Menticia at University Lake

Yesterday was a spectacularly beautiful day, so I took Menticia rowing on University Lake. We saw these cool birds.



Menticia's been in middle school for one short week, and already she's a different girl. She's talking about boys (but only how OTHER girls like them) and she wants to listen to bone-rattling stations on the radio.

She wanted to play what she called the "Game of What If ...?" and it goes like this.

"What if it started to rain?"
"I'd row us back to the dock?"
"What if it rained so hard the boat filled up?"
"The boat couldn't fill up that fast."
"But what if it did? What if there was lightning?"
"Then I'd pull the boat up on shore and we could hide under it until the rain stopped."
"But what if there was a sudden tornado?"
"The sky would get ugly long before the tornado appeared, and we could get back to the dock."
"But what if it came up very fast, without warning, and the boat was stuck, and full of water, in the middle of the lake?"
"Well, you're wearing a life jacket, and I'm a very good swimmer. We'd get in the water and I'd swim you to shore."
"What if the water was full of snakes?"
"Poisonous snakes?"
"Yes."
"There aren't any poisonous water snakes in North Carolina."
"But what if there were?"

This went on for a very long time.

It got hot on the water so we rowed close to the shore, tethered the boat to a fallen tree in the shade, and lounged in it, listening to the water lapping and the birds chirping, reading Harry Potter.

You can see from this picture that the book is very fat, and we've barely begun, relatively speaking, but I remind her not to be disheartened: finishing the book is not the only pleasure - actually reading it can be be fun too!



We were the last ones to get our boat back, a few minutes before closing. We drove into Carrboro and had dinner at the Jade Palace, where she put away almost an entire plate of shrimp lo mein. She'll be a teenager soon if she keeps this up!

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