Keeping Billy clothed at night has been an ongoing battle. Within 30 seconds of us closing his bedroom door at night, he can be completely undressed, pull-ups off and singing merrily about the whole experience. We have gone through this cycle for hours at a time at night, and then restarted it at about 2 a.m. if he happens to wake up to use the bathroom.
The first step was giving up on two-piece pajamas and going with zip-up footie pajamas, which came increasingly difficult to find as he got bigger. But we've found, with the help of family and friends who are always on the lookout, size 5 and 6 footies. (Billy is 3, but tall for his age.)

Obviously, once he's totally potty-trained -- and we're making significant progress on that front -- this will be less of an issue, but for the time being, we had to find a solution. We were laundering complete sets of bed sheets and blankets as much as a couple of times a day.

The zip-up jammies worked fine to start, because he didn't have the fine motor skills to operate the zipper. Well, that didn't take long. On the off chance that you're currently eating your breakfast or lunch, I won't describe what we encountered the first day we found out he could operate a zipper. The horror ... the horror.

So then we moved to a diaper pin skillfully inserted through the zipper pull at the top and pinned to his jammies. Within three days, he could unfasten the diaper pin. Even more remarkable, one day we came back in and found him out of him pajamas, naked, with the PJs stretched out on the bed next to him, pin still fastened at the top. I guess little Houdini shimmied out through the neck opening!

Thanks to the great advice of my fellow bloggers at Both Hands and a Flashlight, we tried putting a shirt -- one size too small -- on over his jammies, which were still pinned at the top, underneath the shirt. Success for almost a week!

Then Billy learned to reach under the shirt, unfasten the pin without looking, unzip his jammies (while still wearing the shirt), step out of the feet and remove his pullups. He would run around the room, trailing the jammie feet behind him like a half-dressed Superman. And I was starting to think he actually did have super powers. It also occurred to me that perhaps we should notify the school that we could check off "fine motor skills" on his IEP and consider that goal "achieved."

After redressing him three times last night, I had a thought: turn the pajamas around backwards, zipper going up the back. But then, I thought, the feet wouldn't work. So I cut the feet out. I also cut a little notch in the neck so the neckline wouldn't be uncomfortable for him.

So I redressed him, pajamas on backwards, zipping up his back, pinned at the top with a diaper pin. Small shirt went over his head. And he laid down and went straight to sleep. And slept through the night!

I'll keep you posted, but if he gets out of this set-up, we're taking him on the road.

2 = The number of hours of sleep I got last night.
2 = The number of sick children I currently have.
2 = The nights in a row that Billy has had nightmares.
2 = The number of times I can read "Goodnight, Blue" without wanting to throw myself into traffic.
2 = The number of episodes of Damages that are now, unwatched, saved on my DVR.
2 = The time I just set on my alarm clock as I head off for my nap.

5. Craft projects from Dollar Tree
I thought I had really found a deal: three Valentine-themed craft projects for $1. At Michael's, a similar package would have cost $5 or more (I know, still not a fortune, but we're talking about something that will end up covered in glitter glue and probably stuck to the furniture. Not something I want to spend a lot on.) Anyway, I open the package of red and pink foam hearts and the room fills with the scent of cat urine.There is a reason why this costs is $1. And I'm still ripped off. No one wants a pee-scented Valentine.

Some things at the Dollar Tree are a good deal: Ziplock bags and greeting cards (check for misspellings). Steer clear of craft projects and anything with the word "meat" on the label.

4. Our renter
We're maintaining two mortgages at the moment, because we couldn't sell our house in Sunny Hills (another dislike: the real estate market) before moving to Tallahassee. We managed to rent to a guy who works at the prison (did we mention our old home was prison-adjacent?) who has complained non-stop about petty crap, been late with the rent every month and now has informed us this week he's moving out -- without paying his last month's rent.

If you have money problems, nobody understands more than us. I can put up with late rent, because the Lord knows, I've been late with mine in the past. But don't complain about the "taste of the water to me" as an excuse for not paying it. (By the way, anybody know any prisoner relatives with dull taste buds who might like to rent a house?)

3. Bad Dreams
Our family has been beleaguered by sleepless nights this week. Billy, in particular, like his mom, occasionally suffers nightmares. It breaks my heart, because he can't tell me what he's dreaming. He did (milestone!) manage to tell me one night "Dream!" when he woke up crying, so I think he's starting to understand what they are. I wish I knew what scares him.

