I apparently have developed a weird mutant immunity to poison ivy.

12yo daughter has not. Yet.

The last two weeks have pretty much been a tour of the third level of Hell. I’ve barely been online, and as I am a rather private person by nature I’m not likely to post much about it.

I will, however, share the fact that my dad is home from the hospital now and doing much better (on his couch, watching his soccer, without random medical people poking him every half hour). I plan to see him today but have to call first – as he said, he has a 5k run today, and then is helping this guy move furniture. (I wonder where I get my smartass sense of humor from …)

Just got word that my dad is recovering well and will be moved out of the ICU today. They will also be giving him a nicotine patch so he will stop being so mean to the nurses. :)

I suppose, in a way, MLK’s dream has come true, at least in my kids.

They don’t understand what all the fuss is about with President Obama.

“He won the election, didn’t he? Somebody always wins, right? So what’s the big deal?”

We explained a bunch of times what the big deal is. But they don’t believe us, I think. How lucky they are, to be able to scoff at the idea of a whole society discriminating against part of itself based on the color of the skin. In our little neighborhood, there is nothing to support these old tales of segregation.

“I knew he was gonna win, anyway,” the boy said the other day.

“Oh?” I asked.

“Sure,” he answered. “He’s from Chicago.”

“Listen, Mom!” my 12-year-old daughter, Blossom, said to me the other day. She was working at my old laptop, and as she struck the keys a metallic, mechanical sound issued from the machine. “I made it sound funny!”

“That’s a typewriter sound,” I told her.

“Listen!” she repeated, hitting (I know) the ‘Enter’ key, and eliciting that old-school ratchet-and-ding. After a few more feverish taps, she looked up at me. “A typewriter?”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly feeling about a million years old. “Remember when we went to the museum last summer, and saw those old machines in the Newspaper display?”

“Ohhh,” she said. “You had one in grade school, right?”

“Yes,” I said again, finding a chair and easing my ancient bones into it.

“Neat,” Blossom opined, typing a few more lines. “That was before CD-ROM, right? You had to use floppy disks.”

“No, dear,” I answered. “Something even more archaic. It’s called paper.”