Damn Dishes

Emil is a repeater. He has heard what you said, and will remember it word for word, and will use it as his own. We all know, from raising children, that it is essential to watch what you say around them because “little pitchers have big ears” and will embarrass you or someone else by saying something that wasn’t meant to be heard outside your own home. Emil, age 26, is like one of those little pitchers.

For instance, one time I hugged Gunnar goodbye and exclaimed, “It’s like hugging a wall!” He is six-foot-four and a big galoot. When they were here, Gunnar and Melissa picked Emil up for lunch one day and he introduced Gunnar to his house supervisor: “This is Gunnar. He’s big, like a wall.”

Another thing about Emil’s particular brain is that if you interrupt him mid-sentence — say, for instance, you want him to clarify a point — he will then start at the first word of the sentence again, and repeat the entire thing verbatim, like a recording. He can’t start in the middle of it, where he left off. It’s the way his brain works; a cerebral palsy thing, I guess.

Everett and I went out for supper last night at a local restaurant and then picked Emil up for the weekend. After we went for an ice cream treat at the local dairy dip, he came home with me. “It’s a long weekend; I get to stay till Monday,” he has said numerous times. He's quite happy about that, apparently, if only because he'll have free range in the kitchen.

Often when he’s here, there are dishes on the counter and he will say something like “We should get those dishes done so it looks nice in here.”

I can’t remember what his exact words are, but they are repeats of something he has heard me say. I am waiting for him to say them today, because maybe he will help me tackle that damn pile of dishes I can’t seem to get to the bottom of!

I said to Scott the other day: Make up your mind what you want for a water treatment system, because it's well past time we got a dishwasher in here.

"We've already got a dishwasher," he retorted, meaning me, "but it makes a lot of noise."

He quite often makes me hoot with laughter, as he's got a uniquely goofy and witty sense of humour, but I might've bitten the inside of my cheek when I grinned at that one: ha ha.

Trees inside the northern block of bush along our driveway are dying, due to flooding. Red-winged blackbirds have moved in. We do live in the middle of a swamp, apparently.