My dreams are generally anxiety dreams: A recurring dream is that I'm performing and forget the words to a song. This week, I was in a bridesmaid's dress, aboard a jet ski, driving toward a volcano where my friend was getting married. I was late for the wedding, and I had forgotten the words to "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." I also honestly dreamed once that I was being chased very slowly by a murderous Thomas the Train (see #2 below).

Dave doesn't have bad dreams. In fact, he usually wakes both of us up laughing. On Tuesday, he dreamed that we hired Mick Jagger to do carpentry work. I won't get into the details, but suffice it to say that Mick Jagger is crap at home repair.

2. Demon-possessed Toys
My car is haunted by a missing toy cell phone. I know it's in there somewhere only because every time I hit a speed bump, I am greeted with the little ditty "Shave and a hair cut - two bits!" And somewhere in Billy's room "Evil Thomas" is hiding. This is a battery operated Thomas that decides to come to life between 2 and 3 a.m. and emit a sinister "chooooooo chooooooo" sound over the baby monitor.

The Elmo phone even looks demonic: It used to have cute Elmo eyes perched atop it, but my teething children scraped away the whites of his eyes, revealing the red paint beneath, making him look like Chucky's furry cousin. Occasionally, we will hear -- from somewhere in the house -- the phrase "It's Elmos's turrrrrn," in this creepy deep, battery-dying voice.

And this week's greatest dislike is ....

1. The three pounds I've gained since I stopped nursing.
Gone are the days (months, nearly a year ... sigh) when I could eat anything -- and I mean anything -- and not gain an ounce. Don't get me wrong; I'm not thin by any stretch of the imagination, and if I'd been truly motivated, I could have used the last year to LOSE more weight. But anyway, back to stupid dieting and step aerobics. Boo!

5. Sleep Talkin' Man (sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com)
One sleep-talking husband + one voice activated tape recorder = hilarious. Thanks to this brutally honest couple, my new favorite word is "BADGERTASTIC!"

4. Damages
I am so excited that Damages is back for another season. I'm not sure how the members of this particular law firm manage to either kill someone or at least get charged with it every few months and maintain their licenses to practice, but I'm looking forward to seeing who bites it in the opening scene on Monday night. (FX Network, 10 p.m. EST; you can get seasons 1 and 2 on DVD.)

3. Both Hands and a Flashlight (bothhandsandaflashlight.com)
This funny, extremely well-written blog by the parents of an autistic four-year-old and new baby so inspired me that I started my own. I should wish to be half as good as this. Not only is the blog sharp and witty, but I've got more than a few excellent parenting tips from Tim and Mary. You don't have to have an autistic child to appreciate the humor, but if you do, you'll want to bookmark this one.

2. Burgundy Lincoln Continentals
Actually, if you were to look in my driveway, you would think I friggin' LOVE burgundy Lincoln Continentals. We now have two of them that look identical, and there is a perfectly logical, boring explanation to this, but I prefer to let the neighbors wonder about our bizarrely specific car obsession. I'm just so glad we have a second car, so I don't have to drive Dave back and forth to work anymore. (Subset of this like: Extra hour in my day.)

1. Sloan, my lovely new niece
She just gets more beautiful every day, sleeps like an angel, according to her parents, and is gradually assuming the title of "World's Best Baby" from Willow (who has decided, this week, not to sleep). Sloan is so good, in fact, that I'm convinced when she's 16, she's going to cover herself in tatoos, buy a motorcycle, change her name to "BloodRayne" and declare herself a vampire.

Oh, deliver me. I do not have words for how much I hate Thomas the Tank Engine. There has never been one single watchable episode of that blasted British-born stop-motion irritant. And yet, Billy and millions of other kids are crazy for it.

I don't get it. It's like baby crack. Are there subliminal messages in it? Are all the toddlers in the world going to rise up and take over upon a single command from Sir Topham Hatt?

I try to get Billy to watch an episode of Scooby Doo where the gang solves yet another thrilling mystery about a ghost at an amusement park: No interest. He would rather watch an interminable 5 minutes about Thomas learning not to go too fast over the bridge.

