5.16 Closing in...

I've been cranking away on my paper - three sections, the conclusion and the abstract to go. I will be so glad to be done with this. While I picked an interesting (to me at least) topic, I've been living with it long enough and intensely enough that at this point I despise every word and have no idea whether I'm making sense or not.

I have to run over to the campus bookstore this afternoon and pick up my cap and gown. That happens Friday!

On a completely different note:
I spent a few hours Thursday evening (after my brain was fried for the day already) at the rummage sale put on by the women of the church. I sat (mostly) in the hall, knitting, directing traffic, and making sure no one slipped out the back door without going by the cash register first. One of the rooms I was sitting near was the one with all the kids' toys and games. Someone had donated a plastic car shaped bed, the kind that becomes the "big kid bed" - it takes a crib sized mattress and is used when the kid is climbing out of their crib on their own anyway. The car bed was used as the repository for all the stuffed animals that had been donated (somewhere between 100 and 200 I think).
One small child, probably about four going on five, decided that it would be a good thing to climb into the bed to look at the toys. This was reasonable as his arms wouldn't reach. He sat surrounded by stuffed animals, looking them over and digging through the pile and his conversation with his mother went like this:
Small boy: (holding up a cute horse with sparkles) Do you like this one?
Mom: Yes, that one is very cute.
SB: (chucks the horse over his shoulder)
SB: (holding up a grumpy bulldog) Do you like this one?
M: That's rather ugly.
SB: But do you like it?
M: No, I don't think so.
SB: (contemplates bulldog for a long time, before finally setting it to one side)
SB: (holding up a cute puppy with floppy ears) Do you like this one?
M: Yes, that's very cute.
SB: (chucks the puppy over his shoulder)
This sequence repeated a couple more times - cute things that mom liked were chucked over his shoulder, ugly ones she didn't like were set to one side.
SB: (rummaging through the pile) Oh wow! a snake. Do you like this one?
M: Ewwww! a snake! No, that's awful.
SB: I Want This One! I want the snake. I need the snake.
M: No.... why don't you get the horse? Why don't you get the puppy?
SB: I want the snake!
And after five minutes of arguing, he got to keep the snake, mostly by completely ignoring her and dashing out of the room snake in hand to go show Gramma.

I think she's in trouble.

I also decided it wasn't the best time to mention that when S was the same age, he had an entire collection of snakes: stuffed, plastic, and rubber, from little bitty ones only a few inches long up to the four foot handmade beanbag snake K found him for his birthday at the Saturday market in Eugene.