I would like a dozen Candied Octopodes

Lifeguarding's a funny thing. When it rains, we still have to sit out in our stands and watch the crazy people who swim in the cold and the wet. Unless of course it rains too hard, and then we close the pool. I never liked swimming in the rain because I got wet, but that could just be me. Apparently none of the swimmers share my opinion.

If it rains too hard for us to see the bottom of the pool, it's time to go. If it lightnings it's time to go. If it thunders it's time to go.

There's only so much we can do when it thunders. We can only clean so much stuff for so long. Today we were closed for two and a half hours. Everything was clean, all the extra guards were sent home, and everyone was tired of doing whatever they'd done for the first hour.

So Jack and I went to the Fun House and borrowed their Candy Land.

Man, I haven't played Candy Land in years. It's pretty hard to beat. You can't really go wrong with Candy Land. It's a pretty intense little kids game, what with the Gingerbread Man card and doubles and candy bridges and stuff like that. Riley beat both me and Jack soundly.

I remember playing Candy Land as a kid. I used to play it with Mommy pretty frequently, I think. Virginia threw away ours recently because it was coming apart and missing most of the pieces. We need to get a new one for the girls and William so they can have that essential piece of childhood too.

Today Marcus asked us how you play Candy Land. I said, "Have you never played Candy Land?!" and Jack said, "What kind of a child WERE you?"

***

Other news that must be shared: Hana and I learned (after having a conversation about octopi [wince] that I will not repeat) that the plural of "octopus" is not actually "octopi."

I wondered where the word "octopus" came from anyway, since I assumed the word didn't mean "eight cats," and Googled "etymology of octopus." I learned from the Online Etymology Dictionary, which is a very cool site that I never knew existed, that "octopus" is actually from Greek roots, not Latin, and that "pous" means "foot." Reading further informed me that, "Proper plural is octopodes, though octopuses probably works better in English. Octopi is from mistaken assumption that -us is the L. noun ending that takes -i in plural."

Octopodes? Really? I feel so freaking enlightened right now.

I told Devon the other day that we should have a Factual Aquatic Life Day sometime, in which we fill our eight-legged octopus (The other octopodes have unconventional numbers of pouses. Podes?) with ink. He said that I would want to fill an octopus with ink. Just wait until I tell him they're really octopodes.

Octopodes. Heh heh. What a cool word. Octopodes. Sheesh.

My podes are tired and spitting ink, so I'll see you cats later.

(Get it? See? Cats? Sea cats? Sea kittens? Oh, just go read the article. Ridiculous.)

Don't you just love it when you think I'm leaving and I give you something else to do?

Don't you just love it when I end my posts with open-ended questions?