I've tried to analyze the world view of the creators (originally Rev. Awdry) to find a clue to its success, but frankly, I'm baffled. The trains spend most of their time fighting with one another over petty crap until Sir Topham Hatt (hilariously called "the Fat Controller" in England) threatens to scrap them for "causing confusion and delay." And this is better than Scooby Doo how?

In one episode, Thomas makes fun of Salty for his Scottish accent. Salty is sad. Emily tells Thomas to stop being mean. Thomas apologizes to Salty, who says, essentially, "That's OK, it was pretty funny." So the message here is ... it's OK to ridicule people with accents because secretly they like it? If you're funny enough, you can be mean?

The plots are mind-numbingly repetitive as well. That previous plot? The one with Salty and the accent? Well, you can watch it again, only with Gordon being smelly. Thomas makes fun of him for stinking ... yada, yada, yada ... Gordon says, "That's OK, it was pretty funny."

In the '90s, there was apparently an outcry about Thomas the Tank Engine being sexist -- because of all the male engines and only one female (I guess they hadn't seen the Smurfs). So they added a couple more female characters, including The Refreshment Lady. There's no point here; I just think it's hysterical that their answer to charges of sexism was to add a female character who serves everybody tea and food. Hail, Britannia!

This would all be bad enough if I could just turn off the TV and that would be the end of it. But as many of you know, Billy has a recorder in his brain with a limitless hard drive. If he's ever heard it, he can recall it at his whim. He could name all the trains -- Skarloey, Rheneas, Edward, Peter Sam, etc. -- before he would call me "Mama."

Bad enough to endure through breakfast, lunch, and dinner a word-for-word repetition of the episode in which Thomas tried to keep Percy from meeting Flora, but yesterday, while playing at his train table with Willow, he screamed, "You're causing confusion and delay!" at her, which made her cry. I don't know if she was afraid she was going to be scrapped or just didn't want to be screamed at, but something's gotta give.

We have every train, truck (oh yes, they have trucks now) and piece of building equipment that those geniuses at Thomas headquarters have dreamed up, including the special Christmas present train (from the episode where Thomas had to deliver the Christmas presents), the zoo train (from the episode where Thomas had to pull the zoo train) and the aquarium train (you see where this is going). It's gotten to the point that every episode is just one long commercial for the toys.

And then it hit me: That's their genius. They've taken a toy catalog and given it a plot -- barely. You can't act out the stories without all the pieces: the highest bridge, Sir Topham Hatt and his car, the roundhouse, the tea lady -- actually, I think most stories would survive the loss of the tea lady.

Movies and TV shows have been doing the same thing for years -- perhaps more subtly, as they don't usually employ the actual toy in the film, but consider how the Transformers movie franchise might have been different if they'd had to use actual Transformers.It's hard to imagine that making it worse.

At least Billy wants to act out the stories, imaginative play being an important developmental step. Theoretically, kids practice social behavior in miniature as they act out stories in play time. I cringe at the thought of him taking life lessons from Thomas to the playground; he has enough communication problems without screaming, "You're causing confusion and delay!" at potential friends. But then again, those kids probably love Thomas too.

Baby crack. That's the only explanation.

I used to think I was busy. Really. I thought that if I didn't have time to see three movies a week, get my hair done, work out daily and spend some "me" time with a glass of wine and a good book, then life was really hectic.

Good grief. After I had kids, I started considering myself a success if I managed to brush both my hair and teeth in the same day.

When Billy got old enough to start climbing things, well ... if we both made it to bedtime without a trip to the emergency room, then good enough. My writing fell by the wayside a bit, as I barely had time to have a complete thought, much less write one down.

Things are starting to settle down a bit. Willow's 10 months old! She's big enough to stand up, but not yet old enough to work the baby gate (unlike Billy). Billy's schedule is very consistent now, with pre-K every day and therapy of some sort almost every afternoon. I'm averaging about 5 1/2 hours of sleep a night now, and I might even get around to vacuuming today.

My wizard of a husband built this website for me, and I've committed myself to blogging at least once a day. Not only is it a chance for me to start writing again, but it gives me an outlet for stress and a chance to communicate in some way with the outside world. As other parents of special needs kids will attest, you can get a little isolated sometimes. We got in the habit of avoiding social interaction for fear that Billy would have a meltdown, something expensive would get broken and other people would look at us as bad parents.

