I still have not told The Father about just how sick Buddy is. I will tell him tomorrow, when our five day vacation is over. But I can see now that Buddy is doing very poorly indeed. He did not eat today and will not accept food from me – the pill giver- at all. I have to force the pills down his throat- but the bright side is that he is down from 7 to 3 pills, twice a day.

Jimmy, our 20+ cat , is now totally blind. A month or so ago, she could still see something, but that is gone. If The Baby picks her up and puts her on the floor of the kitchen, one can see that Jim is lost, hasn’t a clue as to where to turn. She has to start at the couch, her food bowl or her kitty litter- then she is fine.

The Father suggests that we take her to the vet, but we won’t. We won’t because The Boy fills her food bowl every morning and carries her over to it.

I always forget that we have a horse as well.





Bennie is not doing well either. He has seen a number of horse doctors, but no one can figure out what his problem is. Soon, he will be going to a very pricey place to be scanned, to see why he has landed in a place where The Girl cannot ride him.

I feel like I did when Stan and Ollie were very old, Jimmy was very old.

I am surrounded by ailing animals and a glistening sliver of glass which makes me question my success as a wee, earth mother.

Continuing the story which included the search for the body of one’s youth- perhaps- when The Baby and I left the garden , entered the kitchen, she started screaming : there was a fish in the niche for the doormat ( no doormats here for the moment, for it is old Jimbo’s favorite place to piss). I looked, and sure enough, it was one of the girl guppies, lying there on the floor, looking dead as a doornail.

I scooped her up and placed her into the women’s dorm. A quick count told me that- somehow- another female guppie was missing. How far, one wonders, can a fish flop ? I found the second missing female nestled in the grove of the kitty litter pooper scooper. I tossed her into the women’s dorm as well.

I have no idea how long they had been out of the water, but as of today, they are still fine.

Although I put them back into the tank.

I had pulled them out of the tank for a bleeding heart reason : with guppies, one should have two females for every male. Well, we had about four males for every female, and all that male guppies want to do is f***, f***, f****. My little girls had no rest, darting hither and yon, finally figuring out that if they sat their bellies upon the floor of the tank, the brutes simply could not reach them.

Mr.Jo was supposed to build me a new tank, my Christmas present, dontcha know.

I’m going to order something this week. I really cannot bear looking into my tank anymore, these poor, homely girls almost unable to eat as all of these flashy, rather pimpy looking short guys harass them.

Today as we drove around, picking up supplies for our last minute, Oma and Opa are invited, Easter dinner, The Father started talking about buying a farm.

Not me, The Father.

Not now, later, for this is a day dream, remember ?

But, oh, is there a peach of a farm for sale right now. Read this and weep : it is from the 1400′s, I kid you not.

Of course, the translation of the real estate jabber tells me that it needs major work, but still…

Aren’t daydreams simply the best thing that life has to offer ?

Today after dinner, The Baby and I went out into the yard. As I searched- in vain- for a weed ( read : for something to do), The Baby sang. The Baby is just about always singing. She has a lovely voice, one of those one’s that is in key or on pitch, or some combination of a preposition and noun that I don’t understand , but which provides for an enjoyable listening experience.

Yet, I still rue the day that I downloaded the full, Faith Hill version of Where are you Christmas? . This one song changed The Baby’s singing style forever. She now sings with the full and deep vibrato of an adolescent’s broken heart. Why, one hears the tears of centuries in her voice.

So back to the yard. She is singing away, in that vaguely tragic manner of hers. She is singing My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, she captures the pathos and loneliness of a long distance romance very well , bringing new depth to a song whose lyrics most likely are not even listened to any longer.

But she gets the girl’s name wrong, being bi- lingual can be very tough at times.

But I was a very good Mummy Dearest, one who enjoys listening to her sing very much and so never want her singing in my presence to end. I did not tell her that it was Bonnie, not Body.

Bring back,
oh bring back,
bring back my…..

I just stinkin’ love new gambles, the challenge, the not knowing, the changes.

When The Father said to me- in 1982- that he who dares, wins and then told me to look at his hand, it was empty, so what did he have to lose, I knew that I had found the boy for me.

After all, my mode of life has been, sure, why not ?

This is really, really exciting.

This is new.

This is, sure, why not ?

The plans that he has… the ideas, the dreams…

As I go over blue prints and great big piles of paper, in my role as the prophet of doom and gloom, the anchor, the sensible one who wants to know where we will get money to pay for milk- I cannot see any flaws.

