My bride and I bought a new matress this weekend. (We also bought a new couch and a new chair and ottoman, but this morning's story is about the mattress.) It's all my bride's fault, of course - if it had been left to me, I'd have been sleeping on the same mattress when I was moved into the retirement home - I've just become adept at contorting my body around the springs poking through the top. Somehow, I made it to 30 years old without ever having to buy a mattress. I'm not exactly sure how that happened. It seems like I would have had to go through the mattress-buying excercise by now - after all, I've bought a number of cars; I have a mortgage and a kid. But I have never until now bought a mattress. In some strange way that neither fatherhood nor land ownership did, a mattress made me feel like I've irrevocably crossed that threshold to adulthood. We don't actually have the mattress yet, as they don't carry the normal king size beds out here - only up through 'California kings' (vs. 'Eastern Kings'). Oh, and in the past 10-12 years since our old mattress was made, both mattresses and box springs got thicker. So now we have to buy all new bedsheets. And lower the bedframe a few inches. And yes, you have to buy a new, matching box springs, because using your old box springs voids the warranty on your mattress. Please tell me - who is using their mattress warranty? "Yes, is this 1-800-Beds? My mattress is on the blink, can you please send out a mattress repair man?" I bet the mattress repair man is the one checking to see if you ripped off the tags.

I just received the new tax form to fill out for 2003:

Ella's vocabulary at 19 months:

"cheese"	her favorite food - she also knows exactly where it is in the refrigerator
"Mom"
"Dad"
"Dis"	'this'
"Dat"	'that' - often confused with 'Dad'
"Hi"
"book"	used in combination with the above, she can tell with surprising accuracy which books are Dad's and which Mom's
"juice"
"ball"
"dog"	used a lot less now that Muta and Cleo are gone
"pooh"	when pointing at the tv, short for Winnie the Pooh
"pooh"	when pointing at her diaper, short for "I have a special something for you now"
"bum"	also used when pointing at her diaper - short for "Can you please change my bum now?"
"coke"	references any canned beverage. In Ella's mind, all of them belong to Daddy - no doubt due to the amount of Diet Coke I drink. (I've also managed to train her that all the remote controls are Daddy's, too. )
"car"
"go"
"uh-oh"
"phenylketonurics"

She doesn't say "yes" and "no" yet - but she has been shaking or nodding her head for months to indicate her agreement or (more often) lack thereof.

The next phrase we're working on is "Vote Bush."