Elaine heard me use the word "aurora borealis" and became immediately convinced that such a beautiful word must mean something wonderful to eat. She insisted that I give her one. As I tried to explain what they are, Elaine grew impatient and went to the refrigerator to find them for herself. I clearly wasn't being cooperative.

Failing to find any aurora borealises in the refrigerator, Elaine stood in the middle of the kitchen looking thoughtful. After a moment, she brightened and declared, "I want apricots!' So, I gave her a bowl of dried apricots, and, as she accepted them, she delightedly exclaimed, "Aurora borealises!"

The thing about burned brownies is: they have a strong, pungently chocolate smell; it's fun to excavate out the good, middle layer; and they're done twice as fast. So, basically, you can't lose.

I've been playing a lot of Plants Vs. Zombies lately, so I've been thinking a lot about brains. And how they get eaten. One of the ways that brains commonly get eaten is by the "Terrible Twos." See, there is a class of humanoid demon that is about three feet tall, can mimic human speech, and is not deterred by garden perennials. Worst of all, apparently, every child passes through this phase. Now, I'm a skeptic of so-called "Common Knowledge," so I didn't believe in the Terrible Twos, despite having heard about them. Not until last fall. But, then, the toddler ate my brains.

My theory is that every infant must pass through the "Uncanny Valley" -- and that's the Terrible Twos. The Uncanny Valley is an idea from computer animation. In short, there is a scale from cartoony, Disney-like depictions of human beings through the various levels of CGI, up to absolutely realistic images of humans. And, there is a patch on that scale where the depictions become too realistic, without being real enough. That's the Uncanny Valley, and anything that falls there is, really, downright creepy. Because it's eerie to look at something that's almost perfectly human, and, then, suddenly to see something that's off. Something that gives it away. You feel tricked, cheated, and creeped out.

That's what talking to Elaine was like between two and two-and-a-half. She'd babble along quite coherently, and when you'd start talking to her, she'd give completely reasonable responses. Then, suddenly, you'd need to really communicate an idea, and you'd realize she was just spewing random movie quotes. Being the full-time caretaker of a toddler is what having Eliza as a business partner would be like. Highly frustrating.

Fortunately, while zombies don't give your brains back and computer therapist programs don't burst into random sentience, toddlers do get older.

I have a second-hand garden. It came with my house, and I've been watching the spring flowers come up with a mix of anticipation and mild trepidation. Gardening has always been important to me, and I have strong opinions about my plants. So, for instance, I was excited to see so many daffodil leaves, but, I was somewhat disappointed when they bloomed and were almost all white. I mean... Yellow! That's what daffodils are about right? They're bright, bold trumpets and stars. Sure, a few white or orange daffodils add nice variety, but, in any given mix, a good fifty percent of the daffodils should be yellow. Needless to say, I'll be rectifying that situation before next year. (By adding more daffodils, of course. Not by taking any out.)

On the other hand, now that the daffodils have faded away, my garden is filled with a whole array of colorful tulips -- red, pink, yellow, and purple-striped! Now, if I'd been arranging this garden, I probably wouldn't have planted any tulips at all, because, honestly, I don't really like them. Tulips are kind of... pretentious. While being too simple to truly pull it off. And, yet, if I'd followed my instincts -- and planted tons of daffodils, rose bushes, and not much else -- my garden would be empty now.

So, on the whole, despite the sad lack of yellow daffodils, having a second-hand garden seems to be a pretty fantastic thing.

I've been rereading one of the very first chapter books I ever read, "The Cat Who Wished To Be A Man." I must have been six, and I know I checked it out from the public library. I remember being in (what I thought of as) the adult section. The shelves were taller there, and the books thicker. In retrospect, it must have been the YA section. And, the copy of "The Cat Who Wished To Be A Man" that I'm reading now is nothing like thick.

When I reached back through my fading memories and pulled out the title of that book I vaguely remembered with a cat begging his master, a magician, to turn him into a man... I had hoped that actually reading the book would pull the memories closer. I thought I might feel a sense of resonance with my six-year-old self while reading it.

Alas, while the overall story is mildly familiar, it doesn't actually feel like a book I've read before. Sometimes, revisiting a book, or a piece of music, or an actual place can take you back -- for a moment, you feel like you're the same person as when you first visited it. But, six-years-old is too far away. The memories I have of this book (although definitely authentic, as I've never talked about it before) don't feel substantially different from false memories I have of my mom's childhood, created by listening to her stories so many times.

I wonder where the tether broke... If I had the time, I might sample re-reading books from different periods of my life, and find out how far back that sense of resonance can stretch. Of course, the experiment would be complicated by trying to remember enough books from different times in my life that felt significant enough to warrant that kind of resonance... And, like I said, I don't really have the time.

Well, perhaps I'll experiment in the other direction: in another twenty years, I'll read "The Cat Who Wished To Be A Man" again, and find out if the tether stretches farther through adulthood.

There is something magical about taking a square sandwich and turning it into four, smaller, triangular sandwiches.

One of the best parts of being a writer: being sent the link to a nearly finished anthology that will have one of my stories in it.

Actually, there's been a lot of good bits about being a writer this week. For one, I was asked to write an afterword for the story, "Rekindle the Sun," in this anthology. That was a first. I got to reread "Rekindle the Sun" with an eye towards what it meant to me, and then write a mini-essay about that. Doing so made me particularly curious about what kind of take all the other authors in Belong: Interstellar Immigration Stories had on the theme.

I can't wait to read their stories!