First three boxes of books up from the basement

One box of Gorey and two of hardcover fiction (Maron-Muller; Rowling-Tolkin & misc children's).


Today's earrings: flowers, other flowers

Bedtime reading: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, L. Frank Baum

Sweet

R came and mowed the lawn this morning, driving Tiger into a worshipful tizzy. K and I dragged the poor thing off to the store. We got books and stickers, but all he wanted was to see R, so we came home without going to the library. S took Tiger and R off to the zoo. Happiness!

They came back and R & Tiger played on the jungle gym while K&S worked on stuff and I lay on the living room couch and read about L. Frank Baum. I had just got to the part where the biographer talks sneeringly about the Populist Parable theory of _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ when I dozed off. Naps = good. (Though K did tell me later that I'd been snoring.)

The boys made apple crisp and chocolate chip cookies, consuming a fair amount of raw sugar in the process. R's father joined us for dinner. We ate; Tiger oscillated.

Now I'm going to go read the part of _Witches Abroad_ where someone drops a house on Nanny Ogg.


Today's earrings: moose, chocolate molecules

Bedtime reading: _Witches Abroad_, Terry Pratchett

It's not easy

At work today, Newbie told me that she'd recently made fudge from our family recipe. (Last December, Confused Cricket made fudge that I took in to the office. There was so much rejoicing that I circulated the recipe.) She said it hadn't occurred to her before then that fudge could be home-made; to her it had always been a store-bought treat.

I thought of, but did not share with her, a complementary revelation I had, when I realized that sodas could be purchased in supermarkets and then consumed at home. I suppose I must have been aware of the theoretical possibility before... it had just never come home to me before that I could do that.

Anyway. In our dandy new office configuration, Newbie's pointed straight at the bookcase on my right. Today I was getting some measurable work done, which means I had the tunes cranked, which means I was silently mouthing/emoting "Ballroom Blitz" and "Bat Out Of Hell" and the like smack in the middle of her peripheral vision. Poor Newbie. I hope the fudge recipe makes up for it.


Today's earrings: frogs, peapods

Bedtime reading: The Emerald City of Oz, L. Frank Baum

Called in sick

no earrings today

Bedtime reading: Sky Island, L. Frank Baum

Never just one

"Beware of monocausal theories."
- Buchanan Sharp

He was talking about the historiography of the English Revolution at the time, but I have found it good advice in general.


Today's earrings: strawberries, chocolate molecules

Bedtime reading: Sky Island, L. Frank Baum

Perspective

Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the Earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. Photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dead as an old bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of the great drifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land. And if you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you would have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held afloat by the fire beneath. It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.

- - Lewis Thomas

Today's earrings: flora, swirly blue-green beads

Bedtime reading: Sky Island, L. Frank Baum

Petting zoo postponed

Finished Making Money. (It doesn't quite have the same plot as Going Postal... well, maybe it does.) Late leaving the house.

Tilden was surrounded by detour signs and policemen repelling traffic. We finally found a chink in their armor and slipped through to an unoccupied picnic table by Anza Lake. Threw sticks in the lake with the daughter of friends of friends. Nice girl.

Someone taught D to say, "Acorns are the future," and he brought this out at the table, to great effect. Somewhat later, when most of the assembled had wandered off to throw more sticks in the lake, I looked up and said, "dragonfly." (There was this dragonfly, you see.) At that moment an acorn fell out of the tree we were sitting under and smacked the table right in front of me. The omens are clear: my future is dragonfly.

On the carousel, M was admonished for riding paparazzi-style. Then we went to have a lovely dinner with T&S and A&S.


There are a lot of Ss in this story. Time I came up with better names for you all. A has called Confused Ground Cricket. Who wants to be the the Fainting Goat? Any takers on Grace Darling or Darling Lily?


Today's earrings: llamas, buffalo

Bedtime reading: Sky Island, L. Frank Baum