The status of an in-the-works novel, however, may have been set back many months. Well, let's be honest here. The months spent on the book equate to about seven or eight pages, so really, not much was lost there, either.

This all comes about because we are in the process of growing out of things at my house. The latest project is to get our 3 1/2 -year-old twins off of sippy cups, and it's going pretty well. They understand that, as is common practice around the world, 4-year-olds don't use sippy cups, and as
3 1/2 -year-olds, they need to practice with open cups like the ones 4-year-olds use.

In our case, the aforementioned pink plastic cup with princesses on it is for the girl and an as-yet-unmentioned blue plastic cup with Spiderman stickers covering up the princesses on it is for the boy. The girl picked out the cups one day when the boy was not there.

They are, in theory, all for the graduation to the rank of 4-year-old, and agree that as 4-year-olds, they will turn over, on their birthday, their sippys to be given to some other, younger kids to use. The typical milestones reached by toddlers have come fairly easily. They never liked pacifiers, so that was one nonevent. They gave up their bottles almost cold turkey one night when we decided it was time to get off bottles.

Potty training came quickly for the girl, but the boy dragged his feet on the issue. He has recently come around, though. The threat of "no computer game if you have an accident" seemed to have done the trick, but with the computer temporarily out of play, I hope we don't have a relapse. Still, the recent addition of Spiderman and Incredible Hulk—a.k.a. "the Green Man"—underwear has helped with the potty issue, but it has also opened up a new escalation in underwear one-upmanship. Princess underwear had to be added to the girl's wardrobe to keep the balance of undergarments from tipping too far in one direction.

But I digress.

The kids' practice with open cups has often led to spilt milk, apple juice, fruit punch, and so on, and the cry of "uh-oh" is a familiar one around the house. But until the day of "the spill," it was never around the computer.

The kids have about a half a dozen computer games, which they play on my laptop. They are simple, educational games that help baby farm animals find their mommies or direct air traffic at an airport, and the rule has always been "no food or sippys around the computer."

On Sunday, the morning of "the spill," after I had cleaned up from breakfast, the kids wanted to play a game or two before we went to the Oakland Zoo. I set the laptop up for them on the kitchen table, started the game and went to get myself cleaned up and ready. Evidently, while I was clearing the table after breakfast, the girl had held back her cup of juice in reserve.

When the boy yells out "uh-oh," it is usually followed by a defining statement, such as: "uh-oh, train tracks," or "uh-oh, lawnmower." When the girl yells out "uh-oh," it's usually because her brother has done something that she believes needs immediate attention.

This time, it was "uh-oh, Daddy. ... Daddy. ... Daddy, the computer's broken."

Now, I have to say right here that I do not know how computers work. They're magical little boxes, if you ask me, and one of the reasons for having kids is so they can download things for you and fix the computer when it stops working. But kids have to be older, like 6, and mine are not yet 4, so we've got a couple of problems.

One, the kids don't understand that Dad can't fix computers when apple juice is pouring out of the disc drive, and they were not yet done with their game, so there was crying.

Secondly, I know what an apple juice bath will cost, so there is crying.

And the last few pages of the book, which hadn't yet been backed up but included some fine and clever sentences, might be lost as well, so there was more crying.

And I was going to write an op-ed piece for the paper Sunday night. OK, there was no crying about that, but I still had to write it.

So I pulled out the old PC that has been sitting in the garage, unused for several years, borrowed a monitor, and banged one out. The old PC's Internet connection didn't work any more, I couldn't find the disc to download the new software for the current Internet connection, and I really had to search for a floppy disk to bring the piece to work in hopes of finding a PC in an office full of iMacs to get the thing into the system. Eventually, it worked.

I still haven't heard back from the computer repair shop, which makes me think a new laptop is in my future, but on the plus side, there have been fewer spills this week than last.

Now, if we can just get the kids to give up their blankies, then we'd be set.

Gregory Watkins is the editor of the Rose Garden Resident. He can be contacted at 408.200.1066 or gwatkins@svcn.com.