Little surfer girl

My life isn't terribly blog-worthy these days. I'm keeping very busy though, having recently started up my freelance indexing business again. I enjoy it, and I love making extra money to throw into the new furniture fund, but it's not very exciting. Mostly I do legal stuff, lots of tables of cases and statutes. I've done 3 tables for books on patent law in the past 2 weeks. See?! You're falling asleep just thinking about it.

I did have a good chuckle a couple days ago, when I came across this case: Power Lift, Inc. v. Weatherford Nipple-Up Systems. I snickered like Beavis as I tried to find out more, but all I could find was that this case "held that a license agreement is a contract governed by ordinary principles of state contract law and examined whether state relief from forfeiture provision was preempted." Yawn.

I was thinking the other day that it's a shame blogging is such a recent invention. I've missed out on recording so many cool and interesting things. I thought maybe it would be fun to go back and use old material for times like these when my present-day existence is so boring. Let's see . . .

Three moves ago, we spent 2 blissful years in Hawaii. As our time there was coming to a close, we took it into our collective head that we should learn to surf, so we headed for Waikiki. Mike had already had one lesson, and he was eager to show off for Fred, who had recently returned from one of his numerous TDY trips all across the Pacific rim. The boys took off together, and we girls got ready for our lesson.

Our teacher was a huge, local-kine beach boy, friendly enough but definitely intimidating to 5-year-old Annabelle. He plopped down next to her, looked her in the eye, and said, "AhnnaBELLE! I nah worried 'bout yoo. Yoo gonna be ooooooooKAY. I worried 'bout yo mama."

How sweet, I thought, that he would try to build up her confidence like this. I only hoped that she wouldn't be too disappointed if it turned out that surfing was a touch harder than Danny Boy made it sound.

After our drills in the sand, we followed Danny out into the waves. I took the first wave, Danny pushing my board hard toward the beach and hollering at me to "Paddle, paddle, paddle!" and "UP!" I made it up onto my knees and splash! fell off the board.

I came up from the water spluttering and looking for Annabelle, anxious to show her that her mom was OK. I started to panic when I couldn't see her little blonde head bobbing around in the waves at the break. And then I saw this:



There was my baby, grinning from ear to ear, and gliding across the water like she owned the ocean.