Sucking the words right outta your head

We don’t have any Baby Einstein DVDs. Just hadn’t gotten around to getting any. Someone I know swears by them, keeps her little rascal captivated. And they’re so educational, what with their shapes and their colors and their classical music and all.

Except apparently, they’re not. Oops.

the [University of Washington] research team found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos.

We can’t be having Baby Einstein now anyway, as Disney bought it out not that long ago and that would go against my husband’s one-man Disney boycott.

But there’s no need. Two out of our hundreds of channels are full of bright colors and simple tunes designed just for baby. And I tell you, ol’ Cletus is already entranced.

And is one hour of silence worth 6 to 8 words?

Could be.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

SAD. I think maybe I’ve got SAD. That’s the good ol’ seasonal affective disorder caused by lack of daylight. Only in Britain could one get SAD in the summer.

It’s dreary here. Oh, sure – there have been the occasional glimmers of sunlight (last week wasn’t bad). But summer has largely been a washout. For many people, a complete washout – i.e. their homes and everything. All I’ve lost is a tomato crop. Vine rot. Blecchh.

I’m not the only one feeling the cool. Apparently, there’s been a rush on last minute vacations to…wherever there might be a glimmer of sun. Carbon footprint and environmental protesters be damned, people are crawling over each other to get off this sodden, gray island.

Us. Not so much with the foreign vacation plans. I haven’t even taken Cletus north of the river yet. Plus travel docs, he doesn’t have any. But I wouldn’t mind a little time in the sun.