Sunday Quote

Tell me the story as it lies in your head.

- Rudyard Kipling, The Finest Story in the World

Meerkats really are cute

There was some Meerkat show awhile back that was very popular - I tuned in once and the mommy meerkat was eaten or something and I thought (once again) real nature is way to rugged for me. I like fake nature like gardening books and the botanical garden and looking out the car window at anything bigger than a breadbox, especially if it has teeth.
However, to be sure, they (Meerkats) are cute. I mean top notch cute. Freaking crazy cute. They run around like our faux miniture poodle with his little bichon mix teeth sticking out, very distracted and energetic (like Tucker) cute. How they fit in to a maritime theme is anybody's guess - the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk has an African exhibit of fish - and somehow wangled a bunch of Meerkats in for the big draw (yes, way cuter than fish). To be fair they also had a pet the nurse shark exhibit which was probably a huge drag for the nurse sharks, two of them, who appeared very sulky, and was entertaining for the fact of the Maritime employee standing next to the "Nurse Sharks are Harmless" sign (I kid you not) shouting above the din "touch them only with two fingers, no, NO! NOT THERE! They don't like being touched there. NO NO NO NOT THERE EITHER! He had this ongoing list of warnings that was very entertaining - exhausting for him no doubt. This was a man bound for laryngitis going home to a nice mug of hot tea with honey and lemon. Add to that the woman from my town, a state away, who recognized me as a librarian and wanted me to pony up names of good books for her child standing a foot away. Not just a little request. A several times request and a "you can't think of anything else" after she shot down my initial off the cuff suggestions as the son was uninterested in them. "Not on my day off", I cheerily replied. Cheerily because we were stuck on the shark line and I did not want to have to stand in stony silence watching the shark employee hyperventilate "NO! DON'T TOUCH THE SHARKS THERE!". Anyway that got her to stop. Or maybe the tone of false cheer sounded a bit alarming as false cheer so often does.
So where was I? Oh, yeah. Meerkats are really cute. Even toy ones. Except the big giant balloon one hovering over the entrance to the Maritime Center. That one was just creepy.

Heaven or Hell Cake

Every year the oldest boy gets a special cake, usually with a theme that has some level of mayhem and carnage in it...there has been the Surrender Earthlings! cake, the Evolution cake (featuring earthquakes and weird critters and major chaos), the Sacrificial Virgin to the Volcano cake (a plastic hula skirted native girl faces her end on top of the volcano), the Alien giant caterpillars coming out of a head to half torso cake of said son, and the Island of Doom where a team of oceanographers escape a sea of sharks and giant squid only to encounter man-eating creatures on the desert island...there usually is a lot of red icing and strawberry pie filling carnage as you can imagine. This year's theme more philosophical as our young man considers his life options. Choose Heaven or choose Hell. Scarier than that - our son looks suspiciously like Justin Bieber and if you press the button on his tummy, he sings.

Happy Birthday to Chris

Hard to believe that the young artist who drew this tiger is a college senior turning 22 today. I am making him one of his special cakes (baking now) and resisting the urge to start singing Sunrise, Sunset.

Sunday Quote

Broken windows and empty hallways,
a pale dead moon in a sky streaked with grey.
Human kindness is overflowing,
and I think it's gonna rain today.

- Randy Newman

Shadows study

Sunday Quote

Let down, let go. The world will carry you.

- Mark Nemo, The Book of Awakening

Something to chew on

Awful! I know. I do like lame puns :)
This fantastic work of visual art and prankdom mixed - a winning combination - is a must share: someone crocheted a body cover for the Wall Street Bull - how fabulously inventive! We are especially amused considering the husband's long history with "the Street". (And no, greed is not good, it is far better to use your kindergartner lessons on sharing). Meanwhile am reading a book I tried to stop - I tend to not read books about certain subjects that do not lie easy with me - but this book, The Outlander, by short story writer and poet, Gil Adamson, is so exquisitely written, a poet's language and rhythm matched to a compelling story - that I cannot stop myself. Even away from the book, in conversation with others and such, I am thinking about the book, feeling the landscape and the interior workings of her mind...I am thinking about it now. Gotta book.

even twilight in a parking lot...

or a little past twilight can be beautiful in its own way...but then I am always one for photos of rust and old painted walls and cracked windows. Eye of the beholder, yes.

Sunday Quote

Whatever you are be a good one.

- Abraham Lincoln

Procrastination

I do so like this short film called Procrastination - something of which I am quite the master of ....and today it feels especially apt.

