School In Our Jammies

Had Lewis or Clark experienced laptop firewall issues, their Corps of Discovery journals may have lacked reader appeal.  “Saw lots of grizzlies; didn’t die” written from memory two years after the fact doesn’t have quite the punch of “‘a verry large and a turrible looking animal, extremely hard to kill’ chased Fred up a tree today.”

Similarly, consider Captain James Cook’s daily logs of navigation, weather, and the state of New Holland natives:  “…they may appear to be the most wretched people upon earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them.”  He wrote it when he thought it. That makes a difference.

As a modern story keeper on a voyage, I generally write it when I think it. However, having been restrained by one of those superfluous but necessary conveniences so essential for daily blogging – a finicky laptop — I unhappily could not. But for that, our NM adventure would have had that daily “read all about it!” draw.

Sigh.

I shall do my best.

Our people, whom we had not seen in 469 days!, hosted us in their New Mexico resort from June 4 – 13.  So much must be told, and shall be. Stay tuned.

Today, I leave you with this guy:

And his little sister.

Upcoming:  missing cabins/hidden valleys, road trips, PIE, stargazing, two towns, and my peoples.

Once upon a time, Mr. Mo brought Kitty to OmaOpa’s house.  Kitty, who is orange and scruffy, waited patiently on the bench until nap time. Then she joined Mr. Mo in his bed, along with his special nighnie blanket and binkie.  They slept for two hours.

After nap, Kitty joined the gang for “Rescuers Down Under” with Opa.  At 4:15 p.m., it was time to head for home.  Mr. Mo put his boots on and took his coat from the bench.  Oma gave him a packet of fruit snacks for the road and waved goodbye.

She came back inside the house to play with Miss Em until her daddy said it was time to leave.  Oma gave her a packet of fruit snacks for the road and waved goodbye.

Oma came back inside the house.

There was kitty and nighnie, resting in the middle of the living room floor. “Uh, oh”, thought Oma.  She texted mommy:  “Mo left kitty and blanket.  Tell him Oma will take good care until we can get them back.”

“Oh no!” texted mommy back.  “How did we let that happen?  Okay, thanks, Oma, he be okay.”

The following Thursday morning, Kitty waited anxiously for Mr. Mo to arrive.  Oma had texted, “Tell Mo that Kitty is waiting.”

“My Kitty!” exclaimed Mr. Mo.

When he arrived, Mr. Mo climbed the porch steps and swept Kitty into his arms.

And the day ended as it does most every week — only this time, Kitty went home with her boy.

Oma thought, “what a brilliant idea!”  She had leftover cake in the freezer (from the near disaster of that @drakeoncake episode), scads of sprinkles, a bag of powdered sugar, and a cube of butter.  The preschoolers were coming tomorrow.  She would instruct them in cake decorating.  They would love it.

Oma defrosted the chocolate layer, cut it into little cake shapes with a drinking glass, and beat buttercream with her KitchenAid.  She portioned one tablespoon of sprinkles into three Dixie cups, one for each tot, and hid the rest.  (Leaving a half-full bag on the counter would invite speculation that more sprinkles could be available, forcing Oma to defend: Nope, that’s all the sprinkles we have today, guys.  Just the ones in your cup.  Yes, I sure can buy more someday, but we have enough for today. No, don’t eat them yet, please. Soon you can eat them. Yes, I promise — you can eat your sprinkles later. All the ones in your own cup. Right.)

Then, she expertly frosted each teeny, personal-sized cake with a crumb layer and stuck those back in the fridge until the proper time.  The rest of the frosting she divided among six ramekins.

Oma did all of this prior to the arrival of the tots on the day, as any clever Oma would.  (Never completely avoidable, Omas know that chaos is mitigated with a bit of prep and a lot of patience.)  After a breakfast of sausage links all around and some horseplay with Opa, the punkins were ready.  Oma called them into the kitchen.

Who wants to decorate a cake? she called.

“CAKE! CAKE!  CAKE!”

With the zeal of stampeding lemmings, three tots clambered each for a favored kitchen stool. Oma brought cakes out of the fridge.

I WANT THAT ONE! I WANT THE ONE ON THE WHITE FISHY PLATE! I WANT THIS ONE!

Don’t touch the cakes, please, commanded Oma.  The tots stopped touching and looked in her general direction.

