dog days of summer

I haven't felt like blogging. I've been doing lots of Thinking, which is generally useless and exhausting and results in not much other than a general feeling of disquietude. As I get older I find I am less able to be certain about anything, which is much more exhausting than being right ever was. So.

We made a rather impromptu zoo trip this morning and it started raining just as we pulled in the parking lot.

Top Five Benefits to Going to the Zoo Even Though It Is Raining:

1. You will get a good parking place.

2. The temperature will be 80 degrees instead of the 97 degrees with a heat index of 103 that had been forecast.

3. Puddle jumping.

4. Frisky animals like Baylor the brand new elephant, who was doing lots of extremely cute things like galloping.

5. Spending lots of time in places like the bird house and the reptile house and the aquarium, which usually get a perfunctory walk-through just to escape the heat. There were several delightful middle school aged volunteers in the reptile house, one of whom who was a fount of information. He told us, among many, many other things, that Blanco the white alligator is actually a leucistic gator and not an albino. He (the boy, not the alligator) had Asperger's, and his unusual gifts were being put to very good use, except when he kept trying to show a model of a toad to a toddler, who did not want to see the toad and began to cry. The volunteer kept asking the mother, "I don't understand why he is crying? WHY is he crying?"

So, what else? We went to a free Houston Symphony outdoor concert last week. The conductor likes to give a little backstory between songs (which meant some disturbing information last summer when the theme was Russian Fairy Tales) and before they played "Finlandia," he explained that at the time it was composed, Finland was oppressed under Russian rule and that the melody was a reflection of the tumult. Harper asked why the song sounded scary and sad and then happy and I tried to explain and failed miserably. I said something like "Well, Russia wanted the land where Finland was and the Finnish people didn't want to give it to them but they took it anyway, which made the Finnish people sad then, listen to this peaceful part? Okay, that represents the Finnish people getting their country and their freedom back, or maybe it's a reflection of their wistful longing for freedom...and hey, it's also the melody to "Be Still, My Soul"--we sing that at church sometimes.." and with that ended my paltry attempt at explaining patriotism, or imperialism, or was it Marxism? Czarism? Oligarchy? Hegemony?

Tonight while I was giving Helena her bath, Harper wanted to play "school" with Hudson, which I thought was a great idea. She loaded up her backpack, got her bike out and said, "Okay, Hudson, you are the little brother who stays in his room and plays quietly while I ride off to school with the other big kids." You can imagine how Hudson felt about his role. He hopped on his tricycle and sped after her down the hall and it all just fell apart from there.

Helena ate an entire block of sauteed tofu pretty much by herself tonight. She has also been devouring raspberries and cantaloupe and kiwi. She has really discovered puzzles this week.
And Wilberforce the horse, whose handle has been commandeered by a certain brother, who uses it as a gun, or sometimes, a sword:

Harper took some pictures of Sasha this afternoon and they, all very many of them, look about like this:
Here is a ranking of the people who live in our house based on how much they like Sasha.

1. the Husband
2. Hudson
3. Helena
4. Harper
5. me

Hudson and Helena are always happy to see her, and greet her with sounds of delight. Harper likes her very much, but gets annoyed when anything of hers gets chewed on. The curious thing is, the fool dog loves me with an ardor that is difficult to explain. It's possible she even likes me a teeny bit more than she does the husband, who feeds her and tends to her and talks to her in a special voice. Is she trying to win me over because she senses my indifference? I don't really MIND her, except when she won't do her number two business outside because the grass is too long or too wet or whatever ridiculous, fastidious princess and the pea reason she won't go outside even though she is a DOG, and then she comes in and instead does her number two business in the front room behind the table. I don't like her then. And she is still pretty puppy-ish in that if I haven't seen her in awhile and she is quiet, it's pretty certain that she has found something unacceptable to chew on, for example my pale pink ballet flat, or something unspeakable from the trash, or a dart from Hudson's new Nerf gun. But every night when the rest of the house is in bed, she insists on curling up behind my head on the top of the couch cushion and she is calm and sweet and peaceful and every few minutes she'll sigh and open her sleepy eyes and stare at me adoringly and I like her then.

Harper chose the stories before bed tonight and this is what we read:

1. Wifrid Gordon McDonald Patridge by Mem Fox, ill. by Julie Vivas (LOVE her illustrations!) (I defy you not to cry when you read this book. It's not sad for kids though. It's about a little boy who lives next door to an old folks home and he helps one of the ladies get her memories back. Beautiful.)

2. Angus Gets Lost by Marjorie Flack. (We like Angus and his antics.)

3. The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Weise. (I'm not sure I'm pronouncing Yangtze correctly when I read it.)

4. Sheep Take a Hike by Nancy Shaw, ill. by Margot Apple

5. Wheels on the GO! (Hudson's choice--it's little poems about different vehicles, like race cars and jeeps.)