By Rachel Loden
Shall I write a poem about you
And your epic struggle against stupidity?
Feh. But if the brain is a city
I too have rooms in the swampy part, surrounded by crocodiles.
The monarch butterflies sail down from the Canadian Rockies
To overwinter in Pacific Grove, pair off and fly away;
They bruise me. I get crankier.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the Saugatuck
Please text me beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Palookaville.
--------
From Loden's book Dick of the Dead.
I did not get up early to shop for my Superpoke Pet, which turned out to be a very good thing because Superpoke had a power outage last night and did not release new items until 6 p.m. Eastern time. Instead I slept late -- 9 a.m. is quite late on a school day, though I got up briefly to say goodbye to my kids -- and made a bunch of phone calls before going to meet Denise for Bagel City, Barnes & Noble, and Target (where I got a tuna bagel, a mini-wallet, and a $3.50 super-soft green sweater that I may never wear outdoors except on St. Patrick's Day but it will look adorable with my fuzzy froggie Grandma Pants).
In the evening, we went to a meeting at Daniel's high school about the magnet program -- summer internships and senior research projects, class scheduling, college testing, and all the problems the program is facing because of county budget disasters (fewer teachers, fewer electives, no bus transportation halfway across the county, etc.). The first and last segment were both relevant and interesting, but the bulk of the meeting was taken up by the guidance counselors reading word-for-word from their PowerPoint slides (something that would get my son a D on a classroom report). I don't know why administrative idiocy enrages me so much when I should just be resigned to it.
Got home late, read scary articles about likely long-term consequences of Thursday's Supreme Court rulings, watched a horrible Next Gen episode that I need to review on Friday, tried to figure out Daniel's schedule for tomorrow (no school since he has no make-up exam, but he wants to be there for robotics, but he doesn't want to get there on the morning bus since that's too early and instead would prefer to be driven during morning rush hour), so I am not in the best of moods. I think perhaps I shall go to bed and contemplate how lucky I am to have a cat smushed against my hip on a cold night. Oh, and for a smile, have some Paul Bettany.
A longnose gar and another fish in a New England Aquarium tank.
A piping plover and a tern in the shore bird exhibit.
One of the five sea turtles that live in the big ocean tank.
A denizen of the Year of the Frog exhibit (which technically was last year, but who doesn't love frogs?).
A leafy seadragon.
Adam and I believe this is a goosefish, though we may be misremembering.
Snail, coral, urchins, and anemones.
Looking into the ocean tank at a shark and a ray.
No comments:
Post a Comment