Eating: My all-time favorite hot-weather food, Breyer's Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream.

Watching: The first half hour of Touching Evil, a Mystery rerun that Dad recommended highly. Unfortunately, I've been trying to watch it while working on the computer, and I'm having trouble following the story. I need to pay more attention in order to decipher some of those English accents.

Screetch

We knew we needed to replace the brakes on the minivan for quite some time, but since we own only one vehicle, the logistics have been difficult to arrange. The situation became urgent yesterday, however, when the brakes started making a horrendous sound: "Screetch!" The dissonant sound of metal on metal.

Happily, our friend Mary had heard the sad tale of our car breakdown a couple months ago and had made us a standing offer of the use of her car while she's away, if we were ever in a similar predicament. Since she is only in town a week or two every other month, her car sits unused in the garage of her home here.

Last night I called Mary in Texas to tell her we'd be taking her up on her offer. She reiterated that we were welcome to use her car while ours was being repaired and told us where we could find the car key in her house.

So yesterday after we dropped Daniel off at school, we drove to Mary's house. We have a copy of her house key, and Tab found her car keys where she said they'd be. I half expected police to arrive while we were transferring the carseats from the minivan to Mary's Thunderbird, even though I had already called the neighbor who watches Mary's house and told her that we'd be borrowing the car.

No one tried to stop us, however, and we were able to drop off our minivan at the garage without incident. We were assured that we'd have it back before this holiday weekend. I hope so. I'm not comfortable being responsible for someone else's car.

Mary's Thunderbird is quite a deluxe vehicle. The dashboard lights up like a computer screen when the key is turned in the ignition. Everything is digital, including the speedometer. But after driving the minivan, it is hard to go back to driving a car. I feel too low to the ground. And it's no fun having the three boys crammed into the back seat. Daniel squeezes in between the two car seats, and all three boys are constantly manhandling (boyhandling?) each other. With all the rude noises and poking and prodding, it's like driving around with the Three Stooges. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

Daniel is attending day camp at his school this summer. When I picked him up on Monday after his first day, I asked how he liked it.

"Great!" he exclaimed, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

"What did you like about it?" I asked.

"We didn't do any work!"

Hmmmm. The wheels in my mother mind started turning, and I began mapping out a plan of independent study for Daniel this summer. He's come so far with his reading and writing, I'd hate to think of him losing some of his skills during the two and a half months before first grade starts.

So today I went to Amazon.com and ordered a few workbooks for him. At his school they use the D'Nealian system of handwriting, and I found some age-appropriate D'Nealian workbooks at Amazon. I also ordered a pre-school level book for the twins. They won't be attending pre-school this year because we can't afford it, and I know if they were in pre-K, they would be starting to learn how to write letters.

Once in a while, I'll read some of my journal entries to Daniel. He loves it when I write about him and his brothers. So, in order to help him practice his reading, I've decided to write short stories for him to read himself. This morning, I wrote about last night's trip to the restaurant and the petting zoo. I printed it out in 16 point type and gave it to him to read. This is what it said:

We went out to dinner last night at H. I. Ribs. It was fun.

A clown made balloon shapes for us. She made a laser gun for Daniel, an Elmo hat for Matthew, and a bunny bracelet for Stephen.

We liked the petting zoo. We saw a peacock with his tail feathers spread.

We fed the goats and sheep.

Daniel read it all by himself. He even read the word "feathers." The only word he couldn't get was "spread." I'm glad that reading seems to be coming so naturally to him.

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