April 2008 Archives

Kyna helped me write the thank you cards for her birthday gifts. At first I was willing to let her write them out, telling her letter by letter how to spell the words she didn't know, but after a painstaking twenty minutes as she wrote out the first card I could feel my hair turning gray and knew I would die of old age before she finished them all. As I was about to snatch away the long awaited completed card, she told me firmly that she wasn't done yet and then added a small heart above one of her i's and polished off the sentence with a shamrock period. When she passed me the card she looked incredibly pleased with herself.

A gardenia

Opens thick and creamy sweet

And fades pepper spice

These are our newest family members. It appears there are six, one of which is a little runt who seems to be faring well so far. Six seems far more manageable than eight, and I'm hoping I can unload some of them off on neighborhood kids.



Personally, I feel that these baby mice look, uh... interesting, from a medical perspective sort of fetal-like. 'Cute', no matter how ubiquitous in my vocabulary, does not come to mind. Kyna, however, has been running around for a week now (that's how old they are) completely enraptured, collapsing in front of cage every time Cheddar hops on her mouse wheel to get back in shape and leaves the babies exposed so we can see them, exclaiming, "they are sooooooo cuuuuuuuuute!" Over and over and over.

I'm pretty sure I'll get grandchildren out of her.
 

My kitties speak to each other quite a bit. Unfortunately I don't have a video camera, but I found a couple older cats that will definitely be my kitties in a few years, here.

Now, it appears that these two are an old married couple, but that is just what they want you to think.  I guarantee they are plotting to take control of the tuna supply by slicing their owner's Achilles tendon in the morning. They're just working out the details.

On Saturday the local writers group I belong to chartered a bus and drove up to the L.A. Times Festival of Books for the day. This was the first event of this nature I've been to and I spent an incredibly enlightening day listening to various panel discussions and wandering overwhelmedly (yes I made that word up) through the sprawling rows of white tents, most of which were staffed by small, renown or new publishing houses. There were hundreds of them. I had no idea there were so many places where you could get work published and possibly read by tens of people! Being me, I have now set my sights incredibly high and want to work on a piece to be published in either ZYZZYVA, Black Clock, Ploughshares, or Tin House. Me getting published in any one of these journals is equivalent to a poetry grad student deciding to run a series of experiments examining the inner mechanisms of cellular mutation and discovering a promising new cancer therapy in the process, resulting in a  Nature or Science paper. Seeing as I can't actually do that either, this could be an exercise in serious rejection. I'll call it character building.



One of the panels I visited was called Women of Slipstream and featured Aimee Bender, Shelley Jackson, Miranda Mellis, and Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, none of which I'd ever heard of.  The highlight had to be when I realized that all of them talked with their hands just as much as I do.

My favorite quote was by Shelley Jackson who described her writing process as "approaching knowledge". It would be so easy to slam her for this, to dismiss her comment as vague or unfocused, especially since it came at the end of a very rambling, unfocused tangent, if I didn't have a fairly good idea of what she was talking about. Writing can often seem like the unfolding of ideas, exploratively taking you in a particular direction to a dreamed of clarity. Often, I'll reach what I think is the beautiful illuminated end, only to realize the next day that the knowledge I found was incomplete, full of gaping holes. Shelley is also writing a short story that is to be tattooed one word per person for the length of the story and only those who have one of the words tattooed on them can read the story. So far she has one thousand eight hundred and seventy five words tattooed on one thousand eight hundred and seventy five different people, and ten thousand applicants for the remaining thousand words. She gets some points for that idea.

The most surprising moment of the panel was when the small demure Sarah Shun-lien Bynum said in her high wispy, Luna Lovegood voice (of Harry Potter fame) that she liked to Fuck with people. It is rare that Fuck makes it into a professional panel, and I seriously doubt that it was heard at any of the other hundred panels being held over the weekend, but I suppose these women embodied the shock of that moment, a moment I doubt went over very well with the blue-haired tour-bus constituent of the crowd.

And finally, the most intriguing confession of this panel was when the women revealed that none of them had the foggiest idea what slipstream actually meant. They sort of made up their own bizarre version of the word, something about the words that go in when you are trying to speak out, which was an act, I felt, that defined them as those that use the broad acceptance of the current milieu to make up their own world without having to travel the established path themselves, yet without the established path they could not possibly exist. I will admit that I too, did not have a perfect understanding of slipstream when I first read about their upcoming panel, but unlike them, who were the actual participating members, I looked it up before I went.

slipstream: -noun

1. the airstream generating reduced air pressure and forward suction directly behind a rapidly moving vehicle.  