He's matured and grown by leaps and bounds -- and so have we. We still feel like we're inept parents about half the time, but I'm learning that that's not so unusual -- whether your child has special needs or is "normal," whatever that means.

We've been kicked out of one church and a few restaurants, but we've also learned that the people who count won't show us the door. They might (understandably) hide their breakables before we arrive, but they'll embrace both our children with open arms. Thank you all for that. You have no idea how much you mean to us, and just because we're complete crap at staying in touch with you, it doesn't mean that we don't appreciate all of your support.

And as soon as we have the time, we'll call you and tell you just that.

I want to like Leverage. I used to like it ... I think. I've seen every episode. But I realized watching the ridiculous episode about fashion week and sweatshops that I always want this show to be better than it is.

I was excited about Timothy Hutton doing a TV show. I think he's a great actor. Or I used to... I think. I mean, he was in Beautiful Girls, Falcon and the Snowman, Ordinary People, and Taps! He was really good in the Nero Wolfe mysteries than ran on AMC for a while too.

But Leverage has started to feel like an acting workshop that he's leading -- and not a particularly good one. "Watch me channel a really camp German-ish fashion expert!" "This week's stereotype is a really demanding movie director!"

The show works best to me when he doesn't assume a role -- other than that of Nathan Ford, the brains behind the group of thieves-gone-good. When he struggled with alcoholism (a fairly short struggle, it must be said), faced off with his ex-wife, met his nemesis from his days as an insurance investigator -- the show seemed smart and believable, a decent heist movie in miniature.

But for now, I'm afraid this one's going to the bottom of my priority list on the DVR, behind Wonder Pets and that documentary about the fall of the Roman Empire that I never get around to watching.

When people meet Billy for the first time, they're often amazed at his memory. I have to admit, it's pretty cool to the writer in me to hear my son recite Robert Frost poetry. It's very soothing to hear "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" in his sweet little voice ... the first 500 times. At 4 a.m., over the baby monitor ... eh, let's just say my appreciation of poetry wanes a bit.

Lately, he's been all about Charlie Brown all the time, repeating lines from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and the New Year's episode over and over and over ... complete with different voices for the different characters and all the songs, pitch perfect, every word in place. I didn't even realize that song at the beginning of "Charlie Brown Christmas" had words until he started singing them.

A few days ago, I kissed him on the cheek and told him, "I love you, Billy." He kissed me back, put his face very close to mine and said, "Happy New Year, Charles."

It's called "delayed echolalia," this endless repetition. And we're told that it's actually a good sign. It means he can talk, unlike some autistic kids who never develop verbal abilities. All children do it to some degree as they start talking; one mom recently told me that her first words were "We'll be right back after these messages." And as long as Billy starts to replace the repetitive talk with functional language -- and he's doing that already -- there's every belief that he can learn to communicate normally with time.

He repeats what he hears, and occasionally he gets it wrong. In the "12 Days of Christmas," the "eight ladies dancing" became "eight lazy dancers," and "five gold rings" became a plea to "buy gold, please!" -- maybe his own effort at economic stimulus. But I would say he gets it right 98 percent of the time. How many adults can recite all 12 days of Christmas?

There are plenty of times in life when such a perfect memory will be a real asset: spelling bees, the SATs, remembering his lines in a play, winning the final round of Jeopardy. I hope so, anyway, because that's kind of our retirement plan. He'll probably never forget his mother's birthday, to renew the tags on his car, or to turn his clocks back for Daylight Savings Time ... so he's already a few steps ahead of his dad.

In the meantime, we get to hear over and over again how when Leo Tolstoy wrote "War and Peace (the book Charlie Brown reads in 'Happy New Year')," his wife, Sonia, copied the book seven times by candlelight ... with a dip pen. And if you're afraid of responsibility, you have "hypengyophobia" and if you're afraid of cats, "ailurophasia," according to Lucy.

And on the bright side, in a few weeks, it'll be Valentine's Day and we can start over with "You're in Love, Charlie Brown."

For the past 18 months, we've been chasing a diagnosis for Billy's delays in speech, his differences in motor function, his quirks of personality. My emotions have run the gamut from an extreme skepticism that there's anything "wrong" with him to a growing fear that our early doubts are entirely justified. I've worried, cried, screamed and pleaded with insurance companies, prayed, laughed at myself, and started the process all over again.