Ice and relative things

I have had enough, especially with our morning black out and slipslide to work, and power lines and tree branches down and a horrible cold...but the power came back, the lines repaired, my no school son came to work with me and he was my charming lunch date...would that I could say good things about the cold except I am grateful for Nyquil and pajamas which is where I am headed...

Sunday Quote

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

- Gertrude Stein

and everything emptying into white...

The eerie quality of snow at night

Snow when it first falls, peth peth peth, is so magical and snow in the daytime, especially the early morning or at dusk can be stunningly beautiful, peaceful even, but sometimes for me, snow is just creepy. Otherworldly, eerie, mountains of heavy cold stuff looming, the same snowstorm that seemed so magical and peaceful in the morning and hot chocolate wonderful in the afternoon feels foreboding and strange. Not a little dusting of snow that makes me feel cozy and grateful to be indoors, it is the kind we are having lately - boatloads of snow - that gives me that trapped in the avalanche or here comes the Yeti kind of creeped out vibe. My daughter shoveling snow predawn a few weeks back commented that the deep otherworldly hush of snow and then the wind coming up low in the dark of early morning really wigged her out.
I think if I was in a small mountain cabin somewhere, logs burning steadily in the fireplace, no one around for miles, I would have come up with some version of Sasquatch to fret about.
Never thought of snowglobes as creepy however until I came across this site. (note - some of these are really dark although the imagination behind them is very creative). Years ago someone (probably one of my Sims loving children) did send me this site - just found it again, so I guess there is a little something off about some snowglobes...

Happy Birthday, Mom

One of my favorite pictures of my Mom - it is in a frame propped up on my dresser (and if you saw my dresser, you would understand that it sometimes gets lost in the mix) and I think it's a stand-out photo. For one, she looks relaxed and carefree and very cool Mama in the spiffy glasses - and while that was not an alien vibe, she did not love having a camera aimed at her for the most part. She has been gone since 2005 and not a week goes by where I don't think to call her about something. I read an interview somewhere where the person was asked if they could have an hour of anything, no matter how wild or fantastic, what they would choose - and they answered - one more hour with my mother. I think that's just about right.

yes, sonny, way back when I was a lass...

In one of those one topic leads to another discussions, I find myself chatting with the youngest, veering from the topic that dancing, even around the house, is good exercise to a cha cha down memory lane where I share how when his father, always a good cook, would make me dinner (yes, ladies). My husband, then beau, was, as he is now, a cook who did not like to be interrupted when calling up his culinary muse - so to amuse myself, I would dance around the living room to whatever records were playing - good exercise and fun. "Because we had no computers to fool around on back then" chimes in the husband. The 11 year old looks stunned. "Yeah, no cds, we played records," I add, "or ipods, or game things like xbox or any of that stuff, can you imagine?" The boy looks ill. We then start to reminisce how we got our first VHS player a year or so after we got married and how stunning it was to watch a movie in your very own house (!) and I recall that the first movie we got was "Starman" the great sci fi love movie where the fabulous Karen Allen drives across western states with the very cute if robot-y Jeff Bridges alien and introduces him to the charms of diners, pie (lots of pie - so you know it was a decent movie). Now we really are into it - fondly recalling how much more fun the world was then when you could get really excited about stuff that is all so everyday now...at this point the 11 year old looks rather stunned that his parents are truly THIS OLD since clearly this is stone-age stuff... well then this must be our theme song (a big fave at the library with the kidlets, too!)

Sunday Quote

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

- Picasso

The New Scots Makar

Scotland has introduced their new Makar to the world - the poet and playwright, Liz Lochhead, will serve the position similar to our American Poet Laureate. She comes across as an appealing person, warm and witty, in the youtube vid and this bit of background information makes me want to find more out about her work, her interest in feminism and gothic-tinted literature and theatre as writer and performer only adds to that. Finding it difficult to find any complete poems of hers online - and too tired to do a more thorough search as it's getting late...but this only sends me off into more yearning - I want to go back to Scotland - and I wish I had gone sooner. Ah well...now I will just have to make sure I don't wait until far later for a return trip.

a morning stroll ends with royalty

the other morning I got to work earlier than I needed to be, at the little library (I work at two libraries, one quite large and one quite small) and thought I would take a stroll. The frozen lake looked so tempting with all that expanse of untouched fluff that I was amazed no foolhardy teen attempted to cross it all day. The way the library looks through the pines makes me feel I am in Maine, not some urban/suburban library (small city so we are both). And the sign made me pause for a moment until I realized some clever vandal had blotted out the "no". Back inside, I opened up the library and realized the day before had ended with some sort of horrific battle at the castle. I greeted the last princess standing with all the respect due such a warrior queen...and then took off my snow boots and got to work :)