2. to ride in the slipstream of a fast-moving vehicle.

I suspect that the person who named the panel meant that to read their work is akin to gliding in the slipstream of their progressive writing, but I'll have so much more respect for the namer if they actually meant that these are the women who reside in the slipstream of creative writing at large, gliding along by the suction of the established path, glorying in the freedom of movement graciously afforded them by those who came prepared; those who cleared the path, the authors who would have known the definition to all the words in the name of their panel.

I wonder what they

Eat at the small restaurant

Neatly named Gushi

Hidden like jewels

Juicy summer fragrant fruit

Stains our fingers red

So the day before we planned to take Spinny, the male mouse, back to the pet store, Chris and I had a brief discussion about what the fate of male mice in a pet store environment might be. I suggested that maybe he'd be adopted by loving parents who ran a mouse farm and needed a cute spotted stud for their thirty or so females. I didn't actually  believe that this would be the case, but I was trying to think of something positive to say. Realistically we both knew that he'd be given to a spotty teenager looking for a suitable breakfast for his python. Both of us had misgivings about this prospect and I've always maintained a strict policy that pets are part of the family. However, mice can reproduce every 21 days and average 8-10 pups a litter, so there was no possibility of letting Cheddar and Spinny live together anymore. We needed another cage.

I visited the pet store and when faced with ten different options for cages, all I could think about was that study in my first year psychology textbook, the one about how the little mice raised in the 'enriched' environment (whatever that was) did so much better on their SATs than the little mice who were raised in the 'impoverished' environment. Well it seemed silly to save a mouse from becoming a snake snack just to put him in a dull, old, regular cage. I mean, if I'm going to go to all the trouble to rescue him, then I'm practically his mother and I can't just let his intellectual development languish now, can I?  I want him to thrive and be the very best mouse he can be!

Behold the CritterTrail Extreme, generating SAT scores that positively guarantee placement in the best labs at Harvard:

 

Those that delight us

And bring joy into our lives

We hope to please too

Isn't it nice to feel appreciated? This is the certificate of merit Kyna received for helping with the Dead-Eye Clifford story. She was responsible for helping come up with the story line, posing as the Oracle, and all set design for the pictures. I think she has a future in show business. (Isn't that what all parents hope for?)

I guess it wasn't as age unappropriate as I thought it might be.

My sister, Lovage, just sent me this link to a strange mother for a litter of abandoned kittens, a floppy eared rabbit, and it reminded me of a picture I found inexplicably in my daughter's school. Stuck to the wall in one of the classrooms, with no explanation, are these two pictures:

I come from fine Russian stock myself, and I suspect that the gent in this story is a direct descendant of Rasputin.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7353025.stm

Theme song for this post.

(Thanks Lovage)

Rich moist dirt gently

Steams in the day's creeping heat

As young roots chase worms

I am breathing a calm sigh of relief. Kyna's party was incredibly successful. The girls decorated ginger snap butterflies and then crammed the four-inch high icing sculptures liberally sprinkled with colored sugar and cinnamon hearts into their mouths before dashing into the jumpy castle to bounce their brains out. We only had two bonked heads, three crushed fingers, four scraped knees from falling out of the castle onto the driveway and six bumped noses. None were hard enough to actually bleed, which I found miraculous. One particular game I have to brag about was my improvised 'don't touch the floor' trails. I taped down a hundred individual squares of paper leading from the party room to all the important recreational areas they may want to visit, like the backyard and bathroom. Fascinating from a scientific point of view was the fact that the girls saw the pieces of paper taped in little trails all over the house and knew instinctively what to do.  We would open the front door saying; welcome, come in, come in! And before we could even move out of the way the kid would look down, promptly hop onto the first square and then, boing onto the next, and the next, until the entire house looked like a giant kid jiffy popper.  I'm brilliant.