Now, she began.  Before you eat cake, you must frost cake.  But you must do what I say, otherwise you can’t frost your cake.  Okay?

All okayed.

Oma placed her new set of gel food color bottles on the counter.  Then she removed black and brown, deciding that those “colors” were unnecessary for this endeavor.

“I want pink!”

“I want blue!”

“I want…”

Wait! interrupted Oma.  They waited. Each of you can choose two colors.  And you can share!  That way you’ll have more colors!  Mr. Mo, what color do you want? 

He wanted blue and yellow; Miss N of course wanted pink and purple, and Miss E. wanted a bright, grass green and red.  Done.  Against her better judgement, Oma allowed each to squirt just a little bit! of gel into a ramekin and then stir, stir, stir frosting until the colors were saturated.

Next, Oma  –

NOPE! Wait, please!  Don’t touch your cake! Licking is touching, guys – don’t lick frosting.  No, not even the little bit on the side of the bowl…okay.  Just that little bit right there, no more. Yes, you can, too. Just one little taste.  That’s enough.  Ready? — next we must put your frosting into these piping bags.  See?

—using her newfound quar-routine skill, inserted frosting into a piping bag and smooshed it down towards the tip. She did that for six bags of different colors.  She demonstrated to her pupils how to twist the open end of the bag around and around, directing the frosting blob towards the business end of the tip and not back out the way it had just entered the bag.

“I taste it?” asked Mr. Mo.

NO, NO TASTING yet – okay, just a little taste.  Here, hold out your finger and I’ll squirt a bit onto it.  Does it taste good?  Yes?  Like raspberry?  Really? Everybody — hold out your finger. Got some? Okay. Let’s get back to work.  Ready?  If you hold the twisted end of the bag, and squeeze its middle, look!  Frosting comes out the tip!  Now you can decorate your ca –

Before Oma could finish yet another sentence –whammo! — three sets of fingers squished three bags of colored buttercream out their tips.   Smooth, creamy frosting piled like snakes atop each mini cake platform, rising taller and pointier by the nanosecond. Swirls of red, looping with green tendrils, dipped down a side only to be scooped up by a swift finger. And licked. One color down, the bag operator instantly polished off the frosting trail by rapping her lips around the tip and – Oma realized this after the fact – sucking.  Deeply. Empty piping bags were tossed.  New ones acquired. Swiftly, nay urgently, a new hue was procured, emptied, then flung aside as flotsam after a tsunami. Frosting mountains grew pointier.  Cake platforms groaned under the weight.

Sprinkles were flung with abandon.  And then they were done.

Are you all finished?  Yay — your cakes are so pretty WAIT!  Let’s show your mommies before you eat them. Here you go, carry your cake carefully.

Decorated cakes deserved ooh-ing and aww-ing, so Oma directed her pupils to oh-so-carefully carry their masterpieces to the living room to be admired by mommies and baby E.

“We eat our cakes now?” asked Mr. Mo.

Sure!  Who needs a fork?

Silly Oma.  Who, indeed? In seconds frosting mountains were reduced to plains, and Oma realized – this may have not been so brilliant after all.

All done?  Yes, you are.  Quick, boots and coats on, we’re going outside. No, you can take the rest of your cake home.  Let’s go run off some of that sugar, shall we?

Candyland has nonthin’ on mini cakes at Oma’s house.

Oma’s pie making skills are top notch.  Never afraid of crust, she learned early in her marriage to throw flour, fat, and warm water into a bowl and voila!  Out came pie dough.  It rolled well, it held its shape when folded and tucked into a pie pan, it cooked through without the dreaded soggy bottom. Her family loved it.  Her friends all asked for the recipe.  It was perfect.

Oma’s cake skills, however, have been sub-par.  She blamed this on a generation whose mindset rested in a can of peas, a tub of margarine, and a boxed cake from Betty Crocker.  As a product of the 60’s, Oma had no clue– none whatsoever! — that cake could (or should) be anything more than a foundation for frosting. Which came from a can.

Thanks be to fresh broccoli, cheeses-other-than-American-cheddar, real butter, food bloggers and a pandemic, Oma has now chalked up yet another qua-routine skill.  She can bake a cake. From scratch.

