Family Ties

If I haven't mentioned already, Boy Star has an unusual attachment to Grammie Imelda. A good thing, as far as that goes, but quite hilarious.

She spent the day with us Sunday. She played video games and pushed toy cars around, and hand fed the kid, and spoiled him at the store. And when it was time for her to go, in his best Scarlett impression, he wailed," No don't go! Don't go! Take me with you!"

I think I should be offended, but I can't seem to quite get worked up.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by

I'm supposed to be writing on a Thoreau quote: "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined."

Here's the deal. That quote sounds so, oh I don't know, full of ambition and intensity. Me? Not so ambitious and intense. Not even slightly ambitious and intense.

When I was young I imagined being a mother. A thinner mother. A more patient mother. A better mother. But nothing beyond that.

In the daily blur of nighttime feedings, pots of strong coffee, laundry, oatmeal making, bathing, and washing, and diaper changing, imagination has fallen by.

Bugs

Yeah, I hate spiders. Hate hate hatehatehate spiders.

There's one in my house right now. A big one. A big big one. With long creepy legs.

Boy Star seems to think he's going to go kill it. Last time he tried he didn't get near the sucker. That was enough to guilt me into killing the thing.

This time, we're hiding in the basement.

Daddy Star will be here in five more hours. I wonder if there's anything edible in the pantry.

Moving On

So I forgot that yesterday was, you know, yesterday. Day of justification for all things Machiavellian to come out of the current administration. For the first time since 2001, I didn't spend some part of the day glued to the television, weeping.

It was summerlike here yesterday. The in-laws came over. We watched football and had a cook-out.

And I blamed my forgetting on Katrina, but I am none to happy to realize I seem to have used up some portion of my sympathy. Should I not be able to feel compassion for the 9/11 victims and the hurricane victims?

Why

I was crying again this morning as Harry Connick, Jr. carried an emaciated man through flood waters.

Boy Star, three and a half, asked me why. I had already talked to him about the hurricane and flooding. He was specifically asking why that man didn't have food to eat, and why there was no ambulance to take him to the hospital, and why the hospitals were out of medicine.

Why indeed.

Relief

The phone number for the American Red Cross is 1-800-435-7669.

Their website https://give.redcross.org/?http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9115520/

Please donate.