The only other near disaster, aside from the slew of minor jumping injuries, was when all eight little girls barricaded themselves in Kyna's room and decided AGAINST THE ESTABLISHED RULES to let the mice out of their cage. Luckily one of the girls tried to squish one and a spat ensued that distracted everyone from the mice and then escalated so that even us parents, who were happily on our third glasses of champagne at the opposite end of the house, heard the ruckus. Miraculously (again) the mice appeared totally unharmed and were returned to their cage intact.

The crowning touch on the event was the fact that the parents were actually fabulous too. Ordinarily I attend a birthday party and spend the entire time inwardly freaking out that my child is associating with the descendants of the other adults in the room. At the last party I could only stand about half an hour of the dad's 'Heterosexual Pride' t-shirt before I threw myself in front of traffic so that Kyna and I had to leave to take me to the ER.

However, this time was wonderfully different. I was all kitted out with my mismatched Pippi Longstocking socks for a serious hour and a half of jumpy castle exercise to avoid the other parents, when the other moms arrived and I got sucked into a three hour conversation about the economics of food choices in America, parenting woes and travel stories. Everyone was engaging and delightful and didn't seem to notice that I was dressed as Pippi Longstocking and had polished off half the bottle of champagne single handedly. In fact, I think I've decided on the theme for my next birthday.

 

As I stood in the center of my bedroom this morning, one kitten, Pico, our resident climber and breaker of all things precious, scaled paw over paw up the dresser by hooking her claws over the little edges of the drawers. Simultaneously I could see in the adjacent bathroom the other kitten, Purrball, chewing on my husband's toothbrush. (Sorry Babe. It's true.) It wasn't just a tentative bite either; she had all the bristles in her mouth and was trying to chew the top off.  This pretty much sums up my daily life with the kittens.

Purrball obtained her affinity for toothpaste about three weeks ago. I was running Kyna's toothbrush under the tap before she brushed her teeth when half the yellow, sparkly, Shrek toothpaste blob fell into the sink. There was still enough of the slime tasting paste left on the toothbrush so I left the blob sitting there, just beyond the edge of the running water and handed the toothbrush to Kyna.  I'd just turned off the tap when Purrball leaped onto the counter and began to scope out the bottom of the sink. In one mighty lick she scooped up the blob of toothpaste. What happened next was highly amusing.

Immediately she looked like she regretted it, then for the next fifteen minutes she frothed toothpaste bubbles as she worked her tongue trying to get the goo out. Of course her tongue has lots of little stiff bristles too, so pretty soon she had a significant lather going and it looked like she might be prepping to shave. I would have taken a picture at this point, but I was laughing so hard I was crying and I wouldn't have been able to focus properly. In fact, I wouldn't have been surprised if my laughing had made her hire her sister to trash all my favorite things out of revenge, except for the queer way in which Purrball started to hang out deliberately whenever someone began brushing their teeth. She was subtle about it, like cats can be, casually sniffing the soap and pretending not to be interested in what you were doing, and then giving the game away by diving into the drawer when you tried to put your toothbrush away.

To see her sucking the leftover toothpaste out of Chris' toothbrush when she thought no one was looking this morning really clinched it though. She's addicted. It's a downhill slide from here, first just sucking the bristles; next she'll be chewing on the tube. Before long I'll be missing a credit card and she'll be hiding in my closet mainlining Colgate. But I've put two and two together. Never one to blame the victim, I think the toothpaste company is putting something addictive in our children's toothpaste. How else can our kids tolerate bubble gum sparkle flavor, or yellow Shrek slime, day after day and claim to like it. Think about it! I'm onto something here...

Part III of the Dead-Eye Clifford visit. See an explanation here, and part I here and part II here.

Her name was Lily, and lily-like she wasn't. Her husband, Templeton ran nighttime raids on the garbage bin and both worked full time on Halloween scaring the neighborhood children. A job they seemed to enjoy tremendously. As we approached their home, Baby Red bravely hid behind me.



Like most of those in tune with the gritty underbelly of life, Lily and Templeton knew more of the community's secrets than the rest of the house's inhabitants put together.

"Pink Sparkle, eh?" Lily bared her teeth in a grimacing sort of smile, "yeah, I knows her. What's it to yeh?"

"Stripes believes that she goes out in the evenings, sometimes until late."

"Stripes is a smart leopard. Pink Sparkle is a lounge singer down at the Dragon Club. When all those pups came along she had to make a living somehow, or did yeh think she supported them on love alone?" Lily sneered again.

