reply

Okay! Looks like my original Chapter 24 comments from yesterday may be gone forever (creating an odd paradox where @Jade responds to some of what I say, before it appears that I say it) but my repost from this morning is now showing up. By sheer brilliance I was able to retrieve the comments without having to retype them (or, you know, I hit the “back” button on my web browser a few times and got lucky). I really thought for a moment they were lost to the sands of time. @Jade, a couple weeks ago you had some “lost” posts. Clearly, the intermittent defect has now shifted to my computer. Or maybe our hard drives are losing their memories to each other? In any case:

My comments on Chapter 25 (Reef):

> A week passes between chapters! That was a surprise.

> “What’s different is his use of the word we—meaning him and me, like we’re a team and always have been.” – This is awesome! Declan’s attitude might shift, but his intensity sure doesn’t. 

> “She reaches out her hand and we shake solemnly.” – Okay, now I like Principal Latimore. She knows she was wrong, she knows Reef isn’t going to rat out the person who really stole her purse, and she doesn’t push what doesn’t need to be pushed. That was a classy move from a class act.

> We are living in the future. Theo has a a phone filled with notes and passwords, and he indicates how serious it is by lamenting he keeps getting locked out of TikTok. Ha! 

> Love the humor in this chapter. Like Reef’s suggestion of a “mad scientist gizmo.” And his (joking) response when Theo says electricity might be the cure as well as the cause: Pee on an electric fence!

> But Theo outdoes him in the mad scientist realm. Where’s the electricity going to come from? Lightning. 
    Yikes!

Ray-J’s Word of the Day: I believe I have never before mentally processed the word “isolette.” If it’s somewhere in MIXED UP, I missed it, but @GRK’s comment had me opening up Onelook, which also suggests “humidicrib” as yet another synonym for incubator. 

@Jade: “You could probably fuel a car for a few hours off of a baby’s screaming—that has to generate some energy.” – A baby’s screams are a good backup if you run out of consommé, but giggles are a more efficient fuel. (Life bucket list item checked off: Use both A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag and Monsters, Inc. to illustrate a point.)