She can frost it, too, as of last weekend.  She can write snippets of poetry on it with a Wilton #4 tip.  Or, if snippets of poetry composed by a rapper with PG13 language skills hold scant appeal, she can quote her grandson. Who even knew poetry on cakes was a thing?  Well, maybe the rest of those food blogger followers did, but not this grandma.  Now she knows.

She knows, for instance, that one can learn important and useful skills from a baker in New Orleans while standing in one’s kitchen in the Northwest. How did this brilliant and useful new ability come to fruition?  Oma will tell:

1. Oma’s oldest daughter, Jessica, suggested the two of them take a @drakeoncake class together via @thebakehousenola.
2. Oma said, woo hoo!  Sounds like a blast.  Let’s do it.
3. After receiving the list of supplies from @thebakehousenola earlier in the week, Oma visited Amazon, whereupon she spent $75 on cake paraphernalia.
4. She purchased a rotating cake stand for $29.  (It’s beautiful and sturdy, and Oma wants to display it on her countertop, but alas, there is no room.)
5. She purchased another cake stand completely by accident by neglecting to remove it from her cart before checking out.  She sent that one back for a $16 refund, although the offset spatula that came with it would have been nifty.
6. She bought a bag of “manvscake” fancy-schmanzy sprinkles which put grocery store sprinkles to shame.  Those cost $15 for 12 oz.

7. Later that week, she dropped by Michael’s craft store in the Harbor to grab a round piece of waxed cardboard.  They didn’t have the one she found on the app, so she bought plain ones for three times the price of the one she wanted.  At least now she owns a dozen more.  For future cakes.  Like the ones needed for March birthdays.  Okay, not “ones”, just one.  Three birthdays = one cake.  But, April!  April has three birthdays, too.

8. What else?  There was another thing…oh, yes.  Gel food dye for frosting.  Eight colors, $9.47.  They’ll last forever.

9. So, for $75, not counting the $45 cost of the class because her sweet daughter gifted that to her, Oma baked and decorated one cake.

10. Friday evening, Oma located her 9-inch, round cake pans and set to work greasing and flouring them.  She followed the straightforward directions for mixing and cooking an “everyday chocolate cake”.  It smelled divine.

11. However, it refused to come out of the pan.

12. Recalling baking disasters on GBBO, Oma convinced herself that she could glue the broken bits together and Paul Hollywood would never notice.  Then she went to bed.

13. At 5 a.m. Saturday morning, Oma baked another cake to replace the disaster.

14. This time, she generously greased the pans, lined each with a circle of parchment, and greased them again – generously.

15. Her cake layers slid from their pans like ice cubes from a hot tray.  They were perfect.

16. Oma then fiendishly cleaned her kitchen.  She even mopped the floor, which was ridiculous because not only was the class on Zoom, participants cameras and microphones were all turned off.

17. Class began at 9 a.m.

18. By 11:30 a.m., Oma had a beautifully unique, homemade chocolate cake with a full pound of buttercream frosting adorning its top and sides.  She piped letters.  She piped scallops.  She piped pink blobby things.  She sprinkled sprinkles with abandon.

19. This was not the end, however.  Apparently, the “poetry-on-cake” thing includes staging and photographing one’s cake, posting it on Instagram, and tagging @thebakehousenola.  Staging?  Staging is a thing.

20. The thing about staging one’s cake is to gather “from around your house” bits of this and bits of that to properly illustrate the “theme of the cake”, e.g., its “message”.

21. Since Oma is an English teacher, the idea of theme is not new to her.  The part about staging and photographing though – well.  She did her best.

English teachers, as you know, love to teach writing.  They also love seeing their students’ faces, even virtual faces.

Today was the last Zoom meeting with my writing students — not the preschool kind, but the older kind — until January.  So, we wrote a “picture story” together.

The rules are simple:  Choose a series of three pictures. Write a sentence that states the “central fact” of each picture. Use those as both the topic sentence and the clincher sentence in each paragraph.  Fill in with details.  Make it fictional.

Oh, and when you’re filling in the backstory, please use past participle verbs.  Okay?  Okay.