It began to fall into place.  Pink Sparkle, to care for her family, moonlighted down at the most infamous bar in the house. I'd heard that the characters in the Dragon Club made Lily and Templeton look like Raggedy Ann and Andy. Any one of them could have roasted Pink Sparkle in a single breath. My hopes dimmed.

"Thank you Lily." I said, feeling morose.

"Yeh won't get nowhere without the password."

"Pardon?"

"I'll tell it to yeh, 'cuz I'm that kind of a rat." She added for clarity just in case I didn't understand, "the good kind.  The password is Peanut Butter and Jelly."

I paused. The toughest club in history was guarded by the password P.B. & J.? Is that what they spread on their victims before they ate them?

"Yeh heard me right, Big Red. Now go on. Scram."

Baby and I headed down to the Blank Section of the cupboard wall. A ferocious dragon was lounging against it casually picking small bits of some poor breakfast out of her teeth. She raised an eyebrow as we stopped in front of her.



"May I help you?" she flicked a small piece of food from one of her formidable claws.

"We're looking for some information," I said. My throat felt dry.

"Information?" She looked puzzled, "we ain't got no stinking information." She bared her teeth menacingly. "Now bugger off." She exhaled hot air in my face.

"Pardon me, " I tried the polite tack, "but did you have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich this morning? I could swear I smelled peanut butter on your breath just now."

She cocked her head and squinted at us.

"Grrrumph," she grunted and waved her claw at the blank wall of the cabinet behind her.  Slowly it opened and we stepped inside.

 

The Dragon Club was packed. For a Sunday morning I was shocked. I must have looked it too, because a Chinese Shimmering Blue guarding a small pile of treasure by the door asked us in a chipper, sing-song voice whether we were there for the Waffle Breakfast.



"Uh..., no." I said eloquently. "We're just looking for information about the whereabouts of Pink Sparkle."

"Pink Sparkle! Why, we just love her!" She added over her shoulder, "don't we all? Pink Sparkle? Isn't she just the cherry on top?"

A chorus of "yeah's" and "that's right's" echoed around the room.

The dragons were chatting amiably over their waffles.

..."Bob, how did that scale wax work out for you?"

..."Saints alive, Mildred, I just about blew fire, I laughed so hard."

..."Well the little blighter up and scurried off with my best princess! Just like that!"

This wasn't a den of hardened killers; this was a Sunday morning Breakfast Social! I shook my head and exchanged a smile with Baby.

"Ol' Feira is the owner. She's in the cave at the back," said the Chinese Shimmering Blue, nudging one of her treasure pieces back into her tidy pile.

"Thank you, ma'am." Baby and I headed to the cave at the back of the club.

"What can I do for you?" Feira had a rather twangy nasally voice for something so chillingly vicious looking.

 

"Pink Sparkle went missing last night and I'm trying to find her."

"Pink Sparkle? Missing?"  Feira looked genuinely shocked. " She was here last night for her usual shift. Gosh I just can't believe it. How awful!"

The dragon looked quite distraught. By now everyone in the room was listening in.

"Did anyone notice anything unusual? Did Pink Sparkle talk to anyone in particular? Did she leave with anyone?"

"You know, I think she did. That new guy, Mr. Rooster was in last night and he seemed to take a shine to Miss Sparkle. I think he offered to walk her home because they left together." Feira looked around for corroboration.  Other dragons were nodding.

"Thank you, thank you all. You've been very helpful." I had a rooster to find.



"Our pleasure. You find us our Pink Sparkle now Detective."

"I'll do my best," I promised.

"And come by anytime. We have afternoon tea on Tuesdays."

"Thanks. I just might take you up on that."

Baby and I left. Funny things, secrets.

I guess I was going to head up to the Ol' Coop sooner rather than later.

The bedroom was eerily quiet as Baby and I approached. An ominous bone lay on the ground between the coop and us.



Suddenly I saw the long skinny chicken legs of what had to be Mr. Rooster.  I pounced. Baby pounced too. I pinned Mr. Rooster. Baby pinned the bone.



"Where is Pink Sparkle? You were the last one seen with her." I was growling mad.

"I don't know what you are talking about!" Mr. Rooster protested.

Suddenly an earsplitting screech filled the room. Feather, who had been roosting on top of the coop cawed, "disguise! It's a disguise!"



