AJ spent much of his pre-school morning running around the house and singing. Sometimes he sang songs he learned in school or at storytime at our local library or from his favorite CDs. Sometimes he made them up as a descriptive accompaniment to whatever activity he was engaged in. And for some unknown reason, he has been spending a lot of time singing the word �colors� and the names of assorted colors in an ever-changing order to the tune of �The Battle Hymn of the Republic.� In one version:

[cue marching music]

Red and green and blue and purple!
Purple, red and blue and orange!
Blue and green and white are colors!
Colors, colors, colors!

As a result of all of this, the house seems preternaturally quiet. The kind of quiet that is an intrusion due to the insistent presence of its lack of noise. I had to turn on the radio just to concentrate.

Although I was nervous to jump back into the dissertation, I have been mostly pleased with what I�ve found. Sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder. I�m not sure if fonder is exactly the right word in this case, but I am, at least, less inclined toward hatred. This morning�s struggles have been largely vocabularic. I�ve been trying to describe a case where activities are usually described as happening in one of two ways but where it is more accurately taking place in the space between. That space between is giving me trouble. �Interjacent� is probably the most accurate term, but it is unwieldy, inelegant. But I can�t seem to come up with something prettier. I know academics reviewing dissertation are possibly the last people to worry about pretty prose, but as a musician (and erstwhile composer), I find it cuts me to the quick when it doesn�t sound the way I want it to. But perhaps I�m only obsessing because I�ve spent the last several weeks on something I will read out loud. I know I should move on, but it�s needling me. Sometimes the English language strikes me as wildly inaccurate.

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