Nice to have our granddaughter sharing time with us for the March break. Gives her and her mother a break from one another. Gives us the opportunity to live closely with a fourteen-year-old again. Not that it's been all that awfully long since the last time around, which was January.

On each such occasion our lives briefly take a bit of a lurch as we adjust to the new, albeit temporarily reality of two seniors sharing close intimate space with a teen. For a young girl, this teen has a ravenous appetite. No missed meals here. Although it's a struggle to have her agree to eat citrus fruits at breakfast. Toast, tea or coffee, eggs, poultry-type-bacon are all fine but oranges, grapefruits, not so much. She tolerates them crushed into juice form.

Her cellphone is never far from her swift grasp. It's never on ring tone, just buzz, and sometimes it seems like a loud buzz, causing us to wonder what on earth is that and where is it coming from, before we remember. Even through mealtimes she is constantly responding to text messages. She seldom initiates them, but responding is instant, and occasionally, judging from her reaction, hilarious.

Her grandfather has done an awful lot of unaccustomed shopping the last few days. Hauling granddaughter out to the shopping malls where her favourite shops are located. It's not time-consuming, since she knows exactly what she wants, doesn't particularly enjoy shopping, is intent on going in, and getting out as soon as she can. Shopping bags in hand, of course.

They exited one quasi-favoured shop when they understood they had erred in the pricing for sweat pants. Who ever heard of sweat pants priced at $50 each? She did end up elsewhere (Urban Planet) buying four pairs of jeans and nine quite nifty tops.

At breakfast this morning, we perused the news through the tiny computer, and newpapers while she chatted away texting with her best friend. She's working on school projects while she's with us and has set up shop on the dining room table.

At one juncture, her grandfather nudged her to notice an item in the National Post: "At long last", read the headline over the item, "scientists have a way to measure the carbon footprint of cow farts." Truly, that's what it said, and she was more than a little impressed.