I looked carefully at Mr. Rooster. I thought about Stripes' half breed comment, the hissing crow, I thought about my neighbor Mr. Kaa helping Mr. Rooster fix up the Ol' Coop, then I grabbed Mr. Rooster's red comb on the top of his head and pulled hard. The chicken disguise slid off and out slithered Kaa's colorful coils.



"Kaa!" I growled, "I want answers NOW!"  Kaa looked like a snake whose favorite tree just got chopped down.

"I swear Mr. Big Red, I wasn't going to do no harm." I growled again, just to let him know I was serious, "Truly! I just wanted to have a tea party, with real guests for once. No one ever visits, they're all scared I'll squish 'em, because I'm a snake you see. I just wanted to make some friends. I thought if I were a chicken people would like me. But it was just as hard." Kaa began to cry. It sounded like little whining hisses.

"Baby, open the Coop."

Pink Sparkle, Guinea Pig the seal and a pair of kittens all tumbled out into the light. I guess Pink Sparkle wasn't the only one missing.

"Kaa," I said in my gruffest voice, "you know what to do right?"

Kaa looked sheepish, "I'm sssssorry.  I won't do it again."

"Darn right," I said sternly. "Kaa you will have to take some behavior classes."

"All right, all right. I'll do it. But can we have my tea party now that we're all here? Pretty pleasssse?" He looked very hopeful. I looked around at everyone, they were all nodding sympathetically. I guess his outcast plea had touched a cord. We all sat down to discuss the day's and night's adventures, with a very apologetic snake pouring the tea.



Pink Sparkle was every bit as gracious as the other house folk had claimed she was. She forgave Kaa and promised to bring the pups over to play if he promised not to eat them. Kaa promised.

The tea was delicious. I may drop by the Dragon Club on Tuesday.

~ fini

And this concludes the 'journal entry' for Kyna's week with Clifford. Every other entry looks like this:

"Billy Jean had a wonderful week with Clifford. They went to the roller rink and the zoo, and then had ice-cream. We loved having Clifford to visit!"

I'm currently taking bets on whether or not I get called to the principal's office.

This is a bowl that didn't make it either. Oddly, the shell miraculously survived. Pico knocked the whole ensemble over last night. I'm trying to tell myself that I'm greatly comforted by having photos of these objects before they met their rather violent ends, but I've lied to myself before, so my trust is shattered.

The continued saga of Dead-Eye Clifford and his intrepid sidekick Baby Red. The inspired journal entry I wrote in Kyna's class diary about Clifford's visit to our house. So much more than just attending dance class...

The Catt family lived next door to the Pink household. The patriarch's name was Princess. No one ever snickered when they said it unless they wanted to end up sliced thinner than sashimi. Princess had a murky past, the kind you don't talk about. But he'd made good by building a small empire in construction and marrying Stripes, known locally as the most competent cat in the house. They had a litter of kittens that just kept on expanding.

When Baby and I got to the Catt's patch of floor I realized the pups were in capable paws,  Bluebell didn't have to worry her little blue head about anything.



Princess, belying his softened heart growled, "I'll watch the critters, Stripes here will fill you in on what we know. Good day Big Red, Baby Red."



"Appreciate your co-operation Princess." I could tell that old habits die hard. Princess didn't want to be involved with the law, even my version of the law, anymore than he had to. He nodded to me and herded the writhing mass of 'critters' off for a game of wrestling fetch.

I joined Baby by Stripes.

"What can I do for you Detective?" Stripes was a no nonsense kind of leopard.



"Mrs. Catt, Miss Bluebell told me this morning that Pink Sparkle hasn't been seen since the pups' bedtime. Did you see or hear anything unusual last night?

"We saw Pink Sparkle yesterday afternoon, she was walking her pups. That would be the last time we saw her." Stripes paused and seemed to be weighing me with her eyes. Finally she continued, "there is something else you should know Detective. Pink Sparkle goes out at night. Well, to be precise, I never hear her leave, but occasionally if I'm up in the night with one of the kittens I hear her come home. I've never asked her about it. Didn't feel right  somehow."

"Do you know if she left last night?" This sounded promising.

"The only thing I heard last night was the early morning racket made by that new fella, Mr. Rooster. Moved up into that chair coop in the bedroom. Every morning this week he's cock-a-doodle-dooed a hullabaloo at the crack of dawn. He must be a mixed breed though, because his crowing always ends like the air being let out of a tire. Like a long whistling hissing sound."

