7 Quick Takes

1. Dr. Who

So my daughter is hooked on Dr. Who.  As a sign of love and solidarity, I am watching it as well. She started me with season 5, Matt Smith, and the funny thing is, while I find it enjoyable, I do not yet love it as I loved Babylon 5 or Deep Space 9 from the get go.  I see a lot of shortcuts in writing which bother me.  The force of the character is what drives the narrative, without the narrative being always internally consistent.  For example, the Doctor says he chooses his friends very carefully and that there is a lot of good in the friend he has chosen.  I have yet to see the depth of that goodness in Amy, except when she is driven by grief to have deeper feelings for Rory and even then, she does not pause for a moment to recognize that in surrendering one reality (that of domesticity) she is also surrendering her child.  So I'm not yet sold on her goodness, because I see her acting out of love for Rory, but because she needs Rory to be in her life.  She still seems like a soul that does not want an anchor in life, in relationships, in time.  She seems immature to me.  I'll reserve judgment. But I do however have some life lessons from watching Dr. Who.

2.  Weeping Angels have nothing on Active Toddlers.

You know the phrase, "Don't even blink." about the weeping angels. For those not watching this import from the BBC, weeping angels are aliens that look like statues of angels you would find in the cemetery. They can only move when you are NOT watching. But they do move. And their goal is to kill you.  The image of an angel becomes an angel. Ergo if you look at an angel in the eyes and fix the image in your head, an angel forms in your head which will eventually as you fixate on said angel, come out and kill you.

Toddlers notice when Mom in a fit of stupidity eats Frito Pie for lunch and thus crashes on the couch. Toddlers think, now is the time to experiment and explore.  With a 20 year old, 17 year old and 15 year old in the house, one would not consider this to be as dangerous as angels that make you weep, but they went to the closet.  They got out the powdered sugar.  They walked through the first floor.  At some point, they figured out that this mess they'd made was bad, so they got out the brooms.  My 15 year old woke me to show that our entire first floor had been dusted like a beignet.  It took two vacuums, three brooms, two mops, two rolls of towels and said 20, 17 and 15 year old plus myself to restore order.   They looked like little angels.   I came close to weeping.

3.  Father's day is coming up.  My kids made a video.  I'm very proud.

4.  School ended today.   Instantly my kids changed into swimsuits and had a water balloon fight outside.  Stupidly, I stayed inside. One of these days I really must learn.

5. Yesterday, we had a tornado to the north and the east of us and we're not in Kansas.  It took a considerable amount of persuasion to convince one child in particular that as strong, fast and capable as he is, I was not granting him leave to go jogging during the time when the warning was in effect.  The sky I saw had looked formidable, like the gathering dark at the gates of Mordor, and no amount of exercise is healthy in a storm.  After the all clear, it took equal parts of persuasion to convince littles to come out from the blanket camp they'd made out of the table.

6.  Working on Penelope. It was easier to draft Helen because there were stories about her  in every age. The story of Penelope is mostly the same, ergo I have to address how she coped with that sameness.  I also have to figure out how she didn't become turned inside out by the long loneliness.   Suggestions of books to read/research would be gratefully accepted.  Feel free to leave them in the com box.

7.  Lastly, a poem from my small stones collection.

All time has stopped
as my toddler
curls up into my lap
and holds my hands in his,
there are no words,
just an occasional nuzzle
and a headbutt when I'm not looking.
As far as he's concerned,
life is perfect.