidenced by the variety she used.   She didn't quite put them together in the typical order they're usually heard in, which made it all the more funny.   Once she got started, she didn't want to stop.   She was having a great time swearing and was much more relaxed about me digging into her foot to get the very embedded splinter.   Her father called right as we had finished and she showed off her newfound vocabulary to him right after saying hello.   He laughed and I had to explain the circumstances.   Then her brother came in and we were back to age-level appropriate words.