They are damn good plans, not even risky. Not really.

The other day- either to myself or to this place or both or neither- perhaps even in that obscure way that I write when I do indeed want to be obscure- I compared it to Dad in Saudi. I hadn’t had a chance to mention that to him yet, but he brought up the same thing, that it was indeed the same thing : the right time, the right place, the right time to gamble.

Some of his ideas are just phenomenal : if he can sell these ideas, I have not been mistaken : the lad could sell ice to an Eskimo, sand to a Saudi.

And I think that he will.

At 13.05, he called. The Eagle has landed, he told me.

We like that line here, at Casa Kitchen.

And I do believe that our life will never be the same again.

We have taken, oh, a path. Don’t know- yet- if it the one less taken, but those chords play in the background, telling me that life has changed.

Spice of life and all that.

Following one’s dreams and all of that.

My Father always called it going for the brass ( or was it golden ?) ring.

But he never meant it in the way that it sounds.

I know what he meant, I know why he went for the ring, when he had that golden chance. I always knew that he simply had to go for the ring. Because he could.

And so do we.

Because it is there for the taking.

And because we have always believed that (s)he who dares wins.

Or, inverted slightly, my hand is empty now. What can I lose ?

At 13.05 he calls from the airport.

We just love saying that the eagle has landed, don’t we ?

When I pick him up in the afternoon, I can see that the euphoria of the morning is gone, that his afternoon was, well, not good.

Niggle, niggle, probe, probe, they have started a new project. Actually, it is not new at all, his class ( perhaps the whole school) has done it every year for…a while : teasing. Mike learned a few years ago to lie through his teeth about teasing. He told me, way back when, that he wasn’t going to tell people how he felt when he was being teased, picked upon : it just made it worse.

So, this afternoon, the teacher asks- brightly- who is being teased, picked upon ? I suppose that she touched a few noses, one being Mike’s. No, no, no, he said.

And then a girl in his class said that she thought that Mike was being teased, picked on.

Are you , Mike ?

Oh, a wee bit, he said.

From what he has said to me, I know that he felt like being forced to say that was a kiss of death, some betrayal of some obscure version of Omerta

And then they talked about what a friend was, what being a friend meant.

And Mike seems to think that he cannot include people that he knows from places outside of his school.

For he does have friends, children he sees 2, 3 times a week.

They just don’t go to his school, and so this project, these projects are not very pleasant for him.

As Sal would say, well, Duh.

Who wants to admit in public that they are lonely, have no friends, who – in public- wants to expose their underbelly ?

No one with a half a grain of sense, that is who.

No one with a sense of pride.

This morning as I ambled up and down the, oh, three aisles of the grocery store, picking up some cat milk for Jim, some vla for The Father ( some vla for The Father) , one of the girls ( I really have to stop thinking of them as the girls. They have been working there since we moved here, so are moving beyond mid- thirties and girl- ness) said to me, you know, you won. The Boy is yours, right , she asked. Yes, he is , I said. Well, The Boy won the football thing.

Some times, it is really hard to be quiet, to play stupid. I had decided to divert the children on the walk home for lunch via the grocery store. I wanted The Boy to see his name on the list tacked up on the grocery store window. I had in mind saying, oh, I want to show you something …

As I walked to the school, I realized that today was Tuesday, when the grocery store closes at 12.30. I could simply tell the children that I had to run by the store, we needed something.

Of course, they fell for it. Of course, The Baby asked me what we needed. Butter, I said ( truth be told, that simply popped into my mind as something the children would have no clue about, but indeed, later, when I made dinner, we are low on butter. Yup. Life is like that.)

As we walked to the store, to pick up butter, The Boy told me what a great day- why, maybe even the best day ever, he was having. ( Keep quiet, Mummy). Everyone in his class had to write a poem- in pairs- about( what can I say, it is a Catholic school) the resurrection. In a class of 23, The Boy is taking doing things on his own pretty well. So, all 12 poems are submitted, each student judges the poem on a three point scale ( three being highest), the teacher announces the leader, the winner, by a large margin, is The Boy.

So, we are ambling through the twisting alleys of town, me trying to get him to the store to read the broadside that says that he has won the Fussball thing, and he is going on and on about what a great day he has had- maybe even the best day so far.

Oh wow, I say, look ! The results of the drawing for the table.

Sometimes silence is such a good thing.