Friday, at the gym after work, I got bored with jogging and marching in place between resistance stations. And I was feeling really good, and energetic, and stuff, and the music was good and bouncy.

So I jumped, instead. It was fun. I enjoyed it. I haven't jumped like that since I was a kid.

And then when I stepped off the pad to go to the next resistance station, my back said, What the fuck did you do that for?

Ow.

Ow, ow, ow.

Dammit.

So I survived the weekend via liberal application of ice and heat and a lot of Advil, and my back is getting better, but it still hurts.

(Though it's just possible that being at work, where I am not required to pick up or hold a 25-pound squirming monkeybaby every 90 seconds or so, might help matters.)

I think this is even stupider than the time I wound up on crutches after playing Frisbee.

The good news is that Penny chose this weekend to finally imitate a sound Matt and I made!

The bad news is that the sound was not human speech, but monkey-hooting.

I was doing it because it made her laugh. Oo, oo, oo! Ah-ah-ah! Then Matt took her upstairs to change her diaper, and came back down to report that she was doing it, herself.

Sure enough. "Oo-oo-ah-ah!"

I thought it was funny as hell, but Matt seemed slightly disturbed by it, so I haven't been encouraging her. (Well, much. It is pretty damn funny. And yes, actually, the amused/disturbed distribution over this does seem pretty backwards to me, too.) Without reinforcement, she's gone from "Oo-oo-ah-ah!" to just "Ah-ah-ah!" which is pretty similar to what she was doing before the monkey-hooting.

So now I'm repeating "Mama" a lot, and hoping.

And if we've imprinted monkey-talk on her forever, well... We know a primatologist.

--Liz