With my birthday coming up, I was feeling lonesome and particularly lonesome for my sons, so I got out my firstborn's first toy, a clown, with no name, as far as I remember. What a sweet face it has! My son used to suck on his nose.

You see, as I was going through the Nicholson Letters to pull out the ones from WWI and to transcribe them, some pictures fell out. One picture was of my husband and firstborn son. My son is about 3 months old here.

The  clown doll was in the photo!  Seems like yesterday,  to spout a cliche.

I have also saved the rattle, a wooden thing probably covered in toxic paint.

We also had this other red plastic teething ring. When I think of what they know today about polyphenols, is it?, and how they get activated with heat. Yikes!

These pictures come out  sideways because I am having problems with my HP laptop computer or my Cannon Powershot purchased in 2006.

But my 58th birthday is coming up (double Yikes!) and I'm a getting a brand new camera that will do everything this Powershot does and more but costs 1/5 as much.

I love this Powershot camera but have only lately figured out what it can do, but the memory card holds only 2 gig so I can't make long movies with it.

Built in obsolescence, techy version.

My husband, right now,  is making a racket in the hall. He's repairing our Dyson Vacuum. Is it a vacuum? This Dyson really sucks!! We bought it a few years ago when we got the hairy beast below, a child substitute no doubt. The dog, not the device.

He's part Golden Lab, Yellow Lab and blood hound and his coat sheds and sheds and sheds. You'd think he'd be hot in the house, but he hates going outside, unless a human is with him. Just like a kid. You can almost hear him complain, "But there's no one to play with outside and you always get mad when I bark HELLO to the neighbours.

We've got wall to wall carpeting, so I use the Dyson vacuum whatever daily, but  the power brush  started to rattle (I assumed I had bashed it against a table leg once too often) and then, after about a year of the rattling, broke.

I thought we'd have to buy a new Dyson aspirator thingy (whatever it is) but NO. My husband phoned the company and we were registered on warranty and they did a diagnosis over the phone and sent us a new belt. "It will be easy to slip on, " said the customer service person.

"That was NOT Fracken Easy" said my husband who is handy.But the machine is fixed!

My husband's hair is greyer now, as you can see. Mother Nature's own brand of built-in obsolescence.

A day's dog hair collected.

I just checked. They are called Dyson vacuums.builit