for posterity

 Squish!

• My niece has given up FISH and WALKING for Lent
• Not sure how much of a sacrifice is involved in this. (She can still run and jump, I hear.)
• My nephew is TEN. 
• Every time I see him, his proportions have lengthened and his features are at once the same and different. His face gets longer, and his legs, he has large adult teeth. I see him only once a month or so; it's like seeing a very slow stop-motion film. He has reached whatever developmental stage is the one where you are intrigued by adult conversation, and everyone has to be careful to be 10-year old appropriate. 
• He's still a kid, though. We have invented a complicated game in which the carpet is sea, furniture and cushions are islands, and the object is to retrieve objects from across the room without getting "wet". Add stop watches and sharks as required. Also required: fairly big rooms and patient, non-house proud host.

 

• My mother and I finished this magnificent 2000 piecer. Sample of cheery conversation during which: 
  Me, referring to an article in the paper: Those wicker coffins look nice. 
  Ma: Yes, don't they? They seem a bit nice for me though. Cardboard will do me fine.
  Me: Really, Ma. I think we can stretch to wicker.
  
  This from the woman who also wants Rachmaninov and black horses with plumes. 
  (This was not a gloomy conversation, by the way, although I have very little interest in my own funeral beyond the wicker. I mean, I won't be there to enjoy it, will I.)
  
  
• Work is very worky. I am preparing some books for another exercise in excruciating embarrassment comic fair next month, which involves long, tedious hours cleaning pages of specks in Photoshop. Bah. Sometimes I wonder why I am doing this. Can I not just get a-job-like-normal-people?
  
  
• The JB continues to be a super-nervous (albeit paradoxically a technically competent) driver. This is a pain. Skills you can teach, but confidence? Urg. We have had some moments, shall we say. Some are funny. 
  The JB: You're right, I'm using second gear as a crotch!
  
  
• That's between you and the gearbox, pet. 
  
  
• "Our" (my parents') two paddocks are empty for the first time in 25 years. Our final equine, Jenny the jennet, has departed, to be a companion to a big horse. She's a 11h (runty, some would say) mule (mother: Shetland pony; father: rogue jack donkey) who has been with us for 20 years. And what a twenty! So many Jenny adventures. The time she got out in the barley field, and all you could see were the big ears, gleefully roving. All the times she'd search your pockets for carrots and make mean faces at you when she'd eaten them. Ah yes. She is a strange animal, with her donkey feet and her pony head, her half-whinny, half-bray. She didn't like people, other animals, or other horses; indeed, was a cranky rogue in many ways, but you had to admire her spirit. So wily, such a survivor, and when my horse died, she stood over his body for hours:
  
  
  She loaded bravely into the trailer today and went off with not even a backward glance. Go forth and pester, Jenny. 
   

Have great weekends, all. Animal stories and all comments welcome, folks.
(Or just have a nice rest, that is fine too.)
T

miscellany

[Insert inevitable lamenting on subject of own poor blog-keeping skills. Aime, alack and alas, etc.]

Here's another reason, as if there weren't already very many, to love Lucy Knisley - her lovely piece on the subject of her miscarriage. Just in case you happen this way, Lucy, I am very sorry for your loss. Thank you for being so open about it.

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It seems this winter will never end, doesn't it? [Applicable only to readers in northern hemisphere.] It snowed yesterday; big sudsy shapes of snow came down and melted messily on the ground. Let's move on, shall we, winter? You're putting me in a mood, full of self-doubt and riddled with introspection. Yawn. This is dull; I'm boring myself. Maybe I need to get out more; maybe I need to do some voluntary work or something. Maybe the sun needs to come out. 

4AM would seem to be Pointless Introspection o'clock, though I do it during the day, too. The other day I was wondering what sort of parent I could possibly be. I was doing an image search for ponies on Friday (This is part of a proposal I am doing. Nice job, eh. Ponies!) as I introspected gloomily about my ruination of our future child. At that moment, this image popped up in my feed, like magic: 

I don't pretend to understand the image, in which I presume I would be the imperfectly perfect grinning monster dressed in a cardboard box feeding my child a cake of solid gold, but it cheered me up, anyway. 

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Valery and family were over.. a month ago (see above, poor blog-keeping). It was so nice to see them with little Suzy. I love that age; so spirited, utterly trusting, and mysterious. Ah, so sweet.

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I feel much less rutty, since I wrote this post two days ago. It seems it was hormonal. You would think I would know this after so. many. years. but no. One of the less appealing parts of the human condition is this inability while in the rut to recognise it for the rut it is, and that it will end and the other mood will begin. Every rut seems to be an endless proposition, doesn't it? We're such odd creatures, all fear and unhelpful jumpiness designed for the jungle; no sharp teeth and only our wits to live on. We're social, and we need each other to survive, yet we're rivals for the limited resources available. It's all very conflicting.

Well, now, my dears. I think I'll just press post now, as I doubt this post will stand up to a re-read. You poor lovely people, worry not your heads with commenting, really. 

Hope life is treating you well.
T