A landmark day on two counts

PAM and I got our second Pfizer jabs this evening. And today was D1D1’s first day ever of in-classroom kindergarten.

She was over the moon, so eager to be with her teacher and classmates in person. About half the kids in her class are there now.

When she got home today, she said, “I can’t wait for tomorrow!”

Two weeks ago she helped me get a start on concrete dig #4.

Her little sister’s not afraid to get her hands dirty, either.

D1D2 helped me de-grub the wildflower garden today. She’s a good little worker. Turned 2 a few weeks ago.

She likes walking in soil tilled with a digging bar and a gravel rake. “Bouncy dirt,” she calls it.


We worked outdoors this morning, then I fed her lunch. While she napped I filed a daily story with King Features, for Mike Manley. He’ll be looking for copy in about a week.

This weekend I’ll start writing a new story for Jeff Weigel, the artist on the Sunday narrative. Both of the guys are doing their best work ever. It’s a privilege to write for them.

This is Mike’s art…

And I really like Jeff’s take on Babudan, elder warrior, master pathfinder, all-around badass of the Bandar Tribe.

If, with murderous intent, you lie in wait for the 21st Phantom, Babudan’s the guy who puts an arrow through your heart.

Thupp!



My friend Will asked today how much concrete the porch foundation will take. The answer: over 2 tons, dry weight.

These footing and pier forms drop in and get filled with concrete. Each one takes 1,120 pounds before mixing.

That’s fourteen 80-lb bags in each. Seven in the footing, seven in the pier.

Did the spring fluids change on the iron piggy the other day. Motor, transmission, primary. Greased the neck bearings. Leaned her over on the crash bars so I could pour a quart of oil into the primary case.

Finally got an inspection sticker on the ’49 truck. My last one was a year out of date. Hauling stuff legally now… organic material I’m tilling into the sandy loam of the wildflower gardens.

Likelihood of frost will soon pass… it’ll be time to sow this year’s colors and honeybee habitat.

Windows have to roll up and down to pass inspection here in Little Rhody. My window regulator on the driver’s side failed a few years ago on a ride home from Sullivan, Maine.

So… had to finally fix that to get a sticker. And I’m sure the inspector would have frowned at not being able to open the passenger door from the outside. That’s the door she’d open to apply the sticker. I had gotten used to reaching in through the vent window and using the inside handle.

On a temporary insanity basis, I invested a little frozen-knuckle time in fixing both doors. This was maybe a month ago, snow still on the ground.

Kneeling on frozen ground, sticking frozen hands up inside steel doors… not everybody’s idea of a good time.

Original glass, 1949. Has character. It would be a shame to have to replace it just because of a few cracks and some delamination.

One of the Jesus clips off the window regulator. So named for what you shout when it springs out of your hand—Boinggg!—and is gone forever.

Eight weeks to go in my daycare gig with little D1D2. Pam’s retiring from the bank at the end of May. She’s more than eager to take over. It’s been more fun than I ever imagined. Keeps me ever so aware of just how quickly these days are passing.

What a funny little girl. And she knows she’s funny. Yesterday she held up her arms to me, wanting to be picked up for a hug.

“I cold,” she said. “Warm this baby up.”

I enjoy her company every day, 8:30 to 5:30. Here she is digging her daily allowance of “Imusic.” That’s what she calls Irish music. Note her beloved Buck-a-Buck the True pulling a Joe Cool. Who does he think he is, James Dean?

Funny, funny girl. Not a whole lot of Irish blood in her, maybe 15 percent, but she looks 100 percent Irish. If perchance we all come from somewhere else before we land here, she might well be an old Celtic soul.

This is her favorite playlist. I’ll break out a few tracks so you can zero in on just one that might strike your fancy.

She’ll sit and listen to someone singing in Gaelic, no moving pictures on the screen. She somehow just loves the sound of the language.

And this: 6 minutes of no singing.

Irish patriotism a capella, a big hit with her.

She doesn’t go for anything that’s over produced. Irish princesses just out of curlers and the makeup chair, warbling on a rugged coast in their Cinderella gowns? “No like it.”

This might be her favorite. Funny how you can not know a word of Gaelic but know when the lads are talking to the English! Of the lead singer, the little girl says, “Cute boy.” Seriously, where does this come from in a 2 year old?

Maybe that’s not her favorite, I take that back… It might be this sad but hopeful tune about Irish girls orphaned by the famine. Now they’re trying to get out of the workhouse and get a berth on a sailing ship to Australia. They have to be certified as “decent” and “clean,” so you can imagine creepy old English docs checking them out for venereal diseases.

Well done, this track. There’s a visual poetry not implied by the lyrics. Girls lying on a beach to represent ships lost at sea. The orphan girl walking into the sea alone at the end. Which is really what each and every one of them did, in a sense.

D1D2 doesn’t call it Orphan Girl. She says Ocean Girl.

“See Ocean Girl?”

Every day she asks, without fail. “See Ocean Girl?”

Funny little thing… I’m going to miss being your dayside companion.

Tony DePaul, March 31, 2021, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA