I'm beginning to loathe school busses. Naturally, the time that makes the most sense for Penny and I to leave home is right when the high school busses are doing their pickups. It's like magic. Every morning, I get stuck behind a series of cheese wagons between our house and the high school. It makes me crazy.

So today, I decided to take the interstate, so I only had to be behind a bus halfway to the high school. Naturally, I wound up behind every slowass driver in the state. Sigh.

However, by taking the interstate I avoided what sounds like a very nasty accident right on the route I usually take to get Penny to school, so that's good.

Unfortunately, the accident knocked out power to the entire area, including the daycare building. If the power isn't back on in another half-hour, they're going to have to close the place and call me to come and get her.

... Though the power company's outage page shows it as having been cleared, so maybe that will be okay.

I had a nice evening with Penny. They'd had a birthday party at daycare, and she got a goodie-bag just as we were leaving. The goodie bag had a pair of sunglasses, and a whole lot of suckers.

Penny is a sucker for suckers.

You know that old commercial, "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?"

Penny thinks that really ought to be revised to, "How many suckers can a toddler eat in the car on the way home from school?"

(The answer is: One. But only because Mom wouldn't open more.)

Penny was having her bath last night, and she handed me a bath crayon and asked me to draw her.

Um, right. I drew a little stick-person, naming the parts of the body as I did it. "There's the head... body... legs... and arms!"

"Dwaw feet?"

I added little stick-feet to the legs. "Okay, there's some feet."

"Dwaw han's?"

I splayed some fingers from the ends of the stick-arms. "Hands!"

"Eyes?"

It had turned into a game. I drew eyes. "Okay, what next?"

"Nose?"

"There's your nose! What next?"

"Mouth!"

"Right!" I drew a big smile. "All done!"

She frowned, and considered the stick-figure. "... Dwaw butt?"

--Liz