Henry VIII

We went to the zoo today and there were some new meerkittens (which reminds me of the book Life of Pi, which the husband and I read aloud to each other back in the Days Before Kids) and a zookeeper told me that it had been a bit of a Meerkat Scandal, because the mother of the kittens was not the dominant female in the mob (I just looked that term up on Wiki, so it might be incorrect, but it fits the story quite nicely) and usually this means the dominant female will dispose of the babies. Which is just so horrible. There is so much that is disturbing about animal behavior, really. Anyway, the zookeepers managed to spirit the babies away and gradually reintroduce them, and the dominant female had accepted them. Though while we were watching, the poor mother (Hagar?) was trying to nurse all six babies at once, which was so exhausting apparently that she folded over and fell asleep on top of them, and then three of the other adult meerkats came over and started intruding and nibbling on the babies in what I really hope was a gesture of goodwill and grooming, and not a taste-testing.

In other disturbing news from the animal kingdom, the husband stepped out into the backyard last week to smoke his pipe, and a beheaded bird came flying off the roof and landed right in front of him. He looked up and there was some sort of Bird of Prey (a peregrine? a falcon? it was BIG.) peering down, irritated that the decapitation had been interrupted. The husband calmly walked back inside and got the camera, quietly telling me that under no circumstances should the kids walk outside. In an odd twist of fate, I had, a few nights before, watched "The Other Boleyn Girl" and had spent some time feeling incredible revulsion and sadness that humankind ever (and still does!) used beheading as a form of punishment. There's really just the one story, told over and over. Fallen, fallen, fallen.

Clearly I am still in my blue phase.

Last night at dinner Helena was having bow-tie pasta with eggplant marinara, and about halfway through, she got a twinkle of recognition in her eye and begin placing each piece up on top of her hair. Like a bow. Which was very cute, and necessitated a hair washing. I didn't get a picture, but this is another funny thing she does lately. Because carrots are for ears, apparently:Yesterday I asked her if she wanted a piece of toast and she emphatically DID, so I popped the bread into the toaster and she burst into tears. I tried to explain that the bread would be right back, all warm and toasty, but she would not be convinced.

I have some more swirling thoughts about sovereignty and Sovereignty and how I think Harper's cranky demeanor over the past couple of years can be directly traced to the moment she realized she was not the sun, and how Henry and all the earthly kings who came before him and after him got so angry when they realized that they, for all their power, were not the sun. I am not the sun. I did not make the sun. I am to the point where that does not make me cranky. Though I would like some absolute allegiance from these two, who have managed to play together without bickering and screeching for about 15 minutes total out of the past two days. I got pictures: