Welcome!

My niece joined the family on July 12th, 2010. This special young lady's mother is my younger sister, which in classic Chinese culture makes me her Jiu Jiu (舅舅) -- thus the title of this blog. Here I intend to semi-regularly post reflections, thoughts, stories, and assorted whathaveyous pertaining to our trip to China, adoption in general, and (mostly) watching my niece grow up. Since the web is a very public place, I will attempt to maintain my family's privacy while telling the story... but I invite you to follow the blog and come along for the adventure!

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Stuff

Nope, I haven't fallen off the planet. I even have a few half-written posts queued up for the blog. I'm just going to say that life lately has been a great deal more complicated than expected so I haven't had the time (or, to be honest, the drive) to post for a while. I will be catching up shortly (both to prevent the blog from falling as far behind as last year and to help preserve any shred of sanity I may have left), but in the meantime here are a couple of quick Pipsqueakisms:

- When all the lights are out, it gets blitch dark.

- An octopus has eight technicals.

...and...

- At her school's Science Share event, Miri got rave reviews from several people in a row after giving them detailed explanations of her experiment & its outcome. When Mom (who already knew the experiment well) decided to find out what her granddaughter was doing to get such accolades, Miri's response was, "Oh, Grandma, you can just read the signs on the display!"

(Can you tell someone didn't want to be standing in front of a display board while other kids were carousing all over the gym?)

Anyway, there will be more posting shortly-ish. Really, there will. I mean it. <sigh>

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, just to show how weird life is lately... I posted the above message and sat down with my laptop at the dining room table to work on my course. I have the drapes open so the sun comes in through the big sliding glass door just a few feet to my left, and it's nice to periodically watch all the livestock out there (jays, cardinals, robins,sparrows, squirrels, sometimes deer). I caught some close-in motion out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a large, healthy-looking rabbit right up against the glass, looking directly at me. After a moment, it slowly gave the room a once-over (left to right, right to left, up and down, then left to right one more time), then looked directly at me with what can only be described as disdain and then slowly turned and ambled away.

My housekeeping has been rejected by a bunny. Maybe I should go get my vacuum cleaner...?