I made a mental note to check out Mr. Rooster when this case was all over and Pink Sparkle was returned to her pups in one piece. Or so I hoped.

"You should talk to the Horses, they are the neighbors across the floor. Pink Sparkle is real friendly with them and they may know more about her daily," Stripes dropped her voice a notch, "and nightly habits."

"Mrs. Catt it has been a pleasure. You have been most helpful."

"You just get Pink Sparkle back home safe and sound, Detective. Princess and I will watch the pups as long as necessary. No harm will come to them here."

"I appreciate that Mrs. Catt."

Baby and I headed across the floor to the Horses. I wondered where Pink Sparkle went under the cover of darkness. I thought about secrets.

The Horses were led by a wise old codger  by the name of Merrylegs. Unfortunately they were also a dead end. Merrylegs said Pink Sparkle was a pillar of the community and it was a crying shame what happened. None of them knew about any nighttime excursions.

This is the vase that the Pico broke. The worst thing about the whole incident is that I moved the vase from where I thought she would knock it off the sideboard, to what I thought was a safe place on the mantel above the fireplace. In under a minute she had leaped from the back of my chair to the mantel and toppled it onto the bricks below. I got to watch it in slow motion, I presume to enhance my distress and feelings of loss. How nice of my brain.

The name is Dead-Eye. Dead-Eye Clifford, but my friends call me Big Red. I used to work alone, until the day she came back. She said she 'had more than she could handle' and that I had to 'step up to the plate' and a lot of other vague euphemisms I didn't understand. Then she left. And I had a new sidekick. I call him Baby Red, Baby for short. He's pretty tough for his size though.



It had been a hot day. The kind of day that you want to spend panting under the table. I'd just poured a stiff A.J. on the rocks when a vision in blue graced us with her presence.



She said her name was Bluebell, and I could see why, she was bluer than a cornflower. She was excited something fierce and ran in small circles by the door for a while. Baby finally got her calmed down. I could tell this was going to be something big. She was panting hard from the weather or terror, I couldn't tell which.



"Please, Mister Clifford, Ah think my sister is in need of help!"

"In what way, Miss Bluebell?" Her deep southern drawl tickled my ears. "Call me Big Red, everyone else does."

"Thank you ever so, Big Red. It's my sister you see, Ah just don't know what's become of her!"

I was confused. "Miss Bluebell, is your sister in trouble, or is she the one making the trouble. If you don't mind me asking."

"Oh goodness no! Pink Sparkle ain't never been a problem for anyone! Why, she's just as sweet as a big ol' bowl of leftover ice-cream lying on the ground. No sir, Big Red, the trouble is she's just up and gone!"

Bluebell became distraught again and tore around the room growling and yipping up a racket. Baby lost himself for a minute and joined in.

"Baby Red! Miss Bluebell!" I yelled. "Sit!"

They sat. I got Miss Bluebell to begin at the beginning. She said that Pink Sparkle was an upstanding young mother of a litter of fine pups. Model citizen, kept her lawn and sidewalk spotless. But when Bluebell went over for a morning visit like she often did on Sundays she found the pups running rampant and no sign of Pink Sparkle. Feeling responsible for her nieces and nephews, she made waffles for breakfast and then dropped the puppies off at the neighbor's house.



"Ah'm a little worried about them, with those neighbors.. but Ah really had no choice Big Red, Ah had to come to see you. Oh Ah do hope they are all right! Poor dears."

Bluebell looked like she was going to jump up again so I asked my next and last question quickly, "Bluebell, when was the last time the puppies saw their mother?"

"The puppies said that she put them to bed last night and when they woke up, she.. she... she was gone!" Bluebell stifled a wine. "Here is a picture of her. To help.. help.. you look."



Pink Sparkle was as pink as Bluebell was blue. "Thanks Miss Bluebell. You've been most helpful. I'll be in touch."  

Baby Red and I left to figure out our plan of attack. This town is full of characters and everybody seems to have a secret. Finding the right character with the right secret could be be tough. I figured the best place to start was with the neighbors, maybe they heard something last night. As we turned to head down to Pink Sparkle's neck of the house, an upscale neighborhood where they check your tax returns before you can walk through, we ran into our own neighbor, Mr. Kaa.




