"What the hell's wrong with you?" I mumbled into the sheets.

"I wanna go play more Diablo. I have to make the ladder."

(He's found some new sort of Diablo online variant. He had to abandon Spooge and start over, because the character can only be created and kept in the Diablo website. D. likes it because it absolutely does not allow hacked players of any kind. Also because it has a clearly defined though nigh-impossible goal for him to obsess over.)

"So, what do you have to do to get on the ladder?"

"The lowest character on right now is level 88."

"And what are you?"

"Uh...23."

"OK, hon. Have fun. I love you. *yawn* Could you set the alarm for 10 for me?"

***

Hee. He's funny.

D. does not as a rule, leap out of bed. He opens his eyes. He stretches. He rolls over and goes back to sleep for 20 minutes. After an hour or so of this, he manages to sit up. If I'm not there poking him every five minutes, it will take another hour for him to get dressed.

It's so infuriating. I kid you not, the man will spend 10 minutes staring at a pair of socks, as if he's trying to remember exactly what to do with them.

But for two days now, he's been out of bed and dressed before I'm fully conscious. If I hadn't seen it before, I'd swear he'd been replaced by some sort of pod person. A Diablo-playin' fool of a pod person.

***

At the restaurant, Nick's sister is the dishwasher, and her husband is the busser and prep cook. I'm not sure where they are all day, but every night at about 7:30, Chamila and Russel's kids appear. Dita is seven, and Dini is four. Dini is very quiet, but Dita talks up a storm. Her English is improving by leaps and bounds, and she's just starting to learn her letters. Every night we have the same conversation.

(Um, those of you who know my real name are going to have to extrapolate a bit here.)

"What you name?"

"You know my name, honey."

"Anika!" (reads off my name tag) "A-N-N-A-B-E-L-E. Anika!"

"Well, close enough. My real name is Anabelle, but most people just call me Ana, or sometimes Annie."

"Anika?"

"Yup. Here they call me Anika. But my name is really Ana."

(Apparently, in their part of the world, it's common to add "ka" or "ika" to women's names, as a term of endearment. I told D. once when we were in there eating that it means "Little Ana." He always says "Aw...Little Ana's so cute when she's mad! Doot doot doot!" So he was amused)

"How you spell?"

"Well, Anabelle is spelled like this" (points to name tag. I've long given up explaining that it's spelled wrong on the name tag. Maybe we'll work on that one in a few years.) "And Ana is just this part." (covers up part of the tag)

"Ooh! I have your pen, please?"

And then she spends 15 minutes writing "Annabele" and "Ana" and "Dita" and "Dini" and "123456789" all over one of the placemats. Sometimes, Dini tries to take the pen, and I have to give him one too.

I'm not sure why I'm telling you all this. Cute kids, though. They're also getting to be pros at rolling silverware.

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