Lego Land Revisited

Jeff's been sick as a dog with what I'm diagnosing as delayed malaria. It might also be the 'flu.

Whatever it is, it's been awful. Ali and I essentially shunned him once it set in, and so far we've avoided contracting whatever it was he got.

He was upright for parts of the weekend -- dinner with Aunt Shirley and Uncle Larry (payoff for a bet over who would become president) and dinner tonight at a Christ the King fundraiser for the 8th grade class. He skipped basketball this morning (the real evidence that he was actually sick) and managed to walk with us to the newspaper stand.

But it's not been pretty most of the week.

Alison rediscovered her chest of Legos yesterday, just as Jeff was coming out of his delirium. I'd kept her away from him, but she'd slipped downstairs. I'm not sure if she was missing him or she was missing the Wii, but she ventured into the cootie lair on her own.

The Lego chest has sat untapped for at least a year, maybe more. But she dragged it out and Jeff laid on the couch instructing her a little bit and building a bit himself. They built a playground, with a rock wall, monkey bars and a balance beam. It was pretty impressive.

Today, we all got into the act, each building our own Lego house.

Jeff's was a pigloo (What do you call a house built by a hog who lives in the Antarctic?)

Alison's was a square fort-like structure with an open roof so she could show off the furniture she made.

Mine had beautiful front and back entry-ways but I had some structural issues when I tried to put up the roof. And I ran out of black and white Legos, which kind of put a hitch in my design plans.

We had much discussion over how we need Uncle James to come in as a consultant, but the phones were too far away to snag. We'll have to settle for his review of our work.

We went for the walk after I finally got my roof to stay on.

On the way home, Jeff told us both that he needed to apologize for something he'd done on Saturday.

"Remember when I kind of yelled at you Ali, when you were doing somersaults in the living room and I had been downstairs? You were right on top of me and I wasn't feeling very well and I kind of yelled at you instead of asking you nicely to stop doing that," he said.

"It's OK, Dad," said the young gymnast.
"But, you know, we're kind of used to it. No offence, but you're kind of loud most of the time. You kind of yell a lot"

I'm not sure he heard exactly what she said after the "It's OK."

I was trying hard not to laugh out loud. Jeff is a loud talker -- especially when he's not got his hearing aids in. And he was pretty cranky. But when the malaria's got you, it's hard to be nice.

We'll forgive him this once...