The End of a Legend: a True Story

(Image from Wikipedia. Not the real Gregory. Nor is it, evidently, the real Santa.)

Conversation with Gregory (age 6).

Him: I hear Santa’s bells at night.

Me: Really? You believe in Santa?

Him: Yeah. Don’t you?

Me: Uh . . . well, does it make any logical sense that there’s some fat bearded guy that visits every house in the world on Christmas Eve to bring presents, and that somehow he manages to bring nice presents to the rich kids and not-so-nice ones to the poor kids?

Him: Now that we talked about it, it doesn’t seem normal.

Me: So what do you think you’re hearing at night if it’s not Santa?

Him: I don’t know — crickets?

Spider-eating Whippersnapper

A few weeks ago my 14-month-old daughter walked up to me with something in her mouth. It didn’t appear to be food or a booger, so I yelled “Get that out of your mouth.” She opened up her mouth and spit out a brown widow spider. No harm done, except to the spider. I think it drowned.

Balloons

Balloons

They gave balloons to all the kids,

in hopes (my guess) of keeping

them occupied as parents shopped.

Helium-filled, squeaky red spheres

of shimmering joy, tied on each slender

wrist, and the scheme did work,

for a while at least, until we

tried to take it off to strap him

in his seat and he screamed

holy hell; and we fingered

the string to feed him supper,

and he fought us off; and it was

time for bath and there was No Way

he was going to wear it in the tub,

but he gave our ears such a

buffeting that we gave in, washing

around the knotted white twine.

Then time for bed, and now

for sure he would obey or else,

and the hollering resumed; finally

I had enough, took the balloon

in my furious hands and wrenched—

Pop! My sudden act of benevolence.

And later, sleepless, I wondered if God

felt guilty for ending our fun

over one shiny red obsession.

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–Submitted to dVerse OpenLinkNight. Come join in!

Clowns are Freaking Scary

Paper regularly collects on my bookshelf. Articles I print out for later reading, birthday/holiday cards that I put aside for future disposal (just in case the giver happens to come by I can pretend to have saved their important well-wishes), time-sensitive mail that I fully intend to handle soon, school papers from the kids, and, best of all, artwork from the kids.

Yesterday I cleaned out my accumulation and found this drawing from one of my sons, probably dating from Dec. 2011-Jan. 2012. I don’t know if I’ve seen anything scarier in my life.

More Backyard Fun

This is my third day off in a row–a rare event here recently, but it’s been nice to reconnect with the family. Today is breezy and cloudy, and last night’s light rain left behind a welcome coolness. I took the littlest munchkinette outside to talk to the flowers. We had a splendid time.

Backyard Fun

I was able to spend some time with the boys today, after they came home from school. We found this big skink, about 8″-9″. This isn’t the first one we’ve found, or the first one that I’ve blogged about–I guess the backyard is a welcoming skink habitat. Here’s a pretty good shot.

I came in a little closer, trying not to scare it away.

A little closer still.

This guy’s had a tough go of it–notice the scars on his head and back, and it looks like a fairly new tail. Moving in for the big-time closeup, and . . .

Yeah, he split pretty fast, made me jump. Up the tree he went. You can just make him out, center of the picture, left side of the trunk.

I saw a lot of other wildlife. Here’s two of the boys, digging in the ground for bugs. They get that honestly, I suppose.