Here’s what we did today —

The Great Goofy Gingerbread Caper

by Mrs. B’s JW67 Writing Class

Emiline lay very still atop a sheet of cardboard while Oma traced her body with a sharp pencil.  She and her cousins, Miss Nomi and Mr. Mo, had decided to bake giant gingerbread cookies of themselves.  Having read The Gingerbread Man by Richard Scarry several times, Miss Em just knew they could design life-sized replicas of that delicious character.  Secretly, Mr. Mo had planned to inject each cookie with a concoction. He wanted his cookie to run, and he wanted to chase it throughout the neighborhood.  Naturally, he also wanted to eat it. Losing his cookie to a smarty-pants fox was not part of his plan. He had to be sneaky, though.  The girls would not approve. As Oma drew around Miss Em’s body, he and Miss Nomi waited their turn to make cardboard patterns of themselves.

Just thirty minutes later, the preschoolers modeled their Gingerbread Kid patterns while the grandparents took a picture.  Next, they shooed the Oma and Opa out of the house, hoping to mix the dough, shape the bread, and bake their ginger models alone.  They knew how to do it.  With the biggest mixing bowl available, Miss Nomi poured molasses, cracked five dozen eggs, and began to stir.  Miss Em dumped 25 pounds of flour into the bowl as Mr. Mo carefully mixed the spices.  “This be fun, right?” he asked the girls as the heavy dough took shape. One wrong move would spell disaster.  Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg — and Mo’s secret ingredient from Oma’s chemistry closet –  were finally added to the mixing bowl.  It was time.  None of the preschool scientists anticipated what might go wrong when they had modeled their cardboard bodies for the photograph.

Just as the kitchen timer signaled that the cookies were cooked, Scout plopped her fat, furry body atop the gingerbread cutouts on Oma’s desk. As the hot treats leapt out of the oven, they darted through the front door.  Mr. Mo’s concoction had worked! Miss Em, Miss Nomi, and Mr. Mo raced after them in hot pursuit, calling as they ran: “stop, stop before you all skid!  We made you and we’ll eat you, you gingerbread kids!” But sadly, they could not catch their cookies. Disappearing over the hill, those gingerbread kids laughed their gingerbread laughs and high-fived each other. Yes, they had escaped for now.  As the three cousins trudged back home, they talked about what to do better next time. “I’ll leave out the concoction,” sighed Mr. Mo.  “We’d rather eat our cookies than chase them up the road.  Right?” Miss Em and Miss Nomi agreed, and planned to begin their cookie project again, just as soon as they removed Scout from atop their cardboard models.

The End.

Well, the end until January, students.  Thanks for working hard and writing well.  Lord willing, I’ll see your faces again in a few weeks!

Although our tots haven’t lived long, they’ve traveled far.  Each week one or three reminds us about flying to London, training to “the queen’s castle”, or sailing on the ferry.  They want to do it all again.

“Who should we take with us?” I ask Mr. Mo, just because his response is pretty cute.

“Mommy. Daddy. Elliline, Nomi.” Pause.

“YOU! OPA!”

“How about Matt?”

“Yeah!”

“And Jenny?”

“Yeah!”

“And Auntie Erin?  And Uncle David?”

“Yeah, yeah!”

Of course, yeah.

Because these days there is little of that, and because our menfolk had gone hunting last weekend, we teamed up for a mini-adventure.  First, donuts from Freddie’s, plus chocolate milk for ones too young to appreciate coffee. Thankfully, Freddie’s has donuts with white frosting and sprinkles.

“Did you buy all the same kind so we wouldn’t whine?” asked the one who pays careful attention to such things.

“Right you are!” answered the one stuck sitting between two car seats and trying to shuffle pastries to six people, open two chocolate milk containers, and not spill her own latte.  That alone was a bonified airplane experience.

Manchester State Park provided the fresh air and autumn moisture for a jaunty stroll and muddy-puddle stomping.  Five thousand boisterous sea lions provided the soundtrack and a wee bit of trepidation as we all neared the water.  Maybe it was only three sea lions.  We never actually caught sight of them.  Sounded raucous, though.

Speaking of sound carrying across water, I hear ferries.  I do.  When we were dating, Opa discovered his future wife’s ability to hear the low engine rumble characteristic of a Washington state ferry, and announce its appearance before it did.  It was one of those “how DOES she do that?” things.  It was one of my claims to fame.  Still is.

