Inducing Labor

Trisha's step-daughter's child will be born Monday, a child that never should have been born, but which will be induced Monday, because that's the most convenient time. I'm glad they can work this out. The mother is a high school senior and the father is a high school sophomore, and I'm sure they'll be great parents, but I question whether they should be, at this point in time. I'm a stick in the mud when it comes to this shit: a combined age of 33 doesn't come close to my minimum target age of 42; kids having kids on the dole. Gets my dander up. Otherwise a fine time on the ridge. I crashed early, because I knew I wanted to get up in the middle of the night and write, something about that time-frame. It's very quiet at three in the morning. And I don't think you should induce labor anyway. Except on rare occasions, when a trip to Jamaica, might seem preferable to a trip to Iceland. Oh, wait, that is the point. I have to be careful , driving back roads, because the squirrels are so crazy. And that fractured waning moon, dodging tree trunks, is no help at all. It seems like something I've thought about before. Sometimes language works for me, other times I haven't a clue. After dark that kid Travis knocks at the door, needing to use the phone, I nearly bean him with an Indian club I have close at hand. Didn't get much work done today, kept getting called off task, my left hip was being wanky and I didn't feel comfortable on a ladder. Beautiful warm day, clear skies, and the alley crew finished getting a second coat of sealer on the stamped concrete. I think they're done. Now waiting for Rush Welding to get the wrought iron gates completed. D might well show up tomorrow morning with the last load of wood for the back hallway, some cherry plywood and the trim. Finding it difficult to get baseboard in the correct profile. I researched a couple of things, indulgences, William Caxton, squirrels, then packed it in, headed home, the long way around. I needed more mediation between town and the ridge. My older daughter called, driving on her way to rehearsal for "Long Day's Journey Into Night", she has a minor part; I hate that hard-assed American Realism, I find it tedious, but, as a theater person, it's good to have done one, so we talk about that; and her visit, late summer or early fall, with her significant other. It was Caxton, remember, who codified English. Learned to print 1471, died 1491, but as the first English printer, he needed a language that could be set in type. He printed the first Canterbury Tales, around 1480, and a hundred years later Shakespeare was writing plays in a fairly modern English. If I were very rich, I'd own a Caxton book, and a first folio of Shakespeare, because they frame the language. My old 1911 Britannica is pretty good on this and I end up reading with magnifying glasses until my head hurts. I bought this set of encyclopedias in the mid-1970's, Starr Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts, for $100, and I've used them 10,000 times since. It's a terrible set, small format, bible paper, tiny type, but I'm used to that, from my two volume OED, which requires a magnifying glass, and I patiently fan the pages. You have Caxton printing the Canterbury Tales in 1480, and then you have Shakespeare writing Titus Andronicus, no later than 1600. Greek drama, heavy handed, but still, you can understand what's happening. It's amazing that we understand each other, that we can communicate at all, 26 letters, and 500,000 words.