{{{askye}}} It sounds like you gave her a comforting and easeful passing with her loving human close by; it's awful, that the last good gift you can give your pets is the hardest on you.

Ugh. Off to pick up Matilda now, and then I don't even know what. We got a call earlier that the father of one of Emmett's teammates, a robust and glowing and radiantly happy man, died suddenly last night of a massive heart attack. He was the kind of team dad that all the kids on his son's team and on all the teams his team played, and any older or younger siblings of any of these, all knew and loved him; everyone at Emmett's middle school is in shock, and Hec is on his way over now to check in with Emmett, see how he's handling it all, and see if there's anything to be done for the family.

Which means Matilda and I are futless until probably her bedtime, and it's too wet out to go do much of anything, and if I let myself get sad she'll be sad too, and worried, and keep patting me and saying, "Don't be sad, Mommy." Which is exactly the kind of tender toddler thing that just makes you ten times sadder.

I think I'll either take Matilda out for a noodle dinner or call megan and foist ourselves on her for the evening, or possibly both.

Oh, JZ, that's awful. That poor kid.

In pronunciation news, I'm going to have to take a completely contrary position. I love accents and dialects, so odd pronunciations even ones I think are "wrong" don't bother me usually. I love the ways words change on different parts ofthe country and world; plus, who can really say what the correct one is?more standardized, sure, but wrong? I think it just depends on your perception. I'm a liberal commie when it comes to these things, I guess.

Now that I've said this, of course, I'm going to think of a bunch of exceptions.

I have no problem with most. I might even slip in the odd vee-hick-l now and then myself.

Most of the time it's just a overemphasis of different components of the words according to the region.

I used to be more tolerant of NUKE-u-lr before GWB, I must admit.

When someone else mispronounces it I can roll my eyes, when the POTUS says it in an official capacity, I cringe.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday quietly ended the Bush administration's ban on giving federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option.

Thanks to Shrift, I immediately went to Monster.com and changed my password.

Scary.

JZ, I'm around too, if you need.

But...it's not even *spelled* chipoLte.

My grandfather could never pronounce Chick-Fil-A. It always came out "Chick-a-fil."

However, he could say "catfish fillet" just fine.

Aw, juliana! Our door is always open to you (obviously, we made it home by now), but how are you doing with the Death Flu?

I am so sorry for your loss askye. I am giving my kitty some extra cuddles.

My mother cannot say Vietnam or salsa. She somehow puts a million extra vowels in them (and we are from Western NY). So it is vee-a-AT-nam and saaw- all- SUH. Drives me nuts. And I do somehow draw the line between accents and just saying the wrong word, like Chi-pol-te.

Of course, I can't pronounce many words that I see mostly in writing. I just found out today that I was saying proselytize wrong.

My stepmother used to say em-BOYD-ree for embroidery. I could never figure out how she got that.