I heard it traveling westbound from Seattle to Bremerton.  “The ferry’s comin!” I announced.  Alas — and not for lack of hustle — we missed it for the trees and brush between us and the Sound.  Mr. Mo was heartbroken.

“It’s okay!” I reassured all.  “We’ll catch it on the way back.  Let’s find a good spot to wait.”

We waited.

And waited.  I listened.  No rumble.

Finally, we moseyed.  Back along the water, back to the picnic area, back to the beach.  Still no ferry.  Still no rumble.  Opa, because he is brilliant, used his phone to check the schedule.

“Oh, yeah,” he reassured us.  “It left Bremerton at 11:10, and it’s 11:18.  It’ll be along any minute now.”

The tots were growing restless.  I listened harder.

Finally.  Taking its own sweet time, our ferry finally rumbled past.  The tots waved.

Thank you, ferry boat.  We waited for you, and you came.  Next time, perhaps we’ll sail along with you:  we’ll get some good coffee, a giant cinnamon roll or two for sharing, and we’ll be able to check one more adventure off the list for our world travelers.  Who shall we take with us, Mo?

Well, that was easy, thought Oma.  The harvest moon was rising in the west, and she had just spatchcocked her first chicken.  Snipping along the bird’s spine with kitchen shears, flipping it breast-side up and flattening it slightly into a butterfly shape, Oma marveled. After a quick roasting in a 500-degree oven – she’d learned not to fear 500-degree ovens – the chick should be crispy on the outside and tender everywhere else. Dinner would be served in 30 minutes. Since March 21, 2020, she’d done so many new things.

She’d worked a 1000-piece puzzle of the Albuquerque balloon fiesta.  She’d learned to play chess.  She’d kept a sourdough starter alive; she’d even baked a few loaves with “Clara”.  She’d learned to distinguish between ravens and crows just by their calls. Basil, oregano, and scads of begonias thrived on her deck.  Hydrangea blooms were the size of cabbages.  The grass was green.

Chalking these up to new” quar-routine” skills, Oma turned her attention to preschool prep.  Before bedtime, she must inventory her Magnet Hanout and fashion some novel apparatuses.  She’d been collecting cans, washers, bolts and the like, and had even bought a dozen plastic slinkies.  She’d glued magnets onto compact mirrors, stuck big wiggly eyes onto metal rings, raided the science cabinet for steel balls.  These “top of the shop” goodies would thrill her small shoppers.  She was certain of that.

Backstory here:  When Oma and Opa had lived in Fes, they shopped at Carrefour.  At Carrefour they bought bread, orange juice, Babybel cheese, yogurt, and water.  They also shopped at the hanout down the street.  At the hanout, they bought snacks like Pringles and candy, and they practiced their Darija skills with the shopkeeper. Twice Oma and Opa shopped in the medina.  In the medina, they bought a carpet, for which they haggled successfully, and two sugar bowls, for which they did not.

Haggling, as you might imagine, is weird to Americans, but not to Moroccans or preschoolers.  True haggling (not bartering, as that involves goods-for-goods, not goods-for-dough) is a negotiation.  Preschoolers are particularly good at negotiations, even as they have gaps in their economic awareness.

Having stocked her Magnet Hanout and garnered coins from the penny stash, Oma served Opa spatchcocked chicken with perfectly roasted potatoes and onions.  Soon they would retire for the night, as the preschoolers would arrive in the morning.

And they did. Oma told them after breakfast and a bit of horseplay with Opa, that today they would shop at her Magnet Hanout.  Mommy Amy expertly explained how a “hanout” differs from a store, such as “Target” because at Target you walk down the aisles and pick your items, then take them to the cashier to pay.  In a hanout, you greet the shopkeeper, inquire if he has this or that, and he gets it off the shelf for you.  Then you pay.

“Mom!  We need money!” realized Miss Nomi.

“Well, we don’t usually bring money to OmaOpa’s house…” replied Mommy Amy.

Oma corrected that little preschool misconception by instructing Miss Nomi, Miss Em, and Mr. Mo to run upstairs and find purses.  She would give them pennies to spend at the Magnet Hanout.

That one mistake likely furthered their financial misconceptions.

“Okay, welcome to my Magnet Hanout,” said Oma to the shoppers.  “What would you like to buy?”

“I would like,” began Miss Nomi, in her finest adulting voice, “one of those.  The rainbow, sparkly one.” She was pointing to a slinky.  “How much for it?”