Actually, if I'm completely honest with myself, what I've been looking for the past 18 months, is an expert who will say, "Your son is definitely not autistic." I would demand of the therapists and doctors, "He's not autistic, is he?" because to me, that meant the end. That I would lose my son. That he would slip away from me and lose his smiles and affection and love of life -- all of which he has in spades.

Well, Billy's three now, and he's not slipping away -- but some of his differences from his peers have become more apparent. He's a bright, beautiful, extremely funny boy. He has an amazing memory and vocabulary. He can answer the question, "What is that?" almost every time. He recognizes animals, plants, people, the planets, food ... but he can't tell you what he did today, what he likes to do, what his name is. He doesn't ask any questions. He spends most of his time repeating entire books, the dialog of a whole cartoon, the question you just asked him.

I know what you're probably thinking: "All kids develop differently. Don't worry about it. Let him develop at his own pace ..." Believe me, I've heard it all. I've said it all to myself.

He can sing beautifully -- perfect pitch and rhythm -- has a catalog of over 100 songs that he knows, and he loves to dance. But he'll have a complete meltdown if you touch his head or offer him anything to eat except macaroni, oatmeal or chicken nuggets. A symptom of his sensory processing problems is his *extreme* clumsiness. It's like he's always looking at where he wants to be, rather than where he is, and he'll fall over the huge coffee table -- which he doesn't see -- in his desire to get to his ball on the other side of the room. He didn't see the edge of the slide, and he fell off and got himself five stitches.

It's not traditional autism. Or at least what I've always believed autism to be. He's loving and affectionate and emotional and funny. But communicating is incredibly difficult for him. It's like he has all this information locked inside him, and he can't make sense of it. So what comes out, instead of what he wants to say, are these things that he's memorized.

So on the advice of a neurologist, we went for an MRI. It was a harrowing experience. The drug they gave him to sedate him had hardly any effect, and when they put in an IV, a meltdown of Armageddon proportions commenced. The results of the MRI: nothing physically wrong. So we get our diagnosis: autism.

I asked our OT, "Is that what autism means now? A lack of brain tumor or seizure disorder or stroke? None of that and you're suddenly autistic?"

She was kind when she responded to me. "No, Amanda. There are benchmarks for communication delay, motor problems and behavior issues -- and Billy meets all of those."

Oh. OK.

I can say it: My son is autistic.

I'm lucky. He's only mildly autistic. Most of his problems are sensory-related. And she's quick to point out that with therapy, he probably has a very good shot at a complete -- or near-complete -- recovery. That's a word that didn't used to be used with autism.

I don't know why the word bothers me so much. It doesn't change the person that Billy is. He's more than a diagnosis. He's a fantastic boy that any mom would feel lucky to love. I guess it's kind of like the way I don't want anyone to know my weight. The number doesn't make me fatter, but I'm not exactly going around with it scrawled on my forehead.

Every day I question every instinct I have, every treatment decision I've made for Billy -- every decision I make full-stop, for both my kids. But I'm starting to see that that's just part of being a parent.

But the A-word doesn't scare me any more. Much.

Between A Rock and A Good Place

I'm about as outdoorsy as taffeta. It's not that I don't like nature. I love the National Geographic Channel, and I'm glad that there are people with the time and wherewithal to follow the annual migration patterns of the caribou, but my idea of camping is a hotel room with a balcony.
It has to do with risk-aversion: You can't choose how you will eventually leave this earth, but you can eliminate certain death traps -- an overwhelming majority of which exist in the great outdoors.

I call it "Amanda's List of Ways I Will Not Die." For instance, I will not die because I decided to play with a bear cub and its mother bit my head off. I will not die because my tank ran out of air at the bottom of the ocean. I will not die because my brain froze on the way to the top of Mount Everest ...
In 2001, I had been living in Los Angeles for about four years. I had discovered indoor tanning, 24-hour gyms, and container gardening - who needed nature? It was the year I turned 30, with all the soul-searching and self-examination that brings. It was the year that I came out of the shower to find out that nearly 3,000 people died as the result of the lunatic death wish of 19 terrorists.
Like a lot of people, I watched non-stop coverage on CNN, and like a lot of people, I felt gutted after only a few hours. There's just no way to get your head around that kind of loss, played out in front of your eyes again and again and again. Everything that seemed to matter on September 10 just sort of flitted away.
I'd like to tell you that I completely reorganized my priorities and immediately started following caribou across the Great Northwest or joined the Peace Corps. But actually, I went to see the movie "Rat Race." The plot couldn't have been stupider if the script had been written by an actual rat, but I did laugh. A lot.
Then I decided to go rock climbing. Me. I don't even like step aerobics, but for some reason, it just seemed right. I wanted to get away from emails and cell phones and air conditioning and CNN -- until I was actually away from air conditioning. Turns out, Joshua Tree National Park is really freaking hot in September.

