OK, here's one for the Pet Peeves list. What is with "surveill?" This is not a word. I keep hearing this one from cops on tv--not tv cops, but real policeman who end up on tv: "We were surveilling the house..."

To which my immediate response is:"You were not!" They may have had the house under surveillance, but they most certainly were not "surveilling" it. If it takes too much energy to say "under surveillance" they could cut to the chase and simply say they were "watching" the house.

I assume that this bastardization of a perfectly good word is yet another example of the hideous practice of turning nouns into verbs that they were never meant to be. I suppose I should be grateful that they aren't trying to say "surveillancing."

My brother sent me a message this evening, with the subject line of "sadness." I was quite alarmed, assuming that some mishap had befallen him. I opened the message immediately, only to read:

THERE'S A LOT OF SADNESS IN THE WORLD

Right now, as you read this,
17 million Americans are having SEX!

And you're on the computer!

I was going to just follow Alex around for an hour or two and record everything that he does during that time...but the truth is that I can't keep up with him for that long! In fact, I would be hard pressed to keep up with him for 10 minutes, which may serve to explain the trail of chaos through my house. I run, run, run trying to pick things up, put things away, clean up the messes, and placate the outraged siblings he leaves in his wake, but I wear out long before he does!

A sampling of his recent activities:

Running through the kitchen and flinging open the oven door...repeatedly (doubly annoying as we are now on our second range...he permanently mis-placed the door on the one that came with the house; it was just happenstance that we had a replacement)

Dumping a box of eggs on the kitchen floor. This would be an annoyance if the floor was tiled; as it has some gawdy, god-awful carpet on it (circa 1974, at a guess) it's a minor disaster. (My opinion on the bonehead that decided carpet in kitchens was a good idea is a whole 'nother topic.)

Dumping a glass of Kool-Aid in almost the same spot.