Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

I went to go read to Caroline’s class today, which is always fun. The kids are so enthusiastic about stories. And they all listen in their own little ways. One girl likes to play with my toes as I read. Other kids just have the permanent wiggles. Other kids just do their own thing, which is fine. Generally, they’re really well-behaved, and even if they’re not paying attention, they’re doing it quietly. And they always ask for more stories, because it means they don’t have to do any work.

So after story time, they had a little independent reading time before lunch, and another kid brought over Frog and Toad Together and gave it to Caroline and me. I had this book when I was a kid, and I remember that there was something deeply, deeply disturbing about it, to the point that I didn’t like reading it even while I had some unhealthy fascination with it. So I seized the chance to read it today, wondering just what it was that upset me so when I was little. And we leafed through it, and it was perfectly innocuous.

As we were reading, lunchtime came, so Caroline ran to put the book back, but darn it all, I was not going to let it go. The kids lined up, but I ran over to the bookshelf and skimmed through to the back. Aha! Dragons and giants. Scary? Not so much.

Hmm. The Dream. Last story in the book.  Images from Google Books.

Wait, what?  Toad’s doing well up on stage and his friend is in the audience getting smaller and smaller and smaller and he just disappears?  Ay ay?

To a child, it’s just freaky.  To an adult, I have to wonder what the moral is – don’t excel?

The LA Times reports that bacon is not over, offering up 25 fun and delicious things you can do with bacon today!

Because the world’s not going to hell in a handbasket and there is nothing else to report on.

You ever have one of those moments where you realize that the events of the next little while will either make you or break you? I think I’m having one of those moments. Hopefully there will be no restraining orders.

Oh and by the way, I would like to commend the local forecasters for saying it would only get into the mid 40s last night. Because that’s why I planted the strawberries. And then ended up zipping out to the garden with a poncho to cover them up when they revised that to the (whoops, heh heh) mid 20s. Sheesh.

My youngest child is in tears because she doesn’t want to take swimming lessons. It’s not so much the lessons that bother her (or her sister); they don’t like people telling them what to do. They want me to take them to the pool and teach them how to swim. Like I’m qualified. I told her that I had to go through the years of swimming lessons and had someone tell me what to do, so she should, too. That didn’t seem to work.

Sigh.

Am I really that much of a freak for liking my Y-axis inverted?

This is not a double entendre, I promise.

It’s just that I’ve been playing a lot (a LOT) of Fallout 3 lately, and the most natural thing in the world for me is to play it with the Y-axis inverted, so that pressing down on the joystick brings the camera up, and vice versa. When I hand the controller over to Hub for him to do something, he calls me a mutant freak of nature and scoffs repeatedly at me. Scoff, scoff scoff.

I dunno, man, it just feels right.

My daughter woke up crying this morning from a bad dream about me. She wouldn’t tell me what it was until this evening. She said that Daddy wasn’t home, and her sister was in the house, but I was sitting in a red truck in the driveway. She kept coming out to try to get in the truck with me, but I would roll up the window and ignore her. Just sitting there. No wonder she was so distressed. What an awful dream.

I gave her lots of love and cuddles today and played Mousetrap with her. She and I both lost to her sister.

The best part about working in the garden with the kids is that you can squirt them with the hose when you’re done. But then, with pre-meditated coldness, they insist on giving Mommy a big hug afterwards. The chumps.

Finally got the radishes, carrots, peas, and onions all set. Need to see if we can find some strawberry seedlings at the garden center, and maybe some spinach. The next batch goes in late March – stuff like cucumbers, squash, edamame, tomatoes, peppers, and corn. The viney melony/winter squashy stuff we’re going to plant in the front, unoccupied flower beds just for grins, because the watermelons took up so much real estate in the square foot garden last year.

Why nobody will ever beat Johnny Carson for the title. An eggcellent skit.