I signed up for a 48-hour crash course in climbing. From the start, I didn't like the sound of the word "crash," and I had serious doubts about my hippie instructor, who described himself as a "surfer of the rocks," and lived out of his van.
There were two other people in the class, both guys, and for the first hour, Hippie Joe mostly talked about the philosophy of climbing; the Zen of it; how most of climbing relies on visualization and takes place in your head.

Cool. We were just going to sit around and imagine that we were climbing rocks. I suggested we go sit in his van, with the air conditioning running, to do our imagining.
But from imagining, we graduated to "bouldering" on actual rocks, though thankfully, small ones. We practiced finding hand holds and foot holds and scooting along horizontally across the middle of a ridge of six-foot high rocks. I added No. 66 to "Amanda List of Ways I Will Not Die:" I will not bust my skull open because I fell off a rock.
But I hadn't seen anything yet. Our instructor guided us to what appeared to be a sheer cliff face, and pulled out this nest of cables and clasps. We were paired up, with one climber from each team - attached to a rope at the waist -- climbing to the top of the cliff and the other teammate holding the other end of the rope on the ground.
In order to match us up as evenly as possible, we were asked our weights. You would think that my out-of-all-proportion fear of death would supersede all other fears. But it turns out, I'd rather die than tell people how much I weigh.
I lied by at least 15 pounds, and though my skinny male partner looked skeptical, he seemed pretty sure that I was going to be able to sufficiently anchor him when he went spidering up the side of the mountain.
I was up first, though, and the entire time I was making my way up, I was terrified that if I slipped, I would go crashing to the ground, while all 90 pounds of him whizzed upward, flung over the top of the rock by the sheer weight of me.
Singularly focused on this image - when I wasn't frantically pawing at the surface of the rock for something to cling to - I hardly noticed the progress I was making. I was aware that there were three people below staring up at my butt.

I could hear my instructor and my classmates shouting from what seemed like an incredible distance. At first I thought they were saying, "You look fat!" which seemed kind of harsh, but I was too out of breath to explain that everyone's butt looks big in biker shorts.

But as I slowed down a moment, stilled my heart and my breathing long enough to "read" the rock as our instructor had taught us and find the next good foothold, I made out what they were actually saying: "You can do it!"

You can do it. I can do it.
And the very next handhold was the top of the cliff. I cannot describe the sheer exhilaration of it. I pulled myself up top and stood up, unafraid, buzzing from the physical exertion and the thrill of viewing the world from that angle.
I was grinning like an idiot, and I started to cry. Just a little, and I don't know why. It could have been from the dazzling beauty of the desert at sunset. Or I could have been choked up by the sight of my rock climbing pals cheering below. Or it could have been that, as I stared at their ant-like bodies, I realized, "Oh god, I have to climb back down there."
All I know is, as I stood up there, alone in the quiet, I breathed fresh air, I wept for people I didn't know, and I wondered why I couldn't have gotten that kind of catharsis from a nice, long walk.
Again, I'd like to tell you that everything changed after that. But you're probably aware that I haven't written any best-selling books on my year with the gorillas and if I were building schools in Tibet, I wouldn't have time to write this.
But over the past seven years, when I've found myself in need of that kind of peace, I've turned to nature. Whether it's a walk through the woods with my giant Great Pyrenees -- sold to me on the grounds that he could fight anything from snakes to wolves - or a family picnic by the lake.
Or collecting acorns with my son. Two years old, he hurtles himself out the door at the first whiff of fresh air, as though he's been shot from a cannon. He can spend more time studying an acorn than I spend doing my taxes, and you know what? He's right. It turns out that acorns are pretty fascinating.
I haven't recently added anything new to my list of ways I won't die. I have, however, found a whole lot of wonderful new ways to live.