Curiouser and Curiouser

I think this cat's up to Life Number Six. I hope I'm pacing it okay.

I hope I haven't overspent my curiousity account. I wonder what that overdraft notice would look like.



I hope I'm not causing Lewis Carroll to turn over with my mix-up of cats and the lovely Alice.


While emailing with my friend Barb yesterday, I told her I live at the Epicenter of Odd and then, upon further reflection, realized that's just not quite right.



The truth is that I live with a front-row season ticket to Odd. Most of the strangeness goes on in front of me, so close that it sometimes seems as though it's rocking my world with quakes and shakes. In reality, however, nothing's shaking. It's just the view from here. Sorta like one of those reality rides where the seat tilts slightly and the 3-D images get you seasick. I hate those rides.


So what's been playing lately?

Lots of extra kids. Lots and lots. My peanut butter jar is empty and the Costco-size box of graham crackers is down to crumbs. I've made approximately ten thousand carrot sticks and exactly three batches of chocolate chip cookies in the past four days and my kitchen is now practically certified as a quesadilla factory.

The visitors have included the usual suspects plus a couple. One pair of sisters who've been here a lot are new friends of ours. In fact, on the first day of hanging out with them, I didn't even know them.

A mutual acquaintance sent them over in an emergency situation and then they've been back after school ever since. This served to make me feel better after last week's infamous LOSS of a child on my watch. As in, lost, couldn't find, nowhere to be seen, call 911, oops he's under the wheelbarrow hiding. For crying out loud.

In fact, there's even more to recommend this homeschooling mother of four to a restful week or two at the spa or the loony bin:

Two days ago, during a late-night "me time" I accidentally went to a (in my judgment) pornographic movie. (Shouldn't the rating system mean the same thing from one movie to the next?) There were actually children attending this movie. I also sat a few rows away from some people who not only ignored the "no smoking" sign... but smoked something that's not legal without a doctor's prescription. I left surprisingly hungry.

Holy Mom's Night Out. What's the cheap theater coming to?

And in other oddness, yesterday afternoon one of the sweetest octogenarians I have ever known stopped by our home (of course while 11 children were parading through the house in their tutus with marker-drawn jewels on their foreheads). She knocked on the door at 2 in the afternoon to ask if I could help her find her true property corners because her son and grandson are building a fence this weekend. It seems the neighbor has been slowly and surreptitiously stealing her yard, you see. Maybe a blade of grass a day over the past four years and it's adding up quickly.

I know what she means. And oddity or two a minute for the past 10 years and I'm exhausted just watching the show from here.

This very moment a sweet little bird is exploring the moss-covered branches outside my office window. The girls have finished school today. Grace glued beans to paper in her number work. That was fun and messy, a phrase that could describe our life in general now that I think of it.

Madeleine and Sarah wrote stories that theoretically included their vocabulary words. Both of them tend to get carried away with a story and forget the purpose of the assignment, letting the characters do what they will and the plots ramble away regardless of word choices.

I wonder where they got that.