“Two pennies,” replied shopkeeper Oma.

“Okay, here you go.”  Money exchanged for goods.  Off to a fine start.

The other two shoppers did likewise, as following your elder’s lead is a safe procedure when you’re in a foreign country, or at OmaOpa’s preschool.

Buying and selling continued successfully for a time.  Bought were the entire inventory of slinkies, and a can or three. Thinking she’d ramp up the game a bit, Oma proposed a BOGO offer.

“I would like one of those; how much is it?” Miss Nomi inquired of the green pipe cleaners.

“Well,” mused Oma strategically.  “Tell you what.  You can have three of these for two pennies!”

“No,” countered Miss Nomes, authoritatively.  (Were her haggling skills beginning to blossom? wondered Oma.)  “Three pennies.”

“You want three for three pennies instead of three for two pennies?”  Oma asked.

“Yes.”

“Okaaaay.”

Miss Em chimed in next.  “Miss Em, what would you like?  Green pipe cleaners? Yes?  How many?”

“Five,” replied the one with a handful already.

“Okay, for three pennies,” agreed shopkeeper Oma, holding out her hand (there were pennies in it still from the previous transaction) for Miss Em’s money.

“Thank you,” responded she in her most polite voice, removing three pennies from Oma’s hand plus five more green pipe cleaners.

Later, after her shoppers had taken their goods and departed, Oma reflected upon haggling, commerce with preschoolers, and negotiations in general.  What she concluded – before untangling three slinkies and suggesting a romp in the fresh, autumn air – was that if she could haggle a chicken into a butterfly and roast it for dinner, there was still hope for her tots.

Some things float, and some things sink.  Some things are magnetic, and some things aren’t.

Sometimes we understand terms like “magnetic strength”, and sometimes we just feel like creating “magnetic sculptures”.

Sometimes magnets are loads of fun, but other times we enjoy the sand hiding the magnets more than we enjoy the magnets themselves.

Sometimes magnets attract, and sometimes they repel. Sometimes if we’re patient and careful, we can get the hand magnet to move the car across the table without making contact.

Other times we aren’t patient at all, and we throw the car across the kitchen floor until it lands downstairs.  Those times we get to sit on the “naughty rug” until we decide to apologize to Oma and retrieve the car.

And, sometimes new homeschool mommies discover that the real first day of kindergarten is the second day, because the first day was garbage.

And to that, this Oma says “sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.”

so much depends

upon

six pretty

magnets

held by little

hands

beside a pile

of stuff

Who among us hasn’t needed a bit of tech support of late?  Who has never experienced a login fail? A glitchy app?  Lack of RAM? Incorrect password? Eh?

Even in last year’s world, we’d call upon tech support– or Opas– to save us from blue screens of death, reinstall drivers, fix sluggish boot-ups.

But, because of that punk, COVID, my tech support abilities have been sorely tested, both comin’ and goin’.

Comin’ —

Opa, my computer just locked up…Opa, I got kicked out of my Zoom meeting…Opa, my PC wants to restart.  Again.  Opa, Opa, Opa…

and goin’ –

Excuse me, Mrs. B, but I can’t login…

Mrs. B, sorry to bother you again, but I keep getting an error message. It says I have an incorrect code. Please help!

Mrs. B, I’m really sorry to be such a pain, but if my kids get kicked offline, can they get back into class?

Mrs. B, how do my kids submit their assignments?

Mrs. B, I can’t open the attachment.

Mrs. B, Mrs. B, Mrs. B…

Well. It turns out that even preschoolers need tech support now and again. During our end-of-the-summer Field Day, two couldn’t get past the firewall…er, pool-noodle obstacle.  Thankfully, they had Opa’s Tech Guy Services.

Soon, after a successful reboot to a water race, one little bit fat fingered her pitcher, downloading content onto the lawn. One preferred the “dump and dash” method, nearly missing the access point on each attempt. The last bit discovered how undeliverable his data was, but he managed nonetheless.

It was a race, after all.

Not to mess with a good thing when we’ve got one goin’, we hyperlinked the applets out to the driveway and provided them with even more water, piggy-backed with suds.  The Prius is now cleaner than it was.

And my tech skills are savvier than they was.  I suppose that’s a good thing.