"Morning Mr. Kaa."

"Well goodnesssss, morning Big Red, Baby. How are you thisssss morning?"

"Could be better Kaa, could be better. Pink Sparkle went missing last night."

"You don't ssssay." He hissed.

"We're on the case now. If you hear anything that might lead to her whereabouts you let us know."

"Absssssolutely Big Red. Pink Sparkle was a good poodle."

"Is, Kaa. Is."

"Of courssseee. Hey Big Red, I am having a tea party later thisssss afternoon. Won't you and Baby come by?"

"We'll have to see Kaa. We'll have to see."

"I undersssstand."

I kind of felt like he didn't. But I had more pressing things to do.  "Come on Baby. Lets check out the Pink's neighbors."

~

Will Dead-Eye Clifford and Baby Red find Pink Sparkle? Does Bluebell know more than she's letting on? Find out, next on Kindergarten Blog Noir.

One of the productivity incentives in my daughter's kindergarten class is a large stuffed dog named Clifford and his little puppy, Clifford II (that kind of a family). Along with getting to take Clifford home for a week, there is also a journal where kids (read MOM) gets to write out all the amazing adventures they had with Clifford over the week. We all sat on the couch to read the other entries and while Kyna glowed and tittered excitedly as her various little friends took Clifford to Disneyland and the beach, skating lessons and tap class, Chris and I felt a growing sense of mischievous conspiracy. The black humor sections of our brains (which are vast) began to pump out inkacholine (the black humor hormone) and Clifford's week in the Sharrock household took a dramatic twist from the usual.

Ladies and Gentlemen, don't turn that dial, because we'll be back with the chilling tale of kidnapping, seedy bars and crime, in Dead Eye Clifford and the Missing Poodle, or Never Trust Your Neighbor.

Coming soon...

When I was One,
I had just begun.

When I was Two,
I was nearly new.

When I was Three,
I was hardly me.

When I was Four,
I was not much more.

When I was Five,
I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I am clever as clever.
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

~ A. A. Milne

Today is Kyna's sixth birthday. She is, of course, over the moon with excitement. She roused us at 6:00 AM (yes they still have one. I thought they would have got rid of it by now, but no, apparently it has to hang around in case a birthday or Christmas morning should pop up.) to open all her presents. Of which there were a fair few let me tell you.  All the gifts were received with love (many were animal related) and appreciation and I'd like to feature a couple. From Grandma & Grandpa, my parents on the farm, she received a very cool kaleidoscope:



It is made of stained glass and you insert the little magic wand part at the end and then hold it up to your eye while the sparkles, stars and other assorted components of fairy dust fall past the end making gorgeous patterns like the one seen here:



She headed off to school this morning wearing a small dolphin necklace from her Great Grandmother and she also received a very pretty dress from Diana & Roger (sort of second parents to my husband) and a make your own tutu kit from my lovely friend Lisa.

The coup de grace though, had to be the 'pet' bird from Chris' mom, Alice. Meet the aptly named Feather:



Feather has a little button you push, and when you do she squawks and chirps and tweets full throttle. Kyna loves it. So much so, that I was charged with making sure that Feather gets acclimated to our house, you know, feels taken care of. Maybe I should get her a cup of tea. So far I couldn't help noticing there is no volume control.

As for me, I feel like it could have been her thirtieth birthday, or her preschool graduation, or the first word she spoke, maybe her first job. I'm pretty sure each major event will make me feel the same way. I feel proud and in awe, amazed that a whole new life is unfolding. This brilliant being, this self proclaimed chatterbox, who uses sonar and only wears dresses, this complex, newly vegetarian, Fairy Cheetah Queen is living her life, and through some amazingly wonderful fluke I get to be a part of it.

Happy birthday sweetheart.

The Sunmaid raisins

Lie forgotten in the sun

Slowly wrinkling more

I recently read Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, on a friend's recommendation and I loved it so much I feel compelled to write a short ditty about it even though it wasn't a sanctioned book club book like here and here.  Not that we ever actually read our sanctioned book club books.  

Black Swan Green is a coming of age story set in the early eighties against a fading cold war backdrop. Mitchell beautifully entwines the Falkland War (come on... you know, the Falkland Conflict? As Jason, our protagonist, so aptly puts it: